Miriam Ruiz: Projects, Conflicts and Emotions


I think Preining mis-characterises what happens on the Linux kernel mailing list, and in Debian, in free software development in general, and what Sarah Sharp has said and done. I continue to think he is wrong about everything on this topic.I am very surprised that Lars^WWirzenius is in possession of a crystal ball that allows him to see and evaluate my attitude towards all these items, considering that I have presented links to posts on the LKML, and yes, my interpretation of the matter. Mind that the whole text amounts to about 130 lines on my screen, while my personal opinion was stated in two paragraphs of total 9 lines plus some interspersed comments. And in these maybe 20 lines I didn t make general statements about open source, kernel development etc etc. Lars, I know you have closed your blog for comments so I couldn t ask you but please, can you send me one of your crystal balls if you have more of them? At least he has managed to keep a bit of proper writing and disagreed with my statement on Debian (whether there is fun or not in Debian). He is of course free to do that, but please, don t rob me the right to state that I think Debian has changed. All this dispute centers around people not being capable to distinguish two things: One, being against the Code of Conduct due to the inclusion of administrative actions without clear definitions, and Two, being pro offensive behavior and and insults. Now, dear Lars^WWirzenius, please listen: I never advocated abusive behavior or insults, nor do I defend it. (Did you hear that!) I simply opposed the Code of Conduct as ruling instrument. And what kind of emails I got due to my opposition was far outside the Code of Conduct you are so strongly defending. So please, stay at the facts, and stop insulting me. Thanks. Mart n Ferrari Concerning Mart n I don t have much to say but please, stop spreading lies. You stated:
Once again, he s complaining about how the fun from Debian has been lost because making sexist jokes, or treating other people like shit is not allowed any more.Could you please come up with a reference to this? Or are you just interpreting? I am very disappointed about this level of discussion between Debian Developers. You not even cared to answer my comment on your blog. Should I say something clear here you should be happy that this has not been written on a Debian mailing list, otherwise I hope the Code of Conduct hammer would hit you.
All this story seems to start with the complain of a 6 yo girl, close relative of one of the developers and STK user, who explained that she always felt that Mario Kart was better because there was a princess in it. I m not particularly happy with princesses as role models for girls, but one thing I have always said is that we have to listen to kids and take their opinions into accounts, and I know that if I had such a request from one of the kids closer to me, I probably would have fulfilled it too. In any case, Free Software projects based on volunteer work are essentially a do-ocracy and it is assumed that whoever does the work, gets to decide about it.
So that is how Princess Sara was added to the game. While developing it, I was assured that they took extra care that her proportions were somehow realistic, and not as distorted as we re used to see in Barbie or many Disney films. Sara is inspired on an OpenGameArt s wizard and is not supposed to be a weak damsel in distress, but in fact a powerful character in the world s universe.
Sara is not the only female character playable. There are a few others: Suzanne (a monkey, Blender s mascot), Xue (XFCE s mouse) and Amanda (a panda, the mascot of windows maker). Sara happens to be the only human character playable, male or female. While it has been argued that by adding that character, a player might have the impression that the rest of the characters would be male by default, I have been told that the intention is exactly the opposite,and that the fact that the only human playable character in the game is female should make it more attractive to girls. To some, at least.
Here are some images of Sara:
So the fact is that they have invested a lot of time in developing Sara s model. I m not an artist myself, so I don t know first hand how much time and effort it takes to make such a model, but in any case it seems that quite a lot. When they designed the beach track Gran Paradiso, they wanted to add people to the beach. That track is, in fact, inspired on a real existing place: Princess Juliana Airport. Time was over and they wanted to publish a version with what they already had, so they used Sara s model in a bikini on the beach, with the intention of adding more people, male and female, later. The overall view of the beach would be:
This is how that track shows when the players are driving in it:
Now, about the poster of version 0.9, it is supposed to be inspired in the previous poster of version 0.8.1, only this time inspired in Carnival (which is, in fact, a celebration in which sexualization of both genders is a core part). I know that there are accusations of cultural apropriation, but I couldn t know, as my white privilege probably shields me from seeing that. Up to now, no one has said anything about that, only Gunnar explaining his point of view as a non-native mexican: While the poster does not strike as the most cautious possible, I do not see it as culturally offensive. It does not attempt to set a scene portraiting what were the cultures really like; the portrait it paints is similar to so many fantasy recreations . In my opinion, even when the model is done in good taste, with no superbig breasts and no unrealistic waist, it s still depicting a girl without much clothes as the main element of the scene, with an attire, a posture and an attitude that clearly resembles carnival and, thus, inevitably conveys a message of sexualization. Even though I can t deny that it s a cute poster, it s one I wouldn t be happy to see for example in a school, if someone wanted to promote the game there. The author of the poster, anyway, tells me that he had a totally different intention when doing it, and he wanted to depict a powerful princess, in the center of SuperTuxKart s universe, celebrating the new engine.
