Not only that, along with the paid devs, there are female volunteer devs who worked and still work on some critical parts of the program.
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No, Krita has no debts. Why would it? The sane approach is more money => more developers, not the other way around.
@betazoid In general, if you’re interested in specific aspects of Krita’s development, it’s best to ask us directly - you can hop on IRC (krita on Freenode), or ask on krita-artists .org or the KDE subforum: https://forum.kde.org/viewforum.php?f=136 .
I am writing a blog post about Krita’s development, actually, I even made an attempt to gather some community input to be able to write more about popular misconceptions about Krita and Krita development: Krita development from outside - how does it look like? - off-topic talks - Krita Artists if you want, you can answer those questions in a pm to me or in the krita-artists post comment. Although from the look of it, you know basic facts, you’re just kinda confused about the idea and/or how it works out. It’s all public, of course, but things like philosophy or ideas might “get lost in translation” so even though I’m going to write this blog post - which I hope to remember to link to here, for you and all other interested - I’m (and I guess most others are) ready for questions, here or by PM, or on krita-artists, or on /r/krita on reddit, or IRC, or the KDE subforum.
The only thing is, I probably won’t touch the subject of how many females, males or any other gendered people are here in the community since it’s a secondary subject, everyone is welcome no matter their gender or any other attribute (although if one just happens to be a jerk, there might be some issues…). No one is welcome more. There are strict rules on sexism and other forms of harassment though; if someone chooses to work on Krita instead of some other open source program because Krita’s community is more friendly or welcoming than other communities, that’s of course a point of pride for us (well, me. I’m writing from my own point of view), but we’re not trying to invite more of one kind of people and less of other kind of people. Questions about daughters of the developers seem even a bit invading. No matter what career they chose to pursuit (if they’re even of age to make such choices!), their choice is valid. [That was of course from my personal standpoint as a Krita developer and previously a volunteer].
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No, Krita has no debts. Why would it? The sane approach is more money => more developers, not the other way around.
In 2017 the Krita Foundation had trouble with the Dutch tax authorities.
But that was already solved a day later:
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I just thought that daughters of developers who like their profession should be the best potential female developers. How else would a woman/girl have the idea to become a developer? I don’t know, maybe there is no connection here at all. Or is having more female developers not even desirable? Of course nobody can be forced to be a developer or anything else they do not want to be.
Anyway I was speaking in general terms, not about certain people.
- Maybe because she likes computer science?
- Maybe she was an user who can do programming and started fixing things in her favorite software? And grew into a programmer that way.
Just to name a few. I am honestly shocked by your statement.
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Short answer: basically the same way that a man/boy get an idea to become a developer. They learn about the possibility and decide to give it a try 
There are different ways. I for example read this very popular in my country book series for teenagers (now it’s a mandatory reading in schools) that had one of the main characters being a genius of computer science and IT - there was another, who was a genius in robotics, so I thought about robotics, too, cause it really seemed fun. Besides, I’m an adult now, but when I was in kindergarten, long time ago, I was learning “programming for kids” with Logo (Imagine). There were even some contests I wanted to participate in because of how much fun would moving this turtle be. In high school I had c++ programming. Now there is even more push for kids to learn programming than it was before, so there is just nearly no way for a kid to not touch it at some point - I know even my humanist/non-technical friends (like a friend who is an artist and was never ever interested in this kind of science) who touched programming and know the basics because they just had to at some point in their lives.
Also in my faculty in uni there were (mainly) two directions: computer science and Mathematics. Computer science has like 10-15% of women, while Mathematics had >50% of women (most probably because Math or Physics seem like a “safe” choice for someone who likes science but is unsure about technological/engineering career). And there is this little thing that while Math students can easily get a job after the full studies, no one will hire them after two years of uni and they all need getting a “practice” outside of uni (it could be internship or some science project). Since they need to learn programming in first two years, they often decide to get a programming internship since it’s “close enough” and the faculty accepts it (and it’s entirely possible to get a programming internship with little experience). Some of them might like it more than various other jobs that are possible after the Math course.
Also, a twist: the maintainer of Krita, Boud, is a linguist by education. How did he get an idea to become a developer?
I think it would be just fine to make sure that (1) the environment is safe, friendly and there is no prejudice, cause nobody would want to stay somewhere where they feel miserable; and (2) that girls and women of the world know that it’s a valid choice of career for them. Ad (1), I’ve seen myself a conversation in a chat of another open source project, it was something like: “We need more ladies here”, “Even if I were a lady, I wouldn’t admit it here”, “Touche”. What does it say about the environment? And Ad (2), both showing women who are already in tech careers and successful, and making programs for girls and women interested in tech etc., I think it does a great deal. But also just repeating that anyone can choose any career independent of their gender (but sometimes dependent of their other attributes) would help a lot.
