Today yet another story broke about a U.S. politician making comments downplaying rape. This time, it was a candidate for U.S. Senate Richard Mourdock describing pregnancies from rape as “a gift from God.” Before him were Roger Rivard, a U.S. State representative, with “some girls rape easy,” and U.S. Senate candidate Todd Akin’s with “legitimate rape” never resulting in pregnancy. As a result of these stories, many Americans are now familiar with the effects of powerful people dismissing and redefining rape: at best, it is horribly insensitive and blames the victim, at worst it condones a serious crime.

That’s why I was shocked and horrified when a prominent leader in the Linux open source software community – our equivalent of politicians – made comments that also downplayed the seriousness of all rape . (If you’re not familiar with open source software or the free Linux operating system, they are the technology behind everything from Google searches to Facebook updates to Android phones.)

Here’s what happened: In February 2011, on a public open source software mailing list, prominent open source software leader Theodore Y. Ts’o wrote that rape was impossible if both people were drunk enough, and that including several common kinds of rape in rape statistics could be “hyperbolic and misleading.” I won’t go into detail here because it’s pretty offensive, but the full text of two of his emails on the subject are archived here.

What matters for the open source community is that, just as many politicians immediately withdrew their endorsements of Mourdock, Rivard, and Akin, the open source community should also withdraw their support of leaders who make statements like this. Ts’o continues to hold many leadership positions in the Linux open source community after making these comments, from maintainer of the widely used Linux ext4 file system to chair of the most important Linux conference, the Linux Kernel Developers’ Summit.

Refusing to condone statements like these is especially important in open source software because it already has a major gender gap: women make up less than 2% of the open source community. That’s worse than Fortune 500 CEOs, currently at 4% women! We can’t afford to look the other way when leaders in open source make what are, at best, horribly insensitive comments about the sexual assault of women.

But harassment doesn’t end when the conference ends. It also happens online: in mailing lists, in IRC channels (a kind of online chat room) and in blogs. How effective is a policy banning groping if a speaker at the conference says women who get groped were “asking for it?” What if a person on the organizing committee routinely makes sexual comments on the project’s official IRC channel? How can we expect women to feel safe at conference receptions when other people at the party believe rape is impossible if they get drunk enough?

We have to act together as a community to send the message that actions like these don’t reflect the values of the majority of the open source movement. We can do this in many ways. Here are just a few:

Reply publicly online and disagree with the person’s opinions

Publicly advocate adopting specific, enforceable codes of conduct in your community’s online spaces

Send email to organizers of conferences expressing your discomfort with being in the same physical location as someone who condones assault

As event organizers, do not invite the person to speak or attend your event

As administrators of mailing lists, IRC servers, and blog aggregators, design and adopt policies governing behavior

Some people argue that the principle of free speech requires us to allow people to say whatever they want in online communities, even if it is threatening, hateful, or discriminates against women and minorities. But as many have pointed out, freedom of speech does not mean freedom from the consequences of what you say. People are free to say whatever they want – and you are free to react in any (legal) way. Neither do you have any obligation to publish someone else’s free speech. You and your community can support free speech while refusing to condone speech you find abhorrent by publishing it yourself, or supporting the person who said it.

The Ada Initiative has already had many successes in making open source software conferences welcoming spaces for women. We want to work together with open tech/culture communities to keep this culture change moving forward. Let’s increase civility and respect for women in our online spaces in ways that strengthen our communities and our work.

If you would like the women you know and love to feel comfortable in your open tech/culture community, you can do something about it: Donate to support women in open tech/culture today.