Microsoft, the GPL, and Nonsense from Folks Who Know Better

The big news this week, causing much contortion and hand-wringing among the Phoney Fundamentalists, is Microsoft's submission of its Hyper-V drivers to the kernel driver tree. Those pre-disposed to view Microsoft as Satan Incarnate are sure that there's a trick, a devious plot, in there, since Microsoft is, of coure, Satan Incarnate.

What I'm finding disturbing this morning is that none other than Bradley Kuhn of the Software Freedom Law Center has apparently added his voice to the chorus of those claiming that "Microsoft violated the GPL!" What's disturbing is that Bradley certainly knows better.

Stephen Hemminger, the Vyatta engineer who initially turned up the issue (and no one is claiming that there was no potential compliance issue with these drivers) denies that there was a violation. Microsoft has likewise denied that there was a violation (but, of, course, Microsoft is Satan Incarnate...)

Just to remind the folks who should know better (and enlighten the folks who have not actually read the GPL), a violation will occur under the following set of circumstances:

1. Microsoft distributes a binary copy of a "program" (in this case, the Hyper-V drivers), which includes GPL-licensed code, to a third-party, sources not included.
2. The third party makes a request to Microsoft for the sources corresponding to the binary they received.
3. Microsoft fails to provide those sources, in a timely fashion, for no more than the cost of creating the media and shipping it to the requester.

Absent that specific chain of events, there's simply no violation. If Bradley doesn't use hasn't received a copy of the Hyper-V drivers, from Microsoft, through legitimate channels, he's got no standing to be requesting sources, and he can't assert a violation. However, that doesn't inhibit the untruthful propagandists from using Bradley's (unfounded) claims to support their own (inaccurate) assertions of perfidy on Microsoft's part.

The SFLC has absolutely no business making such a claim unless they're prepared to support it, and the only way they can do so is by producing the third-party mentioned above, something which has so far not happened. The SFLC should issue a clarification immediately: they've called Microsoft liars, which is about par for the course, but they've also called Stephen Hemminger a liar, which is completely unreasonable.

A FURTHER CLARIFICATION FOR THOSE WHO DON'T
READ COMMENTS BEFORE POSTING THEIR OWN

Microsoft could have failed to comply by either the sequence of events noted above, or by failing to include an appropriate notice of how to get sources. There are assertions (and I don't personally know for a fact that there isn't an appropriate offer buried in the wad of stuff one gets with a Windows Server 200 license, I don't have one) that no such offer was tendered by Microsoft.

Assuming, for the sake of the discussion, that this was indeed the case, then the copyright holder of the code being infringed (so far unidentified) could indeed have cause to complain about a violation—since the copyright holder is the only one in a position to actually do anything about it—but it would be difficult for him-or-her to start complaining after the sources had been published and submitted, and the code was brought into compliance with the license's terms.

Which seems to be exactly what Bradley's doing, albeit at second hand. Usually this sort of rhetoric gets saved for when the SFLC files an actual suit, but it's being dragged out here when such action was avoided, thanks to Microsoft's deciding in this instance to play by the rules. That the SFLC is doing this strikes me as either grandstanding or ambulance-chasing after the case has already been settled out of court. My comments about "sore winners" still stand.

AND SOME NEW INFORMATION,
CASTING FURTHER DOUBT ON THE WHOLE THING

directhex has pointed out that what Microsoft evidently did in the Hyper-V drivers is to have a GPL-licensed driver shim, which pulled in a hitherto-proprietary binary blob at boot time, no different than what Nvidia and ATI do with their drivers. About which no one is screaming "Violation! Violation!", even though neither Nvidia nor ATI appear to have corrected those situations...

Which of these things is not like the others...? This seems to be some sort of a trick question...

Linus on Extremism

I may make jokes about Microsoft at times, but at the same time, I think the Microsoft hatred is a disease. I believe in open development, and that very much involves not just making the source open, but also not shutting other people and companies out.

There are ‘extremists’ in the free software world, but that’s one major reason why I don’t call what I do ‘free software’ any more. I don’t want to be associated with the people for whom it’s about exclusion and hatred.

—Linus Torvalds (as quoted in Linux Magazine)

[Über-thanks to Jeffrey Stedman and Jo Shields for turning up this quote!]

The Real FLOSS Community and the "Faux FLOSS Fundamentalists"

I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it any more!