About the panties showing every now and then, I ve been told that it s something so hard to see that in fact you would really have to open the model itself to view them. I m not saying that I like them though, I think it would have been better if Sara would have had short pants under the skirt, if she was going to drive the snowmobile with a dress, but I m not sure if that s something important enough to condemn the game. The original girl mentioned at the beginning of this post seems to have found the animation funny, started laughing, and said that Sara is very silly, and that was all. It s probably something more silly than naughty, I guess. Even though, as I said, it s something I don t like too much. I don t have to agree with STK developers in everything. I guess.
There s one thing I would like to highlight about my conversations with the developers of SuperTuxKart, though. I like them. They seem to be as concerned about the wellbeing of kids as I am, they have their own ethic norms of what s acceptable and what s not, and they want to do something to be proud of. Sometimes, many of these conflicts arise from a lack of trust. When I first saw the screenshots with the girl in bikini and the panties showing, I was honestly concerned about the direction the project was taking. After having talked with the developers, I am more calmed about it, because they seem to have their heart in the right place, they care, they are motivated and they work hard. I don t know if a princess would be my first choice for a main female character, but at least their intention seems to be to give some girls a sensible role model in the game with who they can identify.
This is one purpose of a Libre Graphics Magazine: to serve as a catalyst for discussion, to build a home for the users of Libre Graphics software, standards and methods. In such a magazine, we may unite all our previously disparate successes, all the successes which have, until now, stood alone as small examples, disjointed from the larger community. We have the opportunity to elevate the discourse around Libre Graphics as a professionally viable option, to raise previously unmentioned issues and to push forward the conception of just what Libre Graphics can produce.If you are even only vagued interested in typefaces, fonts, design and graphic art take a look at the magazine: it's CC-BY-SA licensed and you can download it for free, or buy a paper copy (which is amazing, really!). And it's not just about graphic arts: if you skim over the titles of the issues, you can find that they've talked about things like "Localisation/Internationalization", "Use Cases and Affordances" and, my favourite, "Gendering F/LOSS". On a similar topic, Siri's talk about "Why aren't more designers using Debian or working for Debian?" tried to shed a light on the difficult relationship between Free Software tools and graphic artists. These are the voices we need to listen to if we want to bring more graphic artists to Debian, and $deity knows that Debian needs them a lot :). After Solveig's talk about bug triaging and Miriam's one on packaging, it was time for the l10n workshop. I think it went well: we tried to briefly explain the translation workflow in Debian, and to translate together with the audience a po-debconf message. It wasn't maybe enough to complete and submit a translation, but hopefully it gave the audience an idea about how to do it. The day ended with a party for Debian Women 10th anniversary. And the cake wasn't a lie, beside being very good. Day 2 This, I'll remember as "the day I exited my comfort zone". Ok, I'm making a bit of fuss about it, but it was my first talk in English all alone. I spoke about the non-uploading DD process and how to keep your (and others') sanity in a big community project (slides here). I think it's very important to remind people that not all DDs are coding persons. And you don't need to be a developer to love Debian, contribute to it and become an official member of the project. But writing this presentation was for me also the occasion to take stock of my experience in Debian so far: in that talk slipped many of my demons, as impostor syndrome or overcommitment. But all the things I said are more or less, common sense - nothing new! - and lesson learned on the road: it's been now 2 years as DD and 4 as contributor. I'm pretty sure it's thanks to the special conditions of this conference (only speakers identifying themselves as female, a safe and very friendly environment) that I had the courage to give a talk. So the conference was a complete success on that regard, too. In the afternoon I was able to do one of the things I love: videoteam duty. Though I convinced Riccio to switch roles and to give me the camera: my experience in directing during last DebConf left me a bit scarred. Special mention for Laura speaking of pump.io and MediaGoblin and Solveig of Tails during the "Lightning Talks" and the people from LelaCoders during the "Bits from Local Communities" session. The Day(s) after: a Debian Contributors hackathon In my experience a measure of a conference's success is the burst of activity in pet projects just afterwards. In this, also, Barcelona MiniConf was a success: during the weekend, Enrico, Laura and I had the chance to talk together about Debian Contributors and make some plans.
