A lot of people (including me, for a time) thought that the Hellwig v. VMWare lawsuit, alleging that VMWare infringed upon the Linux Kernel copyright and violated the GPL, had been lost and was over. It’s being appealed. Things are moving slowly because the German court shuts down for much of the summer.
A Nice, Sensible Statement about Women in Silicon Valley
This is regarding the stupid memo issued by an ex-Google-employee, which got lots of news coverage for no reason I can understand. There has been that sort of jerk at places where I’ve worked before, but usually the complaints of jerks at work don’t leave the work place. There was nothing but old prejudices in this one, and I don’t understand why it became news.
I previously wrote The Empathy Gap: Why Women are Treated Badly in Open Source Communities. The issues I wrote about there extend beyond Open Source to the broader tech community.
There happen to be a lot of women in engineering, legal, and management positions at my customer firms. As a class, they seem to be at least as sharp as a man regarding their jobs. As a consultant, I am reporting to women quite often, and in general find them wonderful to work with.
I think it’s a pity that we have fewer women in Amateur Radio than men. Amateur Radio is unique in that it’s a technical pursuit, a way to meet people worldwide, and a path to technical self-education, but it isn’t employment or school. Women are sorely under-represented. In general, I feel it’s unhealthy for any community that isn’t specifically about the issues of one gender to have a gender imbalance in its participants.
I remain curious about the causes and would like to do more about the problem.
And of course I feel the same way about under-representation of women in the broader technical community.
Bruce
A Note About Our Legal Counsel
Our legal counsel is Heather Meeker of O’Melveny and Meyers, who also happens to be the author of the book “Open (Source) For Business, A Practical Guide to Open Source Software Licensing.”
https://www.amazon.com/Open-Source-Business-Practical-Licensing/dp/1544737645/ref=dp_ob_title_bk
Heather is without doubt the best attorney in the Open Source field. I recommend her wholeheartedly to anyone and everyone!
Heather is not responsible for my opinions on this blog or elsewhere. I speak for myself.