—Peter Finch as "Howard Beale" in Network

I've written about my adventures with Roy Schestowitz and the fun folks over at Boycott Novell, and I've been the happy recipient of much interesting mail over the last few weeks, as well as the subject of a number of blog postings and articles, some more flattering than others, and the experience has caused a bit of an epiphany.

I've come to realize that our community and the people in it, are under attack. We are being disrupted, we are being defamed, we are being lied to, and, in some instances, we are even having our lives invaded.

More importantly, I feel as though I've started to see a consistent thread running through these attacks, invasions and disruptions. This attack comes not from Microsoft, but from a parasitical pseudo-"community" that attempts to pretend it's actually our community.

What I am seeing is people making a pretense of involvement in FLOSS and in our community, people who we don't actually know, people who never join us at conferences, don't work in projects, and only participate in mailing lists to instigate flame wars. I am seeing people who seem to be making a sort of religion out of "free software" and issuing their demands to the rest of us to do things their way. These are people who will excoriate you as something less than a "true GNU/Linux user" if you should touch a Macintosh or (heaven forbid!) a Windows box. These are folks who will berate you for buying a piece of software or owning an iPod. These are people who will classify you as a "freedom hater" if you express reservations about the GPL v3.

As I've said, our community thrives on disagreement, and we (mostly) deal with it in healthy ways. We reject uniformity of opinion and we always have. In stark contrast, this pretense "community" insists that their way is the One True Way, and we should all just shut up, learn the catechism, and do their bidding.

I've come to think of these people over the past several days as the "Faux FLOSS Fundamentalists".

By way of a concrete example, I offer this email thread, from the ubuntu-devel list around the beginning of June.

It shows "Mark Fink" (a regular anti-Mono "advocate" who, as you will see, constantly points back to Boycott Novell and praises Roy Schestowitz, and who you may remember from that previous posting), asserting (without particular evidence) that there is "shameful censoring of mono [sic] opposition" going on, demanding that Mono (and consequently F-Stop and Tomboy) be removed from the Ubuntu default install, and further demanding that Jo Shields be removed from his involvement in Ubuntu and David Siegel be fired from Canonical, with much vituperation and insult directed at list members who attempt to help him see reason along the way.

"Mark Fink" and "Remco"--who comes in a bit later in the thread, and starts off seeming semi-reasonable, only to go progressively deeper off the deep end as things proceed--represent the "faux FLOSS fundamentalists" here.

Everybody else on the thread represents the "real FLOSS community", as do the vast majority of the hundreds, if not thousands, of subscribers to that list who didn't comment. Most of us on the thread know, or are at least aware, of one another; none of us has much of a clue who Remco and Mr. Fink are.

I appear, in increasingly testy form, a few times. The messages without line wrapping were actually posted from the countryside of Western Japan, where--as I mention--I was doing a Buddhist pilgrimage and posting from my iPhone.

Scott James Remnant asks "Remco" an intriguing question at one point, and maybe Mr. Schestowitz and Mr. Varghese would like to tackle this, too, sometime: if they're all so concerned about the presence of patents which Microsoft claims to both hold and actively enforce getting into their free software, why haven't they started a discussion about removing the Linux kernel from the default Ubuntu install?

I say enough is enough. We should put our collective feet down as far as strident demands from complete non-participants in the community go. We should say "no" to Faux FLOSS Fundamentalism, and people like Roy Schestowitz, Sam Varghese, "Penguin Pete", "Jason" of mono-nono, and the like, as well as the assortment of associated and sympathetic trolls who post endless anonymous comments to blog postings they dislike and start up flame wars on development lists.

The Faux FLOSS Fundamentalists have nothing to offer the community but their propaganda, their dogma, and their misplaced sense of entitlement. We need to reject those who demand that we all sign up for "Freedom the Way We Tell You To" and I think we need to make it clear to them that they need to either actually start participating in a meaningful way or simply stop "advocating" at us.

Plain old "freedom" is good enough for me.

AN IMPORTANT ADDENDUM THAT I SHOULDN'T HAVE HAD TO WRITE

I begin to detect a trend amongst the comments. People, let's get some clarity on one specific point.

I am not calling Richard Stallman a "faux FLOSS Fundamentalist" here. His name appears nowhere in this post, and, believe me, if I had meant it to, it would have.

