Adrian von Bidder, homeworking & Debian unexplained deaths

There has been a lot of discussion about the death of Frans Pop. It is significant because he chose to write about his grievances with Mark Shuttleworth / Ubuntu and he wrote a resignation note/suicide note the night before the Debian Day anniversary. It is the Debian Day Volunteer Suicide.

Another potentially significant death is that of Adrian von Bidder (cmot). The date is also significant. von Bidder, from Basel, Switzerland, died on the very same day that Carla and I went to the church together to get married. It is very disturbing for me that we don't really know why he died that day.

von Bidder's death was less than a year after the death of Frans Pop.

Debian published a public obituary. The location, circumstances and the official cause of death is not mentioned.

The Debian Social Contract tells us We will not hide problems. The Debian Social Contract is just that, a Contract. It is an obligation on every one of us to publish the relevant evidence from the debian-private gossip network.

It is vital to do some fact checking.

For starters, there have been various complaints about blackmail in Debian. The blackmail of Dr Preining is well publicised. There is a high rate of correlation between blackmail and early death. I wanted to see if there is any sign that other Debian cabal members had tried to put pressure on von Bidder.

I found this undated petition on the Kanton Basel-Stadt web site. It is a petition about suicide prevention. One of the signatories is A. von Bidder. I don't know if that is Adrian. The Swiss phone book only finds eleven people in Switzerland with the von Bidder surname. Even if the petition is not signed by the same A. von Bidder, it gives us a valuable insight into the mental health crisis in Switzerland. Native Swiss residents grow up inside a culture that enables bullying and if they don't have the experience of living abroad, they don't realize the extent to which Swiss culture is different from the culture in other countries.

There are minutes of a meeting from November 2007 where the petition was discussed by the council.

Here is a translation of the petition into English:

Petition regarding suicide prevention in the canton of Basel-Stadt

On average, four people commit suicide every day in Switzerland. What is particularly frightening is that suicide is the second most common cause of death among 15 to 25 year olds in our country.

Switzerland is one of the countries with the highest suicide rate.

There are some connections that are known but have so far been little researched and that shed some light on the situation. For example, the influence of depressive illnesses, seasonal fluctuations, familial clusters as well as gender and age-specific abnormalities (more frequent suicides among young men and older women), etc.

In addition to state institutions, parents, teachers and family doctors could play a key role in suicide prevention. However, it is known that, for example, one in two depressed people who visit their family doctor do not have their illness diagnosed. Depression is still trivialized in many circles, seen as self-inflicted and - with the appropriate effort of will - seen as overcomeable.

From a medical perspective, this is a blatant misjudgment with often fatal consequences.

In Basel-Stadt, an above-average number of people commit suicide (around 50 people per year on average). However, the topic is largely taboo. The facts are only known to a small circle of experts, who are usually confronted with them for professional reasons. The general population is largely ignorant and often helpless in an emergency. This means, among other things, that a large proportion of people remain without treatment after a suicide attempt!

We are of the opinion that there is an urgent need for action in our canton and ask the government council to examine and report whether the canton is taking measures to better inform the population about existing crisis intervention facilities, whether short-term medical/therapeutic care for people after a suicide attempt is guaranteed and in particular young or older people affected and their relatives know where they can turn in crisis situations

- whether and, if necessary, how the necessary professional training of doctors (especially general practitioners) and teachers is ensured

- whether and, if so, how our canton will become more involved in researching the causes

- whether the statistical data collected on suicides and suicide attempts in our canton are regularly evaluated and adequately published

- whether the government council is planning a prevention campaign and possible further steps

A. Frost-Hirschi, Ch. Klemm, M. G. Ritter, Y. Cadalbert Schmid, Ch. Keller, E. Huber-Hungerbühler, D. Goepfert, Dr. B. Schultheiss, E. Mundwiler, S. Frei, Hp. Gass, D. Stolz, G. Nanni, O. Battegay, Dr. L. Saner, B. Mazzotti, F. Weissenberger, Dr. Th. Egloff, Dr. D. Stückelberger, R. Vögtli, Dr. Ph. P. Macherel, A. von Bidder, S. Schenker, Dr. Ch. Kaufmann, B. Jans, S. Schürch, G. Mächler, H. Hügli, J. Winistörfer, J. Goepfert, S. Signer, Ch. Brutschin, J. Merz, E. Jost, Th. Baerlocher, D. Gysin, S. Banderet-Richner, B. Herzog, V. Herzog, Dr. P. Eichenberger

Frans Pop had committed suicide around Debian Day, which was 16 August 2010.

