(*) I'm probably going to be expelled from the project for saying this, but I very much doubt that female coders stay away from PostgreSQL just because some files say "he" in comments rather than "she" or "he or she" or "one" or "they". They probably have different reasons for staying away from the project.
Wanna bet? There is a very loud movement about this. We can either:
A. Start fighting about it
B. Just fix it, it doesn't matter anyway and it doesn't hurt the quality of the code or the documentation
JD
I strongly think that gender should not be mentioned unless it is relevant - as constructs like 'he or she' are clumsy and distract from what is being commented on, not to mention that some rare people are: neither, both, or ambiguous (from research I did when I read a rather curious article).
Other than 'one', 'their', 'they', &' them' - there are role specific references like 'user', 'developer', & 'DBA', ... that can be used where appropriate.
I tend to prefer the term 'Gender Appropriate' rather than 'Gender Neutral', as sometimes mentioning gender IS very relevant!
That's only half the issue. If some people want to review every new patch for gender appropriateness and point out any problems before those patches get committed I'm doubting anyone is going to complain.
The question here is whether we should fix the wording of a comment that was added in, and exists unchanged since, 7.2
IMO we can be more sensitive to these issues in the present without having to apologize for (and fix) this project's history and the writing of people who may no longer even be around. Hopefully this compromise position is sufficiently accommodating - I am personally fine if the people with real control decide to operate under this premise.
If we are going to make a concerted effort to change historical writing we might as well just take the hit and "s/he/one/g". Later, if someone reading the revised wording finds it distasteful they can fix those instances that are so egregious or presently-relevant to warrant the effort.
If we do this how many new developers are we expecting to subscribe to the -hackers list and make serious contributions - say, by reviewing the large backlog of patches we presently have?