Mr. Stallman has some other issues, as far as I'm concerned: poor judgment, a lack of willingness to even try to understand the point of view of others, a very peculiar inability to either acknowledge or see references to women (and I don't understand this at all, frankly) and a lack of good sense as far as how what he says will be understood, on a personal and emotional level, by the people to whom he says it.

Mr. Stallman wrote the GPL and the LGPL, and those have been valuable and important assets for the community. (The offer not good for GPL/LGPL v3, at least not yet.) No one can, or should dispute that.

Mr. Stallman has contributed a lot of excellent code in his time, and there's no way any one can dispute that.

Mr. Stallman did a lot of the seminal thinking around FLOSS (but he's not the only one who did. Eric Raymond and Bruce Perens and many others contributed their thoughts and ideas as well.)

Are we all straight on that? Mr. Stallman has unquestionably contributed, and participated, and I'm not referring to him, neither directly nor obliquely, neither implicitly nor inferentially.

So: I do not include Mr. Stallman among the ranks of the "Faux FLOSS Fundamentalists". His taste in humor aside, he does not make a hobby of disrupting the community to get his way.

That said, when Mr. Stallman insists that I must call not call it "Linux", but "GNU/Linux instead, I must disagree. When Mr. Stallman insists that I must not call what we work with "open source" software rather than "free" software, I must disagree. When Mr. Stallman insists that I must not own an iPod, I must disagree. In general, when Mr. Stallman insists that I must do something contrary to common practice or the dictates of my own conscience, reason or will, I must disagree. (And if I ever happen to wind up out at a group dinner with Richard Stallman--an event which seems increasingly unlikely with each passing hour, and I'm really okay with that--and he attempts to order on my behalf, trust me, I'm going to disagree.)

Because that's not freedom. That's "do what Richard Stallman says," and that's the direct converse of freedom. I do note that many of the symptoms of the faux FLOSS Fundies seem to manifest as a sort of a "free software religion", where the most extreme end of the wide spectrum of views in the free, libre and open source software community (GPL v3 only! Microsoft is our sworn enemy! The Hyper-V drivers are a plot!) is taken as the only legitimate view, as gospel.

Freedom always wins in the end because it simply can't be gotten rid of: no one can tell you how, or what, to think.

I Really Didn't Want To Be Writing About This Again

mdz posted on the backlash to my blog posting (he had to close comments, inhibit the Nameless and turn on moderation as well), and dissected a lot of examples, but there's a new and (I think) rather pernicious one: the thesis is basically as follows:

"In spite of his repeated denials that he has a strong opinion one way of the other on Mono, Lefty is really a secret Mono advocate, and is leading a witch hunt against Stallman over a harmless little joke that he's told for the past decade, but it's really all about Mono."

First, let's get the harmless little joke stuff out of the way. Chani (who is a woman and who was present, so let's get that out of the way, too) posted an extremely eloquent comment on her blog:

talking about relieving women of their virginity casts women in a submissive role, with men in a dominant role, and brings up thoughts of oppression and (indirectly) rape. (yes, thinking about a roomful of guys thinking about taking womens’ virginity does eventually lead me to wondering how many of them would take it by force.) it becomes less about the non-sexual meaning of “virgin” and more about all the crazy ideas societies have had about virgin women. and thinking about that stuff would make any woman uncomfortable.

Yes. This.

Does anyone not get that? If so, speak up: I want to know who you are because I find you very frightening.

Now, as to the thesis detailed above. I've been clear about my opinions on Mono. If I had a serious gripe with Stallman's position, and I cared enough to do something about it, I'd post a blog entry like Dave Neary did. The fact is my feelings just aren't that strong.

By way of full disclosure, I know a lot of people on the Mono team, including Miguel de Icaza, and I like them. They are not demons, and they are not "Microsoft shills". Treating them as though they were and calling them names will not score you points in the community.

I know a lot of people working on Mono projects, and they're doing what I believe to be excellent work.

Now, I believe that anyone who's serious about "getting Mono out of the default Ubuntu install" should run for a seat on the UTB, and nominations are open until the end of the month. I guess we'll see if Roy Schestowitz puts his hat in the ring. If you want to change things, you get involved and put yourself in a position to change them.

What you don't do is defame people over the issue, or interfere with their lives. That's my gripe with Roy and his miserable excuse for a "journalistic" web site, not Mono.

Does anyone not get that?

