The official mythology of FOSS states that it is a meritocracy, and that only the code matters. The reality is not nearly so happy. On September 19th, the GNOME Foundation and the Free Software Foundation will host a mini-summit on women in FOSS. Will it do any good? How much of a problem is it really?

The Free Software Foundation will host a mini-summit on Women in Free Software to discuss how the free software community can cultivate and increase participation by women in free software's development and activism communities.

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) and the GNOME Foundation are targeting higher women's participation in the community. The first step is a "mini-summit" on "Women in Free Software."

The Software Development Times has published an in-depth look the Free Software Foundation's (FSF) attempts at breaking down barriers for women in open source. It highlights the recently released report by the FSF's Women's Caucus, a mini-summit held last year to address issues in the FOSS community that some say prevent more females from participating.

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is acting to implement strategies to broaden the participation of women in the free and open-source software community (FOSS).

Just as Microsoft has being accused of playing dirty over sales tactics and patents, the software company has launched its first open source organization. The CodePlex Foundation aims to act as a liason between commercial enterprises and open source developers and communities while increasing open source participation, says the foundation.

Nearly a year ago the FSF held a mini-summit for women in free software to investigate practical ways to increase the number of women involved in the free software community. Those that attended the summit formed the Women's Caucus, and have been working to develop practical policy to recommend to the FSF and the wider free software community.

The Free Software Foundation is gearing up for a big event March 19th through 21st to be held in Cambridge, Mass. at Harvard's University Science Center. LibrePlanet 2010 is a three day event with workshops on using free software for everything from Web development to video editing and graphics.

"The Free Software Foundation will host a mini-summit on Freedom for Web Services to discuss how the free software community can ensure that software, and its users, stay free in this new technological environment..."