It Would be Good for Debian to Have a Female DPL, But...
2024: (quotas mandate)
An hour ago (election results not published yet, but it announces "FUTURE DEBIAN LEADER"):
This site is run by a very large community of contributors, including many female whistleblowers and volunteers. I just happen to be the editor and I reach out for women's take on things routinely.
One common theme we've covered here is what can harm feminism or the perception of feminism (the latter is not the same). We wrote about this two weeks ago.
To dismiss or discredit all critics as racist and sexist is a very IBM thing to do.
Yes, racism exists. Yes, it is a problem.
Yes, sexism exists. And yes, that too is a problem. It's problem we bemoan very regularly (just earlier this week I mentioned racism and sexism my wife believes she was subjected to by the law firm working for a strangler of American women and a man whose American spouse calls a "rapist" this year).
In the case of Debian, what's needed is leadership that focuses on technical aspects before social aspects or, as someone put it some minutes ago in IRC, "she seems like not the ideal focus. Outreach is what some of the Debian-based distros already focus on. Debian’s focus should be on the tech; performance and reliability.. the stuff that makes Debian worthy of widespread adoption."
In reality, Debian attracted all sorts of antisocial people, which Debian as a project continues to protect. That includes a man who sexually abused his underage sisters countless time and spent time in prison for it.
Debian isn't exactly selecting people for quality or policing bad behaviour. It's selective and that should trouble outsiders; Valve has already dumped Debian and went ahead with Arch for SteamOS. █