Not long after the suicide, Mark Shuttleworth suggested not to give Frans Pop too much attention because we don't want copy-cat suicides. The phenomena that Shuttleworth is concerned about is quite genuine. Shuttleworth's comments resonate with some of the concerns in the petition signed by A. von Bidder. For example, the petition references risk groups in familial clusters. We frequently see people purveying the fallacy that Debian is some kind of family. Shuttleworth's orders included the following comment:

Debian's close-knit culture, and the extent to which many DD's feel a stronger affiliation to this group than any other, amplifies the danger substantially.

von Bidder's death, with no official details provided, occurred exactly eight months after the confirmed suicide of Frans Pop.

In my analysis of the Debian Day Volunteer Suicide, I examined many of the pressures that Frans Pop was exposed to, including those that he complained about, prior to his death. von Bidder was exposed to a similar set of pressures and bad experiences in the debian-private world. We have all been exposed to aspects of that so it needs the most careful analysis and fact checking.

Now we need to look at what happened in the same secret cubby house, debian-private, in the subsequent eight months after the suicide of Frans Pop and up to the unexplained death of von Bidder.

On 27 October 2010, Daniel Baumann, who also resides in Switzerland, publicly resigned:

given what has happened and what has not happened in debian during the last couple of months, i don't want to be involved in debian anymore except for the bare minimum.

therefore, i do effective immediately resign as actuary for debian.ch, and leave the association.

In early November 2010, there was a noisy debian-project thread about censoring political content on Planet Debian. There is an element of hypocrisy in these discussions. Debian was the birthplace of the Open Source Definition, which is analogous to the Debian Free Software Guidelines. We inevitably have to face ethical questions about what it means for software to be truly free. For example, one of the guidelines is the requirement for licenses to give users the freedom to use the software for any purpose whatsoever. Does that mean the software can be used freely for animal testing or tobacco production? Those are important philosophical and ethical questions that are closely intertwined with the concept of a free license. Therefore, we can't really avoid the discussion of political topics.

When people try to stamp out those ethical discussions, they are telling the developers that they want us to work but they don't want us to think. In other words, they are trying to turn developers into commodities or obedient slaves.

Here are some more messages that give an insight into the Debian group during the period following the Frans Pop sucide:

Subject: [VAC] Life is a mess
Date: Tue, 28 Dec 2010 18:49:17 -0200
From: Pablo Lorenzzoni <spectra@debian.org>
To: debian-private@lists.debian.org

Hello,

I've got some personal problems to deal with. I've actually been
experiencing this since November and had expected this would be sorted
out by now. It seems it'll be only sorted out by February or March 2011,
so I'll be entering VAC.

Feel free to NMU my packages.

Pablo

-- 
Pablo Lorenzzoni (Spectra) <spectra@debian.org>
GnuPG: 0x268A084D at pgp.mit.edu/keyring.debian.org
This message is protected by DoubleROT13 encryption
Attempting to decode it violates the DMCA/WIPO acts

Thought police again:

Subject: Policing Debian mailing lists
Date: Fri, 14 Jan 2011 16:49:55 -0800
From: Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org>
Organization: The Eyrie
To: debian-private@lists.debian.org

(Sent here since I suspect this will be controversial enough just among
Debian developers, without also involving the person I'm going to name
explicitly and random other passers-by.)

So, folks may remember the discussion that we had at Debconf about
problems with the tone on our mailing lists and some of the ensuing
discussions.  Unfortunately, those discussions died out without really
going anywhere.