Now, when you say "it's really got to be about Mono", you're effectively saying, "It's not actually possible that people could really get upset over something like sexism in the community. There has to be a better reason."

I came across a study which showed that, among incoming first-year college students, around half of the men favored the possibility of programming computers as a career and something like 20% of the women did. Men associated computer science with making a bunch of money, women associated it with typing and boredom. (Men were generally more interested in money, and women were generally more interested in job satisfaction.)

Assuming that half of that one out of five women, i.e. 10% actually end up studying computer science, only one out of five of them actually end up working in the FLOSS community. It seems to me that there's something wrong there. I say that a bunch of what's wrong is a climate where we tolerate (and laugh at, and dismiss concerns about, and divert discussion of) presentations like the ones given at GoGaRuCo and Flashbelt, and "harmless little jokes" like Stallman's.

Consider that.

Consider what Chani's said.

Now, tell me "It's really all about Mono."

---

Some other postings which relate to this.

Matthew Garrett, RMS and Virgins
Dave Neary, Gran Canaria Wrap-up Day 1
Kirrily Robert, Richard Stallman, Feminist Ally
Geek Feminism Wiki, EMACS Virgin Joke

Hm.

I think mdz makes some interesting points here.

I played Kirrily Robert's "Porny Presentation Bingo" with the comments on my email exchange with Richard Stallman. I think I've won something.

In addition, I'm starting to get not only outright anonymous trolling, completely irrelevant to the issue at hand, but--at least as bad--I'm starting to get link pimps:

Hey, you have a great blog here! I'm definitely going to bookmark you! Increasing your web traffic and page views Add [DELETED], add your website in [DELETED] site, it's pretty awesome too!

So. No more Anonymous Cowards. Moderation is on until I decide to take it off. Sorry For The Inconvenience.

So. Have a name. Be on-topic. Don't advertise here.

Let's All Say It Together.

STOP sexism by Casey West. License:

"I want the [...] open source [...] communities [I participate in] to be a dignified, respectful, inclusive, and welcoming place. … We’ve all been witnesses to off-color jokes, misogynistic back channel chatter, questionable imagery and unnecessary, trolling comments. I pledge to do better to stand up and call this behavior out when I see it in conferences, online and other public settings. I don’t expect it to go away but I’m not going to tacitly condone it any longer."

(And thanks to Luis Villa for the pointer...)

Me, Neither

Emailing Richard Stallman

I emailed Richard Stallman at the encouragement of a couple of friends here in order to get my concerns in front of him, and hopefully, to get a response. The entire exchange pretty much speaks for itself, I'd say, so I'll simply reproduce it in full here.

My initial email:

Dear Dr. Stallman:

I was in the audience during your keynote at the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit, and I was perplexed and distressed by a few things.

The lesser of these was your tendency to shout over questioners while they were in mid-question, and to dismiss their questions as “silly”. However, this is not what I’m mainly concerned about.

The more significant problem was your comments regarding “EMAC virgins”, which you defined as being specifically “_women_ who had never used EMACS”, and for whom being “relieved” of this “virginity” was a “holy duty”. My reaction, and the reaction of a large number of members of the audience with whom I’ve spoken was one of great dismay.

Your remarks gave the distinct impression that you view women as being in particular need of technical assistance (presumably by men, since there's apparently no such thing as a _male_ "EMACS virgin"); additionally, women are quite capable of making their own decisions about who might relieve them of whatever sort of “virginity”. I (and many others) viewed these remarks as denigrating and demeaning to women, as well as completely out of place at what is, in essence, a technical conference.

As a member of the GNOME Foundation Advisory Board, I engage in regular discussions about the relatively small number of women involved in open source. I feel that it is thoughtless comments like your remarks on “EMACS virgins” which contribute, quite heavily, to this situation. Given your position with respect to the free software community, I feel you did your audience a great disservice. If those remarks were intended as a joke, the joke was, frankly, not at all a funny one. I’d strongly encourage you to refrain from such comments in the future.

I also think you may find it worth considering that there are active and important members of the free software community who consider themselves Christians—I’d cite Michael Meeks as just one example. While no one insists that you agree with or subscribe to a particular religion, people are every bit as entitled to their own beliefs as you are to your lack of them, and I thought it likewise inappropriate to take keynote time to create a situation in which you marginalize members of the community by mocking Christianity. Again, this is a technical conference.

