Women & Mozilla

Seems like it was a woman’s week…

12 October 2009 par Delphine | Catégorie: News |

This past week, articles about women and open source have just been pouring out all over the Web and the press – especially in France. What’s going on, are things finally starting to change?!

Here are just some noticeable examples of what has appeared these past few days:

  • The popular French woman’s magazine Femme Actuelle (their Website) published an article entitled “Five ‘free’ Free Softwares” (“Cinq Logiciels Libres et Gratuits”, see below for a picture of the article).

    • Not only does this mean that free software is finally considered as something that can interest women in general, but it also shows that it is coming to a more general public. I really like the fact that this information is now available to all, and considered as something important to know about.

    Tristan Nitot is even interviewed in this article, and explains how free software works, and how it is different from proprietary software. Hurrah for Tristan and for showing all women how much Mozilla and FLOSS rock!  :)

  • The famous French Framablog talks about the article published above in Femme Actuelle, and about Tristan’s interview. They start out their first sentence by stating:

    • “Free software is making progress. Here is yet another example: it is featured on an entire page of today’s number 1,304 of… Femme Actuelle magazine!” (“Le logiciel libre avance. Preuve supplémentaire, il a droit aujourd’hui
    à une pleine page dans le numéro 1 304 du magazine… Femme Actuelle !”)

  • Thierry Noisette has published an article on ZDNet.fr (French Business and Technology Website), entitled “Open Source Needs More Women – Women React” (“Le logiciel libre manque de femmes, des femmes réagissent”). For the original version of his article on ZDNet, please click here. For an English version of the article, please click here.

    • In his article, Thierry notes how very few women are involved in free software, especially compared to proprietary software. But he also states that women have started to react. For example, several FLOSS women – Deborah Nicholson from the Free Software Foundation (FSF), Stormy Peters from the GNOME Foundation, and Hillary Rettig, Free Software activist – have recently organized a ” mini-summit “ around the women in free software issue, on September 19th.

  • Julia Buchner, French Mozilla Contributor (and former intern) and actively involved in promoting women in FLOSS and Mozilla, has started publishing her own articles on Geek Inc. She mainly writes about geek stuff and Mozilla: for example, she’s recently talked about Mark Surman‘s idea for Drumbeat, which you can find here (French).
    The list of all her articles can be found here.
  • And concerning the Internet, the French digital news Website Numerama published in its “Magazine” section a report about women and social media: “Social Media: Women are a majority” (“Media Sociaux : les femmes sont majoritaires“). It clearly shows how women outnumber men when it comes to using social medias, such as Flickr or Twitter.

    So it’s been a busy week for women in open source, and that’s exactly what we want it to be like more often.

    • Un commentaire pour “Seems like it was a woman’s week…”

    1. Are they (finally) noticing? « Women & Mozilla, le 5 January, 2010 à 7:15 pm Said:

      [...] But they’ve also been a period filled with news and information concerning women in open source and computing. So it still seems as though the subject is gaining more and more importance as time goes by. [...]

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