Bonum Certa Men Certa

Bug Squashing and Diversity



Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock

Over the weekend, I was fortunate enough to visit Tirana again for their first Debian Bug Squashing Party.



Every time I go there, female developers (this is a hotspot of diversity) ask me if they can host the next Mini DebConf for Women. There have already been two of these very successful events, in Barcelona and Bucharest. It is not my decision to make though: anybody can host a MiniDebConf of any kind, anywhere, at any time. I've encouraged the women in Tirana to reach out to some of the previous speakers personally to scope potential dates and contact the DPL directly about funding for necessary expenses like travel.



The confession



If you have read Elena's blog post today, you might have seen my name and picture and assumed that I did a lot of the work. As it is International Women's Day, it seems like an opportune time to admit that isn't true and that as in many of the events in the Balkans, the bulk of the work was done by women. In fact, I only bought my ticket to go there at the last minute.



When I arrived, Izabela Bakollari and Anisa Kuci where already at the venue getting everything ready. They looked busy, so I asked them if they would like a bonus responsibility, presenting some slides about bug squashing that they had never seen before while translating them into Albanian in real-time. They delivered the presentation superbly, it was more entertaining than any TED talk I've ever seen.



Izabela, Anisa

The bugs that won't let you sleep



The event was boosted by a large contingent of Kosovans, including 15 more women. They had all pried themselves out of bed at 03:00 am to take the first bus to Tirana. It's rare to see such enthusiasm for bugs amongst developers anywhere but it was no surprise to me: most of them had been at the hackathon for girls in Prizren last year, where many of them encountered free software development processes for the first time, working long hours throughout the weekend in the summer heat.



and a celebrity guest



Jonatoni

A major highlight of the event was the presence of Jona Azizaj, a Fedora contributor who is very proactive in supporting all the communities who engage with people in the Balkans, including all the recent Debian events there. Jona is one of the finalists for Red Hat's Women in Open Source Award. Jona was a virtual speaker at DebConf17 last year, helping me demonstrate a call from the Fedora community WebRTC service fedrtc.org to the Debian equivalent, rtc.debian.org. At Mini DebConf Prishtina, where fifty percent of talks were delivered by women, I invited Jona on stage and challenged her to contemplate being a speaker at Red Hat Summit. Giving a talk there seemed like little more than a pipe dream just a few months ago in Prishtina: as a finalist for this prestigious award, her odds have shortened dramatically. It is so inspiring that a collaboration between free software communities helps build such fantastic leaders.



With results like this in the Balkans, you may think the diversity problem has been solved there. In reality, while the ratio of female participants may be more natural, they still face problems that are familiar to women anywhere.



One of the greatest highlights of my own visits to the region has been listening to some of the challenges these women have faced, things that I never encountered or even imagined as the stereotypical privileged white male. Yet despite enormous social, cultural and economic differences, while I was sitting in the heat of the summer in Prizren last year, it was not unlike my own time as a student in Australia and the enthusiasm and motivation of these young women discovering new technologies was just as familiar to me as the climate.



Hopefully more people will be able to listen to what they have to say if Jona wins the Red Hat award or if a Mini DebConf for Women goes ahead in the Balkans (subscribe before posting).

Recent Techrights' Posts

The Week to Come
Planning ahead
LLM Slop Has Only Been a Boon for Misinformation Online
The very same companies that were supposed to maintain quality (again, not limited to Google with PageRank) are now actively participating in generating and spreading slop
When They Tell You It's Free, Does That Mean No Charges (If So, Who's Paying and Why)?
there's "no free lunch"
 