I personally feel as though you owe your audience, and in particular the women attending the conference, an apology. The remarks came across as thoughtless, inconsiderate and sexist--again, this is not simply my own opinion, but one which I’ve heard echoed, over and over, in my discussions with others who were present at the time. I would imagine that this was not your intention, but it was indeed the reaction of many members of the audience.

I hope you will take this letter in the spirit in which it’s intended. I’ll look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

David “Lefty” Schlesinger

Dr. Stallman's reply:

The Cult of the Virgin of Emacs, like the rest of the Church of Emacs, is meant to poke fun at religion and at myself. I think that you and some others have misunderstood it.

>While no one insists that you agree with or subscribe to
> a particular religion, people are every bit as entitled to
> their own beliefs as you are to your lack of them,

Yes, they are. Are you accusing me of wishing to deny them these rights? If so, you do me wrong. I defend religious freedom as strongly as anyone.

However, freedom of religion the freedom to criticize religious views. No human views are off limits to criticism, or joking. People have a right to criticize religion directly, or to ridicule it harshly.

However, St IGNUcius does neither of those; at most it makes gentle fun of religion, tangentially. There is no reason for religious people to take offense at that. I have presented St IGNUcius with Catholic priests in the audience, and it did not offend them.

>I personally feel as though you owe your audience,
>and in particular the women attending the conference,
>an apology. The remarks came across as thoughtless,
>inconsiderate and sexist--again, this is not simply my
>own opinion, but one which I've heard echoed, over and
>over, in my discussions with others who were present at the time.

I do not believe I owe anyone an apology. I did not insult or attack them, but it is clear some people are attacking me. I think I am being criticized unjustly criticized, and I feel I have been wronged.

I am concerned about this reported hostile reaction. But I am not sure what to make of it, since it goes against nearly all the rest of my experience. I have had very few negative reactions to St IGNUcius in the past; the only one I can remember was from someone who was hostile to begin with. So this seems like an anomalous case. I don't understand why it happened.

You said that you "heard it echoed, over and over", but how many people actually had this reaction? Maybe it was a few people who started a lot of conversations.

My second email:

Dear Dr. Stallman:

I'm honestly a little surprised--amazed, really--that you managed to completely ignore the three central paragraphs which I identified as being the core of my concerns, choosing instead to focus on the side issue of the anti-religious bent of your "St. IGNUcius" routine.

Let me reiterate, without the distractions:

> The more significant problem was your comments
> regarding “EMAC virgins”, which you defined as being
> specifically “_women_ who had never used EMACS”,
> and for whom being “relieved” of this “virginity” was a “holy
> duty”. My reaction, and the reaction of a large number of
> members of the audience with whom I’ve spoken was
> one of great dismay.
>
> Your remarks gave the distinct impression that you view
> women as being in particular need of technical assistance
> (presumably by men, since there's apparently no such
> thing as a _male_ "EMACS virgin"); additionally, women
> are quite capable of making their own decisions about
> who might relieve them of whatever sort of “virginity”. I
> (and many others) viewed these remarks as denigrating
> and demeaning to women, as well as completely out
> of place at what is, in essence, a technical conference.
>
> As a member of the GNOME Foundation Advisory
> Board, I engage in regular discussions about the relatively
> small number of women involved in open source. I feel
> that it is thoughtless comments like your remarks on
> “EMACS virgins” which contribute, quite heavily, to this
> situation. Given your position with respect to the free
> software community, I feel you did your audience a great
> disservice. If those remarks were intended as a joke, the
> joke was, frankly, not at all a funny one. I’d strongly
> encourage you to refrain from such comments in the future.

Perhaps you can respond to _these_ concerns rather than the more tangential ones.

> I am concerned about this reported hostile reaction.

I would hope so.

> But I am not sure what to make of it, since it goes
> against nearly all the rest of my experience. I have
> had very few negative reactions to St IGNUcius
> in the past; the only one I can remember was from
> someone who was hostile to begin with. So this seems
> like an anomalous case. I don't understand why it
> happened.

I understand exactly why it "happened": as I said, your remarks were sexist, thoughtless, dismissive and denigrating.

> You said that you "heard it echoed, over and over",
> but how many people actually had this reaction?
> Maybe it was a few people who started a lot of
> conversations.

