Re: Q: Diversity plans

Soren Stoutner <[email protected]> Mon, 23 Mar 2026 18:13:15 -0700
Newsgroups	gmane.linux.debian.devel.vote
Organization	Debian
Message-ID	<3502110.FA4hkZi4iK@soren-desktop>
Sruthi

On Saturday, March 21, 2026 10:32:26 PM Mountain Standard Time Sruthi Chandran 
wrote:
> On 22 March 2026 4:23:25 am IST, Thomas Goirand <[email protected]> wrote:
> >Hi Shruti,
> >
> >In your platform, diversity and outreach takes more than half of the total
> >amount of text.
> Yes and I would take this chance to make it clear that Diversity and 
Outreach
> are not the same. While Diversity focuses on encouraging contributions from
> the underrepresented groups, Outreach involves activities to attract more
> contributors in general.
> >Have you done some actions to increase diversity in Debian in the past?
> >What actions? Where they focus in India (which would IMO have been a very
> >good and pragmatic first approach)?
> By Diversity, I do not mean just gender diversity, it includes geographic,
> ethnic and all other types of diversities. I would say my biggest activity
> with respect to Diversity was organizing DebConf23 in India. In addition to
> that, I have been involved in mentoring new contributors from India before
> and after DC. Directly and indirectly I could get more contributors and
> Debian Developers from India.
> 
> Regarding gender diversity, I personally talk to potential contributors
> wherever I go and motivate them to start contributing. I have been 
successful
> to some extend. Our FSCI group in India had plans to organize women free
> software hackathon, but we could not do it yet.
> 
> What I have noticed is that when you see people who you identify with, 
visible
> in a project, you are more interested to get involved with the project. I
> intend to be one of the visible women in Debian which would encourage more
> women to get involved.
> >I understand that becoming the DPL will make a spotlight on your diversity
> >actions, which is a good thing, and I support it. Though in what way having
> >a delegated team will help, apart from a larger budget?
> >
> >Last thing, Debian budget is currently tight. Don't you think that spending
> >money on our infrastructure (buying hardware for example) and Debconf 
should
> >have priority over diversity expenditure? Do you have any idea of how much
> >has been spent in the past, and how much you believe should be spent in the
> >future?
> I want to clear a common misconception here, more diversity activities does
> not mean spending more money. My aim with the delegated team is to 
streamline
> the diversity activities of Debian, not to spend more money. We already are
> spending some money, but being honest, we do not get as much result as we
> should. I want the team to study the spending pattern, what we are doing
> wrong and how we can use the money more efficiently. I personally do not
> believe in spending money on diversity just for the sake of that. Every
> Debian penny spent should be justified and have reasonable output.
> 
> I currently do not have any solid number for how much is spent in the past,
> but I can say in the future, I do not want to spent too much more than what
> we spend currently. What I want is better utilization of the fund.
> >Cheers,

I want to say that I really appreciate the wisdom of each of your comments 
here.  I think the distinction between Diversity and Outreach is important and 
that both are critical endeavors.  I also agree with your assessment that 
spending excessive money does not usually produce better results.  Spending a 
small amount of money is necessary, but often the current expenditures are 
sufficient and what is most needed is figuring out how to better structure our 
efforts.

-- 
Soren Stoutner
[email protected]
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