An excellent example of the sort of writing style that makes our mailing
lists toxic has just started posting again, namely Mike Bird.  He usually
doesn't, quite, directly insult people, but whenever he participates in
debian-devel, he is openly insulting towards decisions, packages, and the
work of developers in ways that I think cannot help but make people feel
attacked and defensive.  Whatever concrete technical points he may make
(and occasionally, not always, they are well-founded) are lost in the tone
of how he presents his arguments.  Threads he participates in tend to have
escalating emotions and escalating conflict.

I think this is the sort of behavior that's unacceptable on our mailing
lists, and if he cannot stop writing in this way, I think he should be
told to find some other project to participate in and banned from all of
the Debian project mailing lists if necessary.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org)               <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>

Mark Shuttleworth admits wanting to steer Debian

Subject: Re: Policing Debian mailing lists
Date: Sun, 16 Jan 2011 18:51:33 +0000
From: Mark Shuttleworth <mark@ubuntu.com>
To: debian-private@lists.debian.org

On 16/01/11 07:44, Shachar Shemesh wrote:
> How about:
> # The mailing lists are intended for constructive, on topic
> discussions intended at making Debian better. Please attempt to make
> sure all of your postings maintain all three criteria.

Why limit this to the mailing list? Shifting the culture of Debian to
promote constructive discussion and firmly steer away from flaming,
abuse and unsubstantiated conspiracy trading is now a real possibility,
and would make it an even more productive and fun place.

Mark

William Lee Irwin III (disappearance) discussed

This was covered in great detail on other web sites.

Online forums: a Debian mental health crisis

Subject: Fed up of running the Forums
Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2011 17:30:40 +0000
From: Martin Meredith <mez@debian.org>
To: debian-private@lists.debian.org

I'm getting a bit fed up of running the forums.  While there a couple of good people there on staff, it all seems to be going haywire - and I really don't have the time, or the energy (mental or physical) to constantly babysit them.

At the moment ( and this may just be through mental exhaustion) - I'd not bat an eyelid were I to see them scrapped... However, I know there are a few out there in the community that would hate to see them go.

I'm not able to run these on my own from a non-technical point of view.  If anyone wants to offer help, or to jump in, please let me know.  I'm happy to stay around for a bit and assist, but to be honest, at the moment, I want shot of them.

The emphasis on mental exhaustion is analogous to the comments made by Frans Pop before his first resignation. His second resignation was the suicide.

von Bidder complains about threats from Gianugo Rabellino

In a blog post on 2 March 2011, von Bidder published a blog, an Open Letter to Gianugo Rabellino, complaining about patent threats.

von Bidder's birthday, 6kg of camera gear and a Balkan DebConf at Banja Luka

Here is von Bidder's second last blog post. His birthday was on 7 March, a few days before Fukushima. He received a nice f2.8 telephoto lens for his camera but he also contemplates the effort of carrying 6kg of camera gear with him.

He mentions he is going to the first Balkan DebConf in Banja Luka. Coincidentally, a lot of more recent Debian problems involved the perception that Balkan women were trafficked to DebConf19 in Brazil without any justification.

Multiple nuclear reactors go into meltdown at Fukushima

A tsunami hit the coast of Japan, crippling the Fukushima nuclear plant. Multiple reactors simultaneously went into meltdown. Thanks to social media, people could follow the crisis in real-time from the moment they woke up in the morning until the moment they went to sleep. And if you woke up in the middle of the night, you could turn to your phone to get fresh updates.

The concerns were felt very strongly at a political level in Switzerland. The Swiss government resolved to phase out all nuclear power plants. Two of the three Swiss nuclear plants are rather close to von Bidder's home of Basel. Residents of Basel are required to keep iodine tablets at home in preparation for a nuclear crisis. On the other side of the border, France's oldest nuclear plant, Fessenheim, is a major concern for Swiss residents. The city of Basel was destroyed by a major earthquake in 1356 and nobody knows when a similar event could be repeated in the region.

Surely Debian would provide a safe-haven for people to avoid the negative news about a nuclear catastrophy? Not quite. Even debian-private was in the grip of the crisis, dozens of messages were exchanged about this topic across all the open source communities.

Subject: Huge earthquake and tsunami hit northern area of Japan
Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2011 18:46:37 +0900
From: Kenshi Muto <kmuto@debian.org>
To: debian-private@lists.debian.org

Hello all,

Today M8.8 earthquake happened on northern area of Japan[1].
Furthermore huge tsunami was triggered and it hit coast of
Sendai, Ibaraki, and Chiba area.

