Hi, I just wanted to move here an issue that arises now and then in Debian. That is, politeness and friendliness vs. technical competence. Quite a few people in the Free Software world seem to think -wrongly, in my opinion- that both things are opposed, and that a technical competent person won't care whether the environment is friendy or aggressive because they're just, well, technically competent. Moreover, I have the impression that for some people the issue of friendlyness might be a nice add-on, but nothing really important. Something that can be put aside when something else is more important, from their point of view.
Free Software is about meritocracy and elitism, or at least it pretends to be. It's true that some people are more competent in some areas, and have more knowledge than others, but it's often quite easy to turn that technical elitism into a more global elitism, and ending up thinking that some people just won't add any value to the project, and that's plainly wrong in my opinion. There's one slogan from LinuxChix that I love, that states "be polite, be friendly". I think it perfectly describes two things that any open community should have, at least, try to have. If we want to have a healthy community, and if we want to attract other people that could add value to the project, we will have to be able to keep a welcoming and friendly environment. I don't see how having that should make us technically inferior or anything like that, right the opposite. I don't want to start a flame, and I'm not sure if I'm doing right by opening this debate here, but I thought that maybe other people might have something to say, or wanted to add their point of view to the debate. Greetings, Miry -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-women-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/CAFotxVPjbKehx4tqexMKs=caw+tvdv55kmpyf4otbcwf_kj...@mail.gmail.com