The Coq mailing list

[Larry Lee <llee454 AT gmail.com>]

Fellow Coq Developers,

I agree with Emilio's assertion that the level of diversity within our
community is very low. While I lack reliable figures, my impression has
been that the gender, ethnic, and geographic diversity within our group
is less than that present in other programming and engineering
communities. If any of this stems from internally constructed barriers
within our community, I believe that we have an ethical responsibility
to identify and remove them. Accordingly, I applaud Emilio's effort to
open a discussion about how we can fulfill our ethical responsibility
to root out any barriers that may exist for minority members and to
strengthen our community by welcoming a diversity of people.

That said, I reject Caballero's admonition against having these
discussions. Our community's lack of gender, ethnic, and geographic
diversity is telling. Failing to even attempt to identify potential
barriers, biases, or access issues that may be driving this lack of
diversity is ethically inexcusable and practically detrimental. His
argument is equivalent to saying that because few of us are doctors,
and poor medical advice can be harmful, we should never discuss
possible ways to improve our health. This line of reasoning only serves
to maintain the status quo. It is an argument for complacency.

I would like to encourage us to think broadly about what diversity
means. Currently, our community is overwhelming dominated by developers
working in software engineering and mathematics. As a professional Coq
developer working in these fields, I appreciate this core focus. Yet,
when I think about the range of possible applications that Coq has, I
cannot help but feel that Coq has immense value to offer beyond these
areas. I would like to see Coq used more in the social and biological
sciences. I believe that any effort to open our community, will pay
dividends in bringing in researchers from other fields and enriching
our work. Removing barriers, improving access, and increasing our
visibility are not just ethical obligations - they are practical
opportunities.

Sincerely,
Larry Lee

On Mon, 219-02-04 at 21:17 -0500, José Manuel Rodríguez 
> Dear Coq Communit
> 
>   As a Cuban member of Coq community I would like to say a few words
> about diversity, because I am genetically the most diverse of us. I
> consider that it is not the responsibility of Coq users to address
> problems as complex as diversity, because most of us are not
> qualified for such a task. Such a subject should be addressed by
> experts in social sciences and biology. To put Coq users to try to
> solve such a problem is like to put experts in social science, which
> never programmed in Coq before, to develop a library in Coq about
> machine learning. The opinion of an ignorant person in a given
> subject has negative value in a discussion about this subject: we
> should be humble.
> 
> Finally, James Damore addressed the question of "diversity" in
> computer science. He was fired.
>    
> 
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-Ideological-Echo-Chamber.pdf
> 
> Sincerely yours,
> José Manuel RODRIGUEZ CABALLERO
> 
> 
> El lun., 4 feb. 2019 a las 20:31, Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (<
> e AT x80.org>)
>  escribió:
> > Dear Coq Community,
> > 
> > We would like to invite everybody to an online session about
> > improving
> > diversity in the Coq Community next Wednesday, Feb 6th at 16:00 (4
> > p.m.)
> > Paris time.
> > 
> > The session will be part of the monthly Coq Working Group and is
> > open
> > to everyone [as the Coq WG is].
> > 
> > People who have had difficulty interacting with the community, or
> > those
> > who come from underrepresented backgrounds within the Coq
> > demographic
> > are especially encouraged to attend and share their views.
> > 
> > You can join using a browser, please follow the instructions here:
> > https://github.com/coq/coq/wiki/CoqWG-2019-02-06
> > 
> > Context:
> > --------
> > 
> > It is no secret that the diversity situation in the Coq community
> > is quite dire, to put it softly.
> > 
> > The Coq Development team takes these concerns very seriously.
> > 
> > Informal discussions about diversity have already occurred at a few
> > developer meetings, a Code of Conduct [1,2,3] was added to Coq, and
> > we are looking into Outreachy [4].
> > 
> > However, we still face a chicken-and-egg problem: the large
> > majority of
> > people who have participated in such discussions belong to the
> > dominant
> > profile, thus the very feedback we need from those falling outside
> > of
> > the dominant profile is still missing.
> > 
> > That's why we are really looking forward to your ideas on how to
> > make
> > the Coq community more inclusive for everyone.
> > 
> > Best regards,
> > Emilio
> > 
> > [1] https://github.com/coq/coq/blob/master/CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md
> > [2] https://github.com/coq/coq/issues/6477
> > [3] https://github.com/coq/coq/pull/8071
> > [4] https://www.outreachy.org/