Oh and btw - traditionally Ada Lovelace is considered to be the first programmer. Some time later, most programmers were women. Only later men started to push out women from the programming jobs, coincidentally this job was getting better paid.
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Yes, there are at least two developers who are women.
No, I don’t think the amount of female users has anything to do with that.
I’ve attended a fair share of CG conferences in my country (Russia). I’d say 1/3 to 1/2 of the attendees are women. In fact, women make the majority of participants in digital painting contests organized by Wacom there.
I really don’t know how people arrived at that number (25%) in the article. I’d say it’s an underestimation.
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While at that, I don’t know if that’s a cultural thing, but it’s entirely normal here to be a female designer or photographer or animator and make a decent living. I mean, I live in a country that is traditionally associated with patriarchy, and yet there you are. When I hear how women are underrepresented in the industry in the West, it just blows my mind.
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Reality is often shocking.
It’s a fact that teenage girls usually do not dream about being a developers whereas boys often do even if they have no idea what programming or source code actually is. In my country, if a kid does not go to a technical high school or the realistic branch of high school she/he probably does not learn what programming really is. In computer science class, they mainly learn how to use Excel etc.
I am a woman. I think I know what coding is. I whish I could fix this or that bug form time to time but I’d rather kill myself than code all day every day.
I am so glad that there so many women now that don’t let themself stop from becoming a developer. because there are plenty of women who enjoy that. even if you don’t.
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At least here in the US, the youth do not seem at all bound by the ideas of gender roles or gender norms. Good for them!
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I started coding, or rather, programming, when I was 12 years old. My mother came home with a 16kb Sinclair ZX-Spectrum one day, provided by the school where she worked. All teachers had to become familiar with computers. Within an hour I had typed in my first program and started hacking it to make prettier pictures.
Since then, I’ve always loved programming: in contrast with my parents and sister, if I told the computer to do something, it did something! Sometimes not what I thought I had told it, but that was fixable. Usually.
I never thought of studying computer science because it needs a passing grade in maths at high school, and didn’t even take maths (that was still possible back then, it isn’t anymore).
But when I graduated in comparative linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman language family, jobs were scarce, and I still liked coding, so I did a training for graduates without a good chance at a job (this was 1993), and after that I got a job as a software developer. Coding is lots of fun, and even after 38 years of programming, I still find it fun.
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I know a lady who has a degree in computer science. She works in user support. I think I (a humanist) am better at using computers than her. She is interested in computer science but there are things that she is more interested in. She studied computer science because she wanted to get a good job easily. She told me that studying computer science was very difficult for her, and she thinks that developing software is very stressful, especially fixing bugs.
I studied humanities because I wanted to study something that I am really good at but I totally respect my friend’s choice.
From other people I heard that women are often software testers. A developer once told me that he never met a lady developer.
What about exceptions that confirm the rule?
In the companies I worked we had around 1 of 10 developers female. From my point of view they are not very different then male developers. By the way, I have never seen a developer that fits into the typical developer image. (Fat, pizza eating, coffee drinking and smoking.) What I can say, they all love fixing problems, creating stuff and hate bullshit talking or small talk.
Now too the female developers I know:
- S. studied Math, husband and two children, loves coding, is the main developer of an important module, hates cooking and doing the household
- E. studied informatics, husband no children, loves fixing the hard bugs and diving deep into the code, head of customer service development department
- M., husband and two children, loves programming, expert for reporting, loves traveling
- C. studied German studies and Math, no husband or children, very high IQ, uses businesses programming jobs to get money for the other activities like working on a organic farm, writing novels, programming computer games, playing golf or doing martial arts, making cheese, building a tiny house, moving to the coast into a giant old house…
- J. has a boyfriend, loves coding, programmer for production planning software, loves sport and doing party, very communicative
- G. biologist, husband and 3 children, was not able to find a job as biologist, moved to the customer service as support member (no programmer), afaik never regret the decision
- J. data analysis specialist, boyfriend, loves data, hats to talk with customers, very sporty
- P. programmer, husband no children, loves cleaning code, has 5 horses
- C. data scientists loves KI, just married
And from my personal view all of them are good looking and communicative and afaik like the job.
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Why the facepalm? We are talking about preconceptions and one is that developer are fat and ugly and that’s some thing I can’t confirm.
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This is getting a little off the rails. Perceived traits about the perceived sex of developers you know amounts to anicidotal evidence.
Can we stop please?
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I suppose that I should have written something more complete. It is not about the argument about preconceptions, but women tend to be judged by their appearance much more than men, so talking about a diversity of developers to then end making a comment on how their are good looking to you, kinda defeats the whole point.
I second @paperdigits suggestion to stop this line of discussion, as the misinformationamd personal biases are piling up too quickly.
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Well I am probably just too old. Maybe the young chicks are all into coding nowadays. Maybe if I were 10 years younger I would have considered studying computer science or something similar. We did not even have a computer at home when I went to school.
I bet you’re younger than I am 
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