Re: [PATCH] am: counteract gender bias

[Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de>]

Hi Mike,

On Thu, 7 Jul 2016, Mike Hommey wrote:

> On Thu, Jul 07, 2016 at 01:47:19PM +0200, Johannes Schindelin wrote:
> > Since d1c5f2a (Add git-am, applymbox replacement., 2005-10-07), i.e. for
> > almost 11 years already, we demonstrated our disrespect to the pioneers
> > of software development like Ada Lovelace, Grace Hopper and Margaret
> > Hamilton, by pretending that each and every software developer is male
> > ("his_tree"). It appears almost as if we weren't fully aware that the
> > first professional software developers were all female.
> > 
> > We know our field to have this unfortunate gender bias that has nothing
> > to do with qualification or biological reasons, and we are very sad
> > about the current gender imbalance of the Git developer community.
> > 
> > Let's start changing that by using the variable name "her_tree" for an
> > equal number of years out of fairness, and change to the gender neutral
> > "their_tree" after that.
> 
> You make it sound like the decision to use "his" was conscious and on
> purpose. I doubt that was the case, especially 11 years ago, when these
> issues weren't as publicized. Let's not attribute to malice on part of
> the people who wrote those lines what can be attributed to linguistics.

It was not my intention to imply that the original decision was conscious.

What with me being a non-native speaker, would you kindly suggest a commit
message that conveys the intention better?

Thanks,
Dscho