[1] http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/11/japan.quake/index.html

Now I'm at home, is close to Tokyo. Luckily I'm OK, and my
family too (only some furnitures were damaged).
It was huge and terrible quake, even I had been familiar
with quakes. Aftershocks won't stop yet at this time.

As far as I know, most DDs/DMs lives Tokyo area.
Others are at around Osaka (very far from this earthquake).

I confirmed following people were OK (on IRC or twitter):
dancer, kitame, knok, tagoh, ar, susumuo, ukai, ishikawa,
iwamatsu, yaegashi, henrich, tach, akira

Thanks,
- -- 
Kenshi Muto
kmuto@debian.org

Here is the thread:

Various other threads started to pop up elsewhere.

Martin Krafft told us about the death

Two days after von Bidder died, the following appeared on debian-private:

Subject: Death of Adrian von Bidder
Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2011 18:17:18 +0200
From: martin f krafft <madduck@debian.org>
To: debian private list <debian-private@lists.debian.org>

Dear Debian colleagues,

I have the sad task to communicate to you the news of the death of
Adrian von Bidder (avbidder, cmot), who passed away last Sunday,
most probably of a heart attack.

For now, I shall be your point of contact, and I will forward more
information as I receive it. In particular, if there is a public
funeral, then I will let you know — I'll likely attend myself.

I suggest that Debian arrange for a wreath to be put on his grave,
and I will put myself in charge of that, using debian.ch funds.

Rest In Peace, Adrian.

-- 
.''`.   martin f. krafft <madduck@d.o>      Related projects:
: :'  :  proud Debian developer               http://debiansystem.info
`. `'`   http://people.debian.org/~madduck    http://vcs-pkg.org
`-  Debian - when you have better things to do than fixing systems

This heart attack hypothesis was never formally confirmed. As noted in the petition to Kanton Basel-Stadt, there is an extraordinary emphasis on the privacy of any medical conditions, regardless of whether it is a disease like cancer, an accident, a drug overdose or a suicide. Friends, family members and employers have great freedom to control the narrative around a death because nothing that they say will be contradicted by any official report.

debian-private discussed Krafft's report at length:

Death notice and funeral invitation

von Bidder's spouse published a public announcement about the death and invited people to the funeral. The announcement does not mention the circumstances of the death.

Of particular interest, the announcement tells people that instead of sending flowers, they would like us to send donations to AMICA Schweiz, an organization that helps trafficked Balkan women.

It is not clear how this charity was selected but it appears to be related to the fact everybody was so excited about going to DebConf11 in Banja Luka, Bosnia. A lot of the refugees from Balkan conflict had settled in Switzerland and they now comprise two percent of the Swiss population.

The selection of this charity strikes me as a very awkward coincidence when you consider the subsequent crisis around DebConf19 bringing women from the Balkan countries to Brazil.

The notice tells us that von Bidder's body will be cremated and they will bury the urn privately.

Another key detail from the death notice is von Bidder's age. He was 34 years old when he died. It is very rare to have a heart attack at this age but it does happen.

Comments on debian-private

The comments that appear on debian-private don't mention von Bidder's health, they emphasize his state of mind, how happy he appeared to be.

Subject: Re: Death of Adrian von Bidder
Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2011 09:39:49 +0200
From: A Mennucc <mennucc1@debian.org>
To: debian-private@lists.debian.org

Il 19/04/2011 18:17, martin f krafft ha scritto:
> Dear Debian colleagues,
>
> I have the sad task to communicate to you the news of the death of
> Adrian von Bidder (avbidder, cmot), who passed away last Sunday,
> most probably of a heart attack.
I had contacted Adrian regarding the Debian umbrella.
So I had also a chance of seeing a picture of him
http://blog.fortytwo.ch/archives/80-Yay!-Debian-Logo!.html
In that picture he seemed quite happy and young.
His death is quite shocking and sad.

a.

