They are proposing removing meritocracy based on their political view that certain classes of people will never be able to participate on a level playing field.
They are the ones advancing a narrative of exclusion, telling individuals in whole swaths that they can never compete in open source projects.
They have no evidence to support this of course, just what they were taught in their sociology classes at uni.
In reality though they are the ones pushing outdated bias.
> Instead of abandoning a meritocracy because it has implementation issues, why don’t they just fix the problems?
Because the small group of people pushing these changes don't want meritocracy, they want power and influence merely for having the correct political opinions.
They rely on the cooperation of well-meaning people who support diversity but don't see it's ploy for control and power.
This is about changing the very nature of how open source projects work for people with radical political views to 'feel included', specifically to have their political views validated.
It is not about improving actual diversity, Mozilla already has those efforts. Mozilla should welcome and support contributions by everyone, I even recognize the systematic barriers that some people face, but I don't think we should be altering how key open source software projects function to affirm the believes of a small but loud group of radicals, particularly when their solutions for diversity don't actually increase diversity, they just increase the power of that loud group.
The people pushing this radical view on diversity and equality tend to paint all people they see as marginalized as unable to compete on a level playing field.
> The project also seeks to debias this system of distributing authority
Because this is not about the governance documents of an open source software project, it is about affirming the radical worldview of a small but loud fringe group in the name of diversity.
Except the only diversity is creates is diversity for people with the correct political opinions. It has nothing to do with the actual diversity that benefits an open source project.
It is time we stop listening to this fringe group about how to achieve diversity, they clearly only want power and control for themselves.
We should not let them bully pragmatic moderates who generally support diversity and inclusion into ceding them more authority and dictatorial control.
The radical group pushing these language changes are explicitly opposed to meritocracy.
They don't think they should have to justify their positions or their influence, they get it by having the 'right' politics.
They are committed to advancing their own personal and political power and influence by language enforcement, then use of secret code of conduct proceedings, all of which are subject to abuse.
Even where open source has failed to be inclusive and diverse empowering a fringe minority and instituting authoritarian language policing and secret proceedings will not advance inclusion or diversity.
They make no substantive contribution to diversity or the project.
> At the community development level, your intentional and forced choices around language, schedule, pronouns, and even technical terminology can make contributors from varying backgrounds feel welcome or unwelcome.
The proposal is not to make Mozilla more diverse, nor would it accomplish that.
The proposal is to change the language to make Mozilla seem more diverse to people with very explicit radical views on diversity.
This will actually have the opposite effect of reducing diversity and only serves to empower the people with the correct views.
These people thing changing the code of our institutions works, specifically by giving them more power, that we can rid our institutions of the worst aspects of human nature: racism, sexism, xenophobia.
We can and should combat those aspects for sure, but we are also giving into another aspect of human nature: unchecked power and control, which will almost certainly lead to abuse. There is also no evidence that this will improve diversity.
It's just to make people feel good and put a few radicals in charge who want to dictate everything.
When people approached some of the FreeBSD Core Team with their concerns about vague language that could be subject to abuse, they were basically told they were all racist transphobes who weren't welcome to contribute to FreeBSD anyways.
So it was a pretty obvious politically-motivated power-grab.
They are already attempting to control use of language and the foundational view of how open source works, based on their world view that equality is an illusion and only through use of selective discrimination against unpopular groups, as dictated by them, can equality be achieved.
What about it is fake? A senior-level employee and strategist for Mozilla made this proposal to the governance listserv. It's up for serious discussion.
The movement pushing this worldview do not believe oppressed groups can ever meaningful participate in society without their help.
They advance their 'help' to these groups and rely on the cooperation of people who want 'do the right thing' when they go about forcing their agenda on everyone.
It is about cementing their own personal and political power, it does little to actually improve diversity, and has nothing to do with code.
They are radical authoritarian thugs who come bearing gifts wrapped in feel-good language.
You can see how quickly this movement turns on members of groups they believe to be marginalized who reject their help.
They also inevitably turn against even moderates who are just trying to the right thing.
Funny enough the first reply to this in the listserv is calling out use of politically incorrect language in the proposal.