On various women's mailing lists, a subscriber has raised the idea of a distribution developed "for and by women." So far, the idea has met with a cool reception. It might even be a troll. However, if such a distro ever gets underway, it would be very much in the spirit of the community, and might give more women the background and confidence to reduce the gender gap in free software.

This Tuesday (October 16th) there is an opportunity to attract more women contributors to technology in general and KDE in particular. Tuesday is Ada Lovelace Day; we are using the occasion to invite women to discover KDE. We want to help another generation of women be part of KDE. During the day, we will offer tutorials on different topics to give you a running start.

Women in Linux (or technology in general) has always been a rare breed. I have been very unsuccessful trying to make my female friends or family members getting interested in linux. So in my quest in getting more women interested in linux I have made this list of women who have actively contributed in linux community.

Assuming that the numbers from 2006 hold true, the level of participation by women in open source could use a lot of improvement. According to the Flosspols study, women make up less than 2 percent of the open source community. Proprietary software shows a not-great but much higher participation rate of nearly 30 percent.

I wanted to show you some real world examples of how successful women in IT and FOSS in particular think about the gender issue. These women are not some gray, anonymous, unsubstantiated array of possible FOSS participants, but real life women who have their own ideas and ideals.

The Women's Caucus is seeking an intern to assist with its work to increase the number of women involved in free software.

I have been given the opportunity to meet and get to know so many amazingly talented and skilled women who are in Open Source and more specifically the Ubuntu Community. The women I am writing about make the work and contributions they provide to Ubuntu, Open Source Projects, and initiatives to increase the visibility of women in open source, seem effortlessly awesome!

Clearly, people in the Linux community would like for more women to be involved in Linux, but most people don't know why so few women are involved or how to change that. This HOWTO is an effort to summarize the explanations, recommendations, and opinions of the women who already are interested and active in Linux.

Nearly a year ago the FSF held a mini-summit for women in free software to investigate practical ways to increase the number of women involved in the free software community. Those that attended the summit formed the Women's Caucus, and have been working to develop practical policy to recommend to the FSF and the wider free software community.