I would estimate that I've spoken to well in excess of a hundred people at the conference about this; most of them initiated the conversation with me, rather than the other way around. The virtually universal reaction has been exactly what I described to you: dismay, unhappiness and concern over the view of women which your idea of "gentle fun" implied.

Again, you did your audience a serious disservice with these remarks. I stand by my statement that you owe all of us an apology.

Sincerely,

David "Lefty" Schlesinger

Dr. Stallman's reply:

> I'm honestly a little surprised--amazed, really--that
> you managed to completely ignore the three central
> paragraphs which I identified as being the core of my
> concerns, choosing instead to focus on the side issue of
> the anti-religious bent of your "St. IGNUcius" routine.

I did respond to the other points, just more briefly.

>> The remarks came across as thoughtless, inconsiderate
>> and sexist--again, this is not simply my own opinion, but
>> one which I've heard echoed...
>
> I do not believe I owe anyone an apology. I did not insult or
> attack them, but it is clear some people are attacking me....

Thus, I think your criticism of my response is inaccurate. However, my response naturally reflected my own priorities.

> Your remarks gave the distinct impression that you
> view women as being in particular need of technical
> assistance (presumably by men, since there's
> apparently no such thing as a _male_ "EMACS virgin");
> additionally, women are quite capable of making their
> own decisions about who might relieve them of whatever
> sort of "virginity". I (and many others) viewed these
> remarks as denigrating and demeaning to women,

The cult of the Virgin of Emacs is simply intended as a joke about the cult of the Virgin Mary. I assure anyone who perceived derogatory meanings in it that I did not intend them.

Wow. Just wow. In anyone can find the point in his first message where he responded, "albeit more briefly", to the issue I raised, can you point it out to me? I sure don't see it.

A Good GCDS Beginning (with a significant disappointment)

[UPDATE: I've had an email exchange with Richard Stallman over this. I found it...less than satisfying.]

Well, I'm in Gran Canaria for the first combined GUADEC/AKaDEmy Desktop Summit, and it's great to be here (although quite hot and humid). Last night, things got started with a very nice party sponsored by our friends at Canonical, excellent turnout! I bailed at midnight (although apparently some stayed until 3:00 am), but not before I saw a number of my friends, which was great.

Things kicked off this morning with a welcome from the local government (I'm taking part in a breakfast with them to discuss open source this coming Monday), followed by an excellent keynote, mostly on how the classical liberal arts related to free software (or "liberal software" as he called it) by Richard "r0ml" Lefowitz. Walter Bender talked about TurtleArt, and was followed by a keynote I found quite disappointing from Richard Stallman.

It got off to a bad start when the organizers had to call a break so they could locate Richard--that shows great disrespect for the audience, I'd say. This was only made worse by Richard's observation, a few minutes into his talk, that "there were a lot of people still coming in" and that he should, perhaps, start over again. (They would have already been there if you'd been there when you were supposed to be, Richard.)

The talk started out with a rehash of open source history--much of which is, I'm certain, quite well-known to the audience, and then lapsed into a fairly undirected rant about C# and how no one should be using it (with a completely incomprehensible comment that it was "good" that there were free C# implementations... huh?), before Richard donned his "Saint Ignotius" get-up. For me, things went rapidly and drastically downhill from that point.

The nadir for me was Richard's explanation of "EMACS virgins" as "women who had not been introduced to EMACS" along with the advice that "relieving them of their virginity" was some sort of sacred duty for members of "The Church of EMACS".

What the hell is that, Richard? If it was intended to be humorous, it only reached the point of being offensive. We talk about how we can work better to involve more women in a meaningful way in open source development--where they're clearly under-represented--but this sort of nonsense, stuff which would have been preposterous even ten or twenty years ago, can only work to drive women away from such involvement.

Richard certainly provided a valuable service with some of the first open source efforts, and the first free software license, but that doesn't give him, as far as I'm concerned, a free ride to regale audiences with his evidently mediæval views about women. I was very unhappy with his keynote for a number of reasons--something that was probably reflected in my questions--but the question I really wish I'd asked is the following.

Haven't we gotten past the point where we need to view women as a) technically incompetent, and in need of "us guys" to explain this stuff to them, and b) as objects to be "relieved" (presumably by "us guys") of whatever sort of virginity? If we want to encourage greater participation from women in open source efforts, do you really believe that sort of blatantly condescending, sexist, outdated nonsense is the way to go about it?

I honestly thought it was shameful.