Here is the picture referred to in A Mennucc's email:

and another email making similar observations:

Subject: Re: Death of Adrian von Bidder
Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2011 17:05:10 +0200
From: Gaudenz Steinlin <gaudenz@debian.org>
To: debian-private <debian-private@lists.debian.org>
CC: community@lists.debian.ch

Hi

This is indeed very shoking news. I remember too well the great
evening we had at my place just some weeks ago when we held the
deian.ch annual meeting. With Adrian live and kicking as our
secretary. He seemd very happy and helped me clean up the place after
all the others had already left. :-(

Excerpts from martin f krafft's message of 2011-04-21 07:24:59 +0200:
> The funeral service will be held as expected: Leonhardskirche in
> Basel, Thu 28 April, 11:00 Uhr.
> 

I'm going to attend the funeral tomorrow with some fellow DDs from
debian.ch. We'll meet tomorrow at 10am at the meeting point of the
Basel main train station and go to Leonhardskirche together from
there. If someone else wants to join us, please reply to me by private
mail, so we know that we have to wait for you.

See you tomorrow and rest in peace Adrian!

Best,

Gaudenz -- Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter.
Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
~ Samuel Beckett ~

Feedback from von Bidder's wife

Diana von Bidder sent a private email to Stefano Zacchiroli, the Debian Project Leader. Stefano forwarded the email to debian-private.

One of the key things to note here is that Adrian von Bidder was doing Debian work from home. In other words, she confirms the phenomena of unpaid overtime work that is obfuscated by the structure of open source organizations.

Subject: Re: condolences for Adrian
Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2011 15:02:18 +0200
From: Diana von Bidder <diana@fortytwo.ch>
To: Stefano Zacchiroli <leader@debian.org>

Dear Stefano
Thank you for your wonderful mail! Yes Debian and people were very
important to Adrian. I was glad that he was not only sitting alone in
front of his computer but to know that there are people out there that
estimate him and are his friends even if most of you did not know each
other personally.
The way you describe him (empathy, calm, insight, ... - just the Adrian
I know) assures me on how good friends of Adrian are out there. And I
will always continue to think of this (in a good way!) when continuing
to use debian (which I became quite fond of because of Adrian). 
It's a pity that he couldn't go to Banja Luca anymore which he did so
much look forward to. Anyway, I wish you all the best and hope you
continue your good work.

- Diana

von Bidder's insights on Cuba

Shortly before the suicide of Frans Pop, debian-private had discussions about how to engage Debian Developers from Cuba.

This is an awkward question because the US has an embargo against Cuba but the European countries do not respect the US embargo. Many European countries actively encourage their citizens to ignore the US policy.

von Bidder suggests that people and organizations in Switzerland are free to trade with Cuba, therefore, SPI should leave the USA and move to Switzerland.

Subject: Re: Forthcoming acceptance of a Cuban DD
Date: Sat, 5 Jun 2010 18:37:41 +0200
From: Adrian von Bidder <avbidder@fortytwo.ch>
To: debian-private@lists.debian.org

On Saturday 05 June 2010 14.33:05 Florian Weimer wrote:
> * Adrian von Bidder:
[...]
> > 
> > Flee the US to a country with friendlier legislation?
> 
> Doesn't really work for most pairs of countries because the legal
> system of most countries is not that friendly to foreigners (no voting
> rights, deportation in case of legal challenges etc.).  Or do you
> suggest moving the initial upload server?

I meant: the organisational core of Debian (SPI, location of central resources, ...) should move.

> 
> Anyway, the U.S. has probably the most liberal export regulations in
> the world.  In other places, it's not totally clear if the mass-market
> crypto exceptions apply to software which is never sold as such.

Hmm.

I'm no expert on law at all, but since we (== Debian) are not physically moving goods around and are not doing business transactions (we're accepting donations, but we don't sell anything), I'd be somewhat surprised if any export legislation could eve be applied to an organisation likde Debian in Switzerland.

I'll not comment further, since this options is not being considered at present AFAICT.

cheers
-- vbi

-- 
Grudnuk demand sustenance!

Ongoing impact of emotional stress in the Debian community

Resignation of Steve Kemp

Subject: Resignation...
Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2011 17:20:32 +0100
From: Steve Kemp <skx@debian.org>
To: debian-private@lists.debian.org

  I hereby resign from the Debian project, effective
 immediately.

