>From the Sydney Morning Herald, Australia: Linux grrls break free By Adam Turner April 2 2002
A locker-room mentality inherent in many user groups and mailing lists was the catalyst for an online sexual revolution - resulting in an Linux user group targeted specifically for women. LinuxChix was founded three years ago in the United States by Deb Richardson, who handed over global coordination and hosting to Melbourne programmer and writer Jenn Vesperman in August 2001. Linux is a free, open-source operating system, meaning its use and development is not restricted by copyright laws. LinuxChix is not exclusively for women but is actively welcoming to women rather than just passively neutral, says Vesperman. "Deb started it partly because she was sick of the teenage boy, locker-room mentality of a lot of Linux groups. She knew that it was chasing her away from Linux groups, particularly online, and felt that she couldn't possibly be the only one," says Vesperman. "She also felt that, particularly for women who aren't inherently geeky, there wasn't enough motivation to get past the locker-room mentality and actually find the core of really good people that she knew was there." Along with Melbourne and Sydney there are 18 LinuxChix regional chapters in the United States, six in Europe and five in Canada, supporting Richardson's original belief that women were in need of a low-testosterone environment in which to share ideas. "I think there are an awful lot of women who are interested in Linux and in Unix and I think there are more of them than there appears at first glance, simply because a lot of them have been scared off for various reasons," says Vesperman. "On a couple of the open-source mailing lists, the official lists for various projects, including some reasonably big-name ones, several of the women feel that they have been treated rudely specifically because they are female. They're not working on those projects any more." The LinuxChix community primarily revolves around eight general mailing lists. They include "techtalk" for technical questions and answers from beginner to expert level, "issues" relating to Linux, open source, technology and women and "grrls-only" - a combination of the LinuxChix mailing-lists topics but for women only. Grrls-only is deliberately not archived, to encourage people to speak openly. "We get quite a few people talking about whatever's going on in their lives at the time. It's very social. Since the inception of grrls-only, several women have felt freer to rant about things," says Vesperman. LinuxChix has a key focus on education and empowerment, offering online courses covering such areas as programming in C, security and Linux kernel hacking. A new BSDChix chapter of LinuxChix has formed for people interested in the BSD Unix variants. LinuxChix's Melbourne chapter next meets on Saturday, April 6. For details contact Claudine Chionh at [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Sydney chapter is inactive. www.linuxchix.org This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/03/29/1017206149200.html -- Ron. [au]
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