DPL platform 2025
Sruthi Chandran
[email protected]Who am I?
I am a librarian turned Free Software enthusiast and Debian Developer from India.
Some of my activities in Debian are:
- ruby, javascript, golang and font packages (totalling to around 200) since 2016. (not very active nowadays)
- Community Team delegate since Aug 2020.
- Application Manager since Jul 2020.
- Outreach team since Aug/Sep 2020.
- Chief orga DebConf India 2023.
- DebConf Committee member since 2023.
I have been mentoring people to contribute to Debian for many years now. I am involved in organizing numerous packaging workshops and other Debian events throughout India. I am also involved in organizing other free software events like Free Software Camp.
Why am I contesting?
Concerned with the skewed gender ratios within the Free Software community (and Debian) I am working towards doing whatever I can to better the situation. How many times did we have a non-(cis)male candidate for DPL? If I am not wrong, when I contested in 2020, I was the second non-(cis)male DPL candidate till date. As with my last two rounds of contesting for DPL (2020 & 2021), this year too my primary goal of contesting is to bring the diversity issues for discussion. I believe I was successful in that at-least to a small extend in my previous rounds.
I am aware that Debian is doing things to increase diversity within Debian, but as we can see, it is not sufficient. I am sad that there are only two women Debian Developer from a large country like India. I believe diversity is not something to be discussed only within Debian-women or Debian-diversity. It should come up for discussion in each and every aspect of the project.
DPL elections is an important activity in our project and I plan to bring up the topic of diversity for discussion every election till we have a non-(cis)male DPL.
I feel that one effective way to encourage diverse people to contribute is to have more visibility for diversity already within the community. As more and more women (both cis and trans), trans men, and genderqueer people who are already part of the project become more visible instead of staying hidden in some part of the project, more gender diverse people will feel comfortable joining our community. Geographic/ethnic diversity are also important areas which need attention.