  The following three packages are up for adoption:

    asql - Query apache logfiles via SQL.

    chronicle - Blogging thing.

    rinse - debootstrap-like took for RPM distros.
            (Thomas Lange will claim this.)

Steve
-- 

Gerfried Fuchs / Rhonda D'Vine

Subject: [VAC] to rethink involvement
Date: Mon, 2 May 2011 12:07:39 +0200
From: Gerfried Fuchs <rhonda@deb.at>
To: debian-private@lists.debian.org

        Hi!

 Given that some people think that it's a personal offence when they
being asked about the background of decisions and rather enjoy shouting
at someone instead of giving the reasoning, and the discussion style
within Debian not improving to the point that people who are pointing it
out are intimidated to the part to even write rebuttals, I can't
currently bear the climate anymore with respect to things that I invest
a lot of energy and nerves into.

 I'm happy that in the most crucial areas I am involved there is at
least a second person, if not more, and I'm sorry for them to have to
carry now more burden because I won't be helping out for the forseeable
future, but being called aggressive for asking questions on the
background is not the way I want to continue.

 I'll stick to my packages and like always, am willing to accept
interested co-maintainers, will continue to do my QA work related to
stable bug squashing and regular bug nagging, this VAC is stepping back
from roles that I managed to get things done for the benefit of our
users and also the public overall impression of Debian. The next planned
steps will have to rest though.

 Highly disappointed, demotivated and depressed, on the overall level.
Rhonda
-- 
Fühlst du dich mutlos, fass endlich Mut, los      |
Fühlst du dich hilflos, geh raus und hilf, los    | Wir sind Helden
Fühlst du dich machtlos, geh raus und mach, los   | 23.55: Alles auf Anfang
Fühlst du dich haltlos, such Halt und lass los    |

Censoring discussions about suicide again

Subject: Requesting corrective action against lkcl@lkcl.net
Date: Thu, 25 Aug 2011 00:21:52 +0100
From: Jurij Smakov <jurij@wooyd.org>
To: debian-private@lists.debian.org

Hello,

Today one Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton <lkcl@lkcl.net> posted a message to debian-arm mailing list (cross-posted to lots of other lists open-source-related lists):

http://lists.debian.org/debian-arm/2011/08/msg00155.html

After reading through a couple of pages of conspiracy-theory laden drivel, I was extremely disturbed to find the mention of Frans Pop's death in the context of this message. I think that using this tragedy to push forward one's (rather dubious) political agenda is way beyond bad taste, and I would like to see a fairly strong statement made by the project to inform this individual, that such behavior on Debian mailing lists is not going to be tolerated. Personally, I would not feel too bad about a complete Debian's mailing lists ban at this point, however it might be that I'm overreacting, and we can reach a consensus on what the appropriate course of action should be.

To put thing in perspective, this is the second incident involving lkcl in less than a week. Ben Hutchings has previously requested lkcl to be banned from BTS on the grounds of him interfering with kernel team's bug handling:

http://lists.debian.org/debian-kernel/2011/08/msg00756.html

I request this message to remain private forever.

Best regards,
-- 
Jurij Smakov                                           jurij@wooyd.org
Key: http://www.wooyd.org/pgpkey/                      KeyID: C99E03CC

Mooing

Krafft is the developer who was closest to von Bidder and reported the death to us.

Switzerland takes great pride in the cows and dairy products.

Subject: Mooing solves everything
Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2011 22:14:13 +0100
From: martin f krafft <madduck@debian.org>
Reply-To: madduck@debian.org
To: debian private list 

[Writing to -private with Reply-To set, because this is clearly
a classified topic]

We know about super cow powers and swallowed elephants, and the
power of the Mooing.

What I want to do is collect cow-related stories of relevance to our
project, to prevent an inside joke from dying as Debian prepares to
exit teenagehood.

So, please hit me. What does Debian have to do with mooing?

