Reminder for underrepresented folk feeling sad discovering that some of the "founders" of Open Source are also open eugencists. Don't feel so sad! Because a lot of founders of Open Source are openly and vocally disdainful of those eugenicists, racists, and other bigots. ♥️👍🏿
There are a lot of different personalities in Open Source. And given the demographics of what OSS looked like back in the days, the percentage of bigots is higher than the public at large.
Hateful people are usually much louder then the rest of us, so it can seem like there are many times more of them than there really are. And they can do a lot of lasting damage. I don't want to understate their harm.
But...
By number, there are a lot more good people than hateful people.
Underrepresented people that were driven out of working on open source in the mid-90s, didn't get the chance to contribute to these projects. This artificially puffs up the perceived "brilliance" of these early hateful contributors.
Underrepresented folk are not being forced out of current open source projects at nearly the same rate.
It's better now, but not perfect. We should hold current open source project leaders, who lead relevant and important projects, accountable.
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