Content Management Is It a Man's World?
Mambo, the popular Open Source Content Management System, announced today its first step in encouraging greater participation of women in the project teams.
"The open source world is not much different from other software development," says core development team member Lynne Pope, "We have a lot of women using Mambo yet statistically, few get involved with the project. We intend to change this."
Mambo, like most open source development projects, tended to be very male-dominated. However, while the ratio of male to female participation is still a long way from equal, Mambo has come a long way in the past year. "We have women on project teams, and two who are members of the core development team", Lynne said, "Mambo is a meritocracy, and anyone with skills has the opportunity to join the team and work within the project. However, we have found that many women are not comfortable with just joining in on the forum when they first come to Mambo, so we looked for a way to provide a more welcoming environment targeted specifically at encouraging greater participation of women".
The Mambo Foundation has set up a mailing list and encourages anyone with an interest in encouraging greater involvement by women to join.
Lynne points out that this list is not exclusive. "We are not segregating women from men; our mailing list allows anyone to join and help. Mambo is not unique in offering a women's mailing list - we looked at the success of similar models in other projects. Debian has proven the value of setting up a group to get women involved in all aspects of the project. Having that group, building a community of women supporting women, and having obvious role models has resulted in greatly increased participation of women with their project. Our mailing list is a first step in our campaign to get more women involved."
Mambo Foundation President Ric Shreves stated: "By definition one of the underpinnings of the entire FOSS movement is open access. The software is open, the community should likewise be open. The Mambo Foundation supports fully these efforts and is committed to making initiatives like this meaningful. I am proud that we have a very international group at Mambo and I sincerely hope that going forward the project continues to embrace diversity and provides equal access to the community. Successfully incorporating diverse opinions, talents and abilities is one the challenges to making an Open Source project great."
Mambo mailing lists
http://mambo-foundation.org/mailman/listinfo/mlady_mambo-foundation.org.
Mambo Foundation Forums
http://forum.mambo-foundation.org
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