-- 
 .''`.   martin f. krafft       Related projects:
: :'  :  proud Debian developer               http://debiansystem.info
`. `'`   http://people.debian.org/~madduck    http://vcs-pkg.org
  `-  Debian - when you have better things to do than fixing systems
 on the other hand, you have different fingers.

Balkan DebConf11 in Banja Luka, Bosnia

The final report notes that thirty eight women attended, eleven percent of the total. Local Bosnian women. This is really high for Debian.

Final report about the tombstone

Some months later, the tombstone was completed and placed at the grave of Adrian von Bidder. von Bidder's wife shared a photo and it was distributed on Debian mailing lists.

Out of 350 people at the funeral, only 5 people came from Debian.

It is worth contrasting that image with the emails from debian-private about whether or not Debian money could be contributed to a wreath or similar expense.

After the death of workers at Amnesty International, the organization made public reports about the deaths and gave substantial compensation to at least one of the families.

Subject: Re: Death of Adrian von Bidder
Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2011 08:56:04 +0200
From: Andreas Tille <andreas@an3as.eu>
To: debian-private@lists.debian.org

Hi,

I admit that e-mails about emotions tend to be turned into flames
and I do not want this here.

On Thu, Apr 21, 2011 at 07:24:59AM +0200, martin f krafft wrote:
> I suggest that we donate 200 CHF from the project (price of a nice
> wreath with writing). If there are other donators, please get in
> touch with me.

The donators of the Debian project intend to spend money for the
development of the Debian project.  If we spend Debian money for a
wreath (or any form of replacement donation) this is not related to the
development of Debian.  It is rather *us* *people* who say goodby to
a friend.  So the money should not come from project funds but rather
from single developers.

Saying this I would like to vote against spending Debian money but
rather doing a separate collection.  I could live with some kind of "de
facto" collection like this:  I will ask for Debian money for DebConf.
In case Debian project money is really spended for Adrian's funeral I'd
simply ask for 10Euro less than I would have done otherwise.

Please do not get me wrong: I'm in any case for showing that the Debian
community is sad about the dead of Adrian.  But I'm not convinced that
this purpose is in the interest of our donators and it finally comes
quite cheap for us individuals to simply spend Debian money.

Kind regards

       Andreas.

-- 
http://fam-tille.de

Individual Debian Developers donated to AMICA Schweiz (people trafficking charity)

Subject: Re: Death of Adrian von Bidder
Date: Tue, 3 May 2011 12:12:41 +0200
From: Didier Raboud <odyx@debian.org>
To: debian-private@lists.debian.org

Le jeudi, 21 avril 2011 12.54:32, Stefano Zacchiroli a écrit :
> Consider this: instead of debating right now whether we should use or not
> money donated by _others_, it would take just a handful people to donate
> there to make the whole debate moot and make the nice gesture that Adrian's
> family has suggested.

Regarding this, as Martin already reported on the swiss community mailing list [0], the amount of CHF 682.78 has been collected and transferred to AMICA as per Adrian's family wishes.

This is more than 3 times the initially suggested amount, without any need for debian.org (or .ch) money.

Cheers,
-- 
OdyX

[0] https://lists.debian.ch/pipermail/community/2011/000541.html , which I'm forwarding here with his permission.

Debian finds USD 10,000 to bring Balkan women to Brazil and another USD 6,000 for the Balkan woman sitting closest to the Debian leader to be an Outreachy

Here is the budget for DebConf19 in Brazil. Look for the lines about Diversity. That is $US 10,000. In the end, they may have spent even more than that. The cost of flights for the women from Balkan countries to come to Brazil is higher because they have to buy visas and they have to take connecting flights in bigger countries.

At the DebConf19 dinner, four of the Balkan women were sitting at the same table as the outgoing Debian Project Leader, Chris Lamb. People took pictures of the group from every direction and published them. Nobody understands why these women were selected and why so much money was spent on women who are all of the same age from the same country. The Debian behavior in this matter was humiliating for women.

The woman sitting closest to Lamb is the same woman who won another $US 6,000 to be an Outreachy. She won that only a few weeks after partying with the developers at DebConf. This is ten times the amount donated to AMICA Schweiz in honor of Adrian von Bidder.

Please see my chronological history of how the Debian harassment and abuse culture evolved.