Links 28/07/2025: COVID-19 Sped up Brain Aging, "Circumvention is More Popular Than Compliance"
Links for the day
Richard Stallman is Usually Right Because He Thinks "Outside the Box"
he is able to observe society (mores and norms) as somewhat of an outsider
LWN Has Been Down for a Long Time, Another Casualty of LLM Bots?
Time will tell. How much time though?
Slopfarms Versus 'Linux' (and Against People Who Write Real Articles About GNU/Linux)
LLM slop in slopfarms by Brian Fagioli and Redazione RHC
Gemini Links 28/07/2025: Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray and Running pkgsrc in a FreeBSD Jail
Links for the day
Microsoft Turns News Sites Into Spamfarms
Is the site The Register MS the next IDG?
The Register MS/The Register US
On Saturday I contacted them for a comment (before issuing criticism)
Hacking revelations at Vatican Jubilee of Digital Missionaries
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, July 27, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, July 27, 2025
We're Going to Focus Less on the Molotov Cocktail-Throwing Microsofters and More on Patents
We can get back to focusing on what we wanted to focus on all along
Just Trying to Keep Web Sites Honest (Journalistic Integrity)
the latest articles in LinuxIac are real
Links 27/07/2025: Political Affairs, Data Breaches, Attacks on Freedom of the Press
Links for the day
Gemini Links 27/07/2025: Hot in Japan and Terminal Escape Codes
Links for the day
Links 27/07/2025: More Microsoft Layoffs Coming, Science and Hardware News
Links for the day
Links 27/07/2025: FSF Hackathon and "Hulk Hogan Was a Very Bad Man"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 27/07/2025: DAW Mixer Chains and Simple Software
Links for the day
The Register MS is Inventing or Giving Air Time to New Conspiracy Theories so as to Distort the Narrative As High-Profile Agencies Fall Prey to Microsoft Holes
But the problem is holes, i.e. Microsoft making bad products; the problem is Microsoft
Most Editors at The Register Are American, Including the Editor in Chief, a Decade-Long Microsoft Stenographer (Writing Prose to Sell Microsoft)
It's not easy to tell where the site is based (we tried) because it's hiding behind ClownFlare and CrimeFlare hasn't been well lately
Pushers of systemd Rewrite History (Richard Stallman Said UNIX "Was Portable and Seemed Fairly Clean")
Unlike systemd
"New Techrights" Soon Turns 2 (A Few Days Before the FSF Turns 40)
We have a lot more to say about LLM bots
When Silence Says So Much
Garrett, a 'secure' boot pusher, will need to defend himself in the UK High Court
The Register in Trouble
There is not much that can be done at this point
Trajectory of The Register: From News Site/s Into "B2B"... and Into Microsoft Salespeople
Something isn't right at The Register
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, July 26, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, July 26, 2025
Misinformation in Social Control Media
Social control media passes around all sorts of tropes
Slopwatch: Fake Linux 'Articles' and Slopfarms With "Linux" in Their Names/Domains
throwing bots at "Linux" to make some fake articles
Links 26/07/2025: Amazon Shutdown in China, Russian Economy Slows
Links for the day
Gemini Links 26/07/2025: History of Time (1988) and Gemini Games
Links for the day
Links 26/07/2025: 50 Percent Tariffs in Amazon, Dying Intel Offloads Network and Edge Group (NEX)
Links for the day
Doing My Share to Tackle Online Slop and SPAM
Trying my best to 'fix' the Web
Blaming Programming Languages for Users' and Developers' Bad Practices
That's like blaming cars for drivers who crash into things
Slopwatch: Fakes, FUD, Duplicates, and Charlatans Galore
The Web as we once know it is collapsing. Some opportunists try to replace it with low-quality slop.
The Register UK Seems to Have Become American and Management is Changing (Microsofter as Editor in Chief)
The Register 'UK' is now controlled by the Directions on Microsoft guy
Many People Still Read Techrights Because It Says the Truth, Produces Evidence, and Does Not Self-Censor
Unlike so many other sites
The Register is Desperate for Money, According to The Register
I decided to check how they're doing as a business
Microsoft Finally Finds a Use Case for Slop?
Create low-quality chaff to shift the media's attention?
Microsoft Windows Lost 400 Million Users in a Few Years, Why Does The Register Double Down on Windows With New US Editor?
days ago they hired a new US editor
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, July 25, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, July 25, 2025
For Libel Reform One Must First Bring (or Raise) Awareness to the Issues and Their Magnitude
I myself know, from personal experience
Links 26/07/2025: Rationed Meals in the US and TikTok Repels Investments (Too Toxic)
Links for the day
Gemini Links 26/07/2025: "Bloody Google" and New People in Geminispace
Links for the day
Response to Solderpunk (Father of Gemini Protocol) About the Gemini Community
Solderpunk responds to non-sequitur
HTML and the Web Used to be Something a Child Could Learn, "Modern" Web is a Puzzle of Frameworks, Bloat, and Worse
When the Web was more like Gemini Protocol