I think mark shuttleworth should really stop coding and start composing song " Woman is the nigger of the world part II" for his sexism speech.
John Lennon once did that!

I call bull on steve-o's comment - the word "folks" works just fine in every case I've seen where people use "guys" as a false generic.

It's what I use now, anyway :)

Thought that would get your attention!

Don't be boring and claim there's not sexism or discrimination. Don't be boring and claim people are generally recruited on merit. Don't be boring and claim that such things are infrequent.

Statistics alone boring prove otherwise.

The fact YOU are not offended frankly means little. That your wife may not be offended frankly means little.

The general facts are that discrimination occurs against women and reducing discrimination means noticing it, taking steps to address it and not being defensive when pulled up short about it. Having worked in addressing racial discrimination I can boringly point out that it's widespread. More so in some countries than in others. The same with sexism. It's more obvious, widespread and blatant in some than others.

Shuttleworth was just being lazy with his speech. Marcel has it right. There are a great number of other things he could have said that would have avoided the problem. I don't know that Shuttleworth is sexist - I've not heard or read anything else and it could well be he was 'playing to an audience' - the geeks who haven't kissed a girl yet...and there's an example. Maybe there are lots who have? Maybe this is just a silly joke. What about the geeks who haven't kissed a boy yet (I'd say that the majority of them).

There are places and times when to make such comments (and sometimes that's never and no-where) but don't come all coy and act like it's some kind of 'knee-jerk feminism'. He ought to take note and be more appropriate and considerate - that hurts no one...other than those who are in to knee-jerk defensiveness.

Next time, Linux speakers at conference should replace words like guys, girls, moms and grandmothers with something more neutral, like penguins, pidgins, rabbits, etc. No one will understand but the result could be more funny. I hope that people protecting rights of animals will not rise their voice against such speech... ;-)

I do agree that when you listen to the video that "girls' comment kind of sticks out, making it easy to take the wrong way.

If you look at the context though, how many people talk about the mom test. It's a common experience with tech people, they know about the computer stuff, making them the ones their moms and grandmas turn to for support and guidance.

Mark talks about the moms and grandmas, then makes a more generalized statement about making things easier for users, then makes the "girls" comment.

Since he had just referenced moms and grandmas just a little bit before making the "girls" comment, I find it hard to interpret it as a reference to anything other than our moms and grandmas.

Later, Seeker

"Maybe the OPENSOURCE community can help solve the "GUYS" problem by choosing one of these."

Why? Guys is applicable. Saying something neutral is like saying "the sacrifices of the men and women of the US army", when it's men getting their body parts blow off, and men who make up almost all of the army and do all of the heavy lifting and nearly all of the getting-maimed and dying. There comes a point where it's disrespectful to say "men and women".

The problem with "GUYs" is that ENGLISH is incomplete. We have no word for "ALL OF YOU REGAURDLESS OF SEX" in the language. The default is to use the masculine form.

They've solved the problem in southern US by using "YALL". "YOUS" or "YOUSN" is used in parts of New England.

Maybe the OPENSOURCE community can help solve the "GUYS" problem by choosing one of these.

Marcel,

Probably 95% of the Ubuntu users never care about any virtualization, just the way 98% of the Windows users don't care about such things, OK?

MOST Ubuntu users just want to use the Internet, to use a media player and an office suite.

MOST desktop/laptop/netbook users are not IT professionals.

How many VMware and Parallels licenses are sold, and how many desktop OS licenses?

Oh, Ubuntu is also for servers? Then... STOP talking about Flash, codecs, Linux Mint and whatever else is FOR DESKTOP USE!

Voilà.

As for Ubuntu 9.04 and Linux Mint 9.04, no matter what they say, Intel users are screwed. Seriously. The said "older driver" (2.4.1) is not stable, unless you like deadly stuff like I830WaitLpRing:
http://beranger.org/v3/wordpress/2009/05/06/error-in-i830waitlpring/

Ubuntu 9.10 is rapidly shaping up. In the last few days, it got TONS of updates and fixes, and even Xubuntu 9.10 got an excellent theming (via xubuntu-artwork 0.36 and 0.37), and fixes for stupid bugs as those in Mousepad and Leafpad (MrPouit is a great guy).

Allow me to go for Xubuntu 9.10 right now, and to only add codecs and WINE. I'll then allow you to go up there, in the clouds :-)

I'm in the same boat that you left with Xen. Our company runs Xen and Ubuntu. We see that switching to KVM is necessary with the next LTS release. We aren't happy about this, but I wasn't happy as a 5yr old when my sister pushed me into the pool either.

I'm looking forward to your migration story, in detail.

Hi Marcel, I have to say I looked closely at the video and didn't think that it was sexist in any way - maybe not appropriate for this conference, but definitely not sexist. Please remember that people come from all over the world and there are different customs, ways and grammatical phrases. Unless there is something that is blatantly wrong in a global sense, please take it for what it was meant - just some light hearted humour. I asked my wife if you would be offended and she looked at me as if to say 'what's the big deal'?

If you look at the following article ( http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Mark_Shuttleworth_at_Linuxcon ), it seems to be all about picking his speech to pieces. Knowing the kind of person Mark is, I doubt very much it was his intention to denigrate anyone. While I'm sure everyone tries to be PC in this age of over-PCness, you'll get it wrong now and again - live with it. Not everyone is out to be bad.

People should calm down about the issue of feminazi or racism agitators heckling about FOSS recruitment, or any recruitment. No one should need to "...strive to be as gender neutral as possible". All that matters is recruitment on merit for the job. Sex is of no relevance here. Recruit completely black, white, male or female teams as you wish as long as all were recruited on merit. When recruiting, just be careful not to give the above mentioned agitators any information by simply declining candidates with "sorry you did not fit our profile". Though this is hard on candidates, it must be, until politically correct nonsense is purged from society.

Did you actually research to find out why Ubuntu doesn't ship with Flash or the codecs needed to play DVD's or other proprietary video files? Did you stop to think that maybe in some countries (like the USA) that they can't, due to the DMCA, and current patents? LinuxMint can because they are very low on the radar, and they probably don't have a legal team telling them not to.

Actually, many users care about virtualization, even on the desktop. That's why companies like VMware and Parallels sell their products to desktop users. That aside, Ubuntu (and any other Linux distribution for that matter) aren't strictly for desktop use. Ubuntu is very popular with companies running Web and Email servers. Virtualization, to those people, is important.

As for the Mint argument, I see your point, but you're making a case based on 9.10 which is still in Beta right now. Essentially, you're arguing that Linux Mint 9.04 suffers from the same problems as Ubuntu 9.04. Fair enough. Nevertheless, as Ubuntu 9.04 works for a great many people and works well for them, so should Linux Mint.

And I thought it meant, "and they lived happily every after" or the movie has a happy ending; bad guy gets caught, the couple gets married . . . that sort of thing.

FYI-- "Happy ending" as it was used in Mark's keynote refers to man being serviced by a hooker to the point of ejaculation.What a charming way to begin a speech.

Congratulations on the launch of Ubuntu User, so far it's quite enjoyable, thank you!

Heck, most desktop users shouldn't care about virtualization at all, when will you get this right? They'd use that Linux distro, plus something else via WINE, period.

As for Linux Mint, it's great, but it releases MONTHS after Ubuntu, which is such a showstopper right now, when Ubuntu 9.04 has a screwed Intel video and 9.10 just got it right. So I am using Xubuntu 9.10 today -- the corresponding Mint XFCE edition might not be ready before January 2010!