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June 13, 2013 Cuernavaca, Morelos. Policement from the General Republic Attorney (Procuradur a General de la Rep blica, PGR) and the Army entered and searched the "3 de mayo" neighbourhood, in the municipality of Emiliano Zapata, detaining 17 ceramist artisans that sold candies, dolls and pi atas shaped like Spiderman. This search was done on the evening of last Wednesday, around 16:00. Federal ministerial policement and army soldiers closed a street with several informal stores and detained workers taht were selling this Marvel Comics character, following said company's denounce. As a result for this operation, 17 artisants were detained, although the same day five of them were freed. The policemen also seized 12 bags of candies, pi atas, ceramics and wooden figures of the superhero. PGR closed down 11 stores where ceramics with this same figure was being sold, accusing the detainees of plagiarizing Spiderman's image, protected under the copyright law. The 12 that remained under detention were put at the Federal Justice's disposal, which prompted that this Thursday, around 10AM, hundreds of sellers of "3 de mayo" went out to PGR's building to demand their friends' freedom, who are facing a bail of up to 200,000 pesos (~USD$18,000). Outraged because they said they were treated as if they were part of a drug ring, hundreds of artisans closed intermitently Avenida Cuauhn huac, where the PGR representation in Morelos state is located. The artisans' pressure helped for the amount of the bail to be lowered from MX$200,000 to MX$16,000, and so they were set free. Francisco Fern ndez Flores, president of the Ceramists Association, criticized the operation because, he said, it was as strong as if they were "drug dealers". The artisans explained that they don't even make the Spiderman figures, they are made by the interns of the Centro Estatal de Reinserci n Social de Atlacholoaya (prision), located in the Xochitepec municipality, who offered them to the ceramists so they could be sold. "The Atlacholoaya inmates do them, we buy them to support them, and turns out we are the delinquents now", said Miriam Monroy, sister of one of the detainees. This information was contradicted by Jes s Valencia Valencia, responsible for Morelos' state prision system, who assured that in said prision no ceramics are done. Fern ndez Flores insisted though that from within the prision they are being offered pi atas, candies and "piggy banks" with Spiderman's shape. Jos Luis Pozo, vicepresident of the Ceramists Union, said that to avoid more such federal operations for copyright breaches, they have committed not to produce or commercialize Marvel superhero figures, and any other characters the authority demands. "We do commit to, from now on, those products singled out to us will not be commercialized", he said. Pozo said that the PGR operation caused losses not just to the detained producers and salesmen, but to over 200 ceramists that had to close their stores in solidarity with their friends. Acording to the artisans, the products were a success until the PGR came, seized the products and detained the salesmen.And yes, the copyright insanity does not stop. Spiderman is by today a clear part of popular culture. Marvel brilliantly succeeded in creating such a popular icon that everybody recognizes, that everybody identifies with And that everybody should be able to recreate. We are not talking about brand protection. Marvel does not, and will never, commercialize pi atas, ceramics or wooden toys. And even if they were plastic-cast While Spiderman is still under the protection of copyright, as the Berne Convention defines it (and of course, as the much stricter Mexican laws agree), that does not mean that any and every product resembling a Spiderman should be protected. Many ceramists and pi ata makers will create unique pieces of art Ok, handicraft. But reading the copyright law more strictly, Spiderman is more treated as a trademark than as a copyright. And it is a trademark that should be declared as having passed on to the public domain.
Scratch animations consist of sprites that are animated by dragging the corresponent blocks into the Scripts area of the Scratch interface. Multiple sprites can be created and interact with one another. Each of the sprites can have different looks (called costumes in Scratch). You can use built-in sprites, load them from files, or draw your own using a drawing tool integrated in the environment.
Scratch itself is coded in Squeak, a Smalltalk implementation derived from Smalltalk-80.
The Scratch 1.4 source went GPLv2 on March, but there were some incompatibilites with the Squeak Virtual Machine currently in Wheezy that had to be resolved first. Luckily we were able to solve them, with the help of the Scratch and the Squeak guys, so I m happy to say that Scrach is finally available from Debian repositories.
Note: If any Scratch derivatives (such as BYOB or Panther) also need to be ported to the current version of Squeak, they should have a look at the comments in the Scratch ITP, and especially to the script uploaded by Bert Freudenberg, that replaces 90 indexed primitive declarations (removed in later versions of Squeak VM) with their named counterpart.
Note 2: This wouldn t have been possible without all the great work and effort made by Amos Blanton and many others. Lots of thanks!
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