Outreachy & Debian pregnancy cluster, Meike Reichle evidence
Meike Reichle is the next case in the Debian pregnancy cluster. In most voluntary organizations, there is some privacy for the family lives of volunteers. Meike chose to share details on the mailing list with over a thousand strangers so we can talk about it in a general sense here.
Under copyright law, the money raised for a work of joint authorship is to be divided up equally between every co-author. The law is very clear on this point. At Columbia University in New York, the Kernochan Center for Law, Media and the Arts publishes a page about joint works (Co-Authorship) with this advice:
in the case of two co-authors, and absent an agreement to the contrary, a right to an accounting for 50 percent of the proceeds of the exploitation of a given work
The Debian maintainer database lists over one thousand seven hundred and twenty (1,720) co-authors (Debian Developers). These are all the people who have ever been on the Debian keyring. There are possibly other people that have not been tracked.
In 2023, when Abraham Raji went to DebConf23, he did a huge amount of work as an unpaid volunteer, including the design for the DebConf23 logo. When he arrived at the day trip, everybody was asked to contribute some of their own money. Abraham Raji didn't put in any money, he was left alone without a life jacket and he drowned.
In the same year over $32,000 was given to so-called diversity internships. It is listed in the summaries published by Software in the Public Interest.
debit credit total
--------------------------------------------
41559.14 USD 0.87 USD -41558.27 USD Expenses
363.82 USD 0.87 USD -362.95 USD Bank-Fees
8228.22 USD 0 -8228.22 USD IT
21.99 USD 0 -21.99 USD Domains
8206.23 USD 0 -8206.23 USD Hardware
32000.00 USD 0 -32000.00 USD Internships
967.10 USD 0 -967.10 USD Travel
271.08 USD 0 -271.08 USD Accommodation
696.02 USD 0 -696.02 USD Transportation
260.35 USD 5131.30 USD 4870.95 USD Income
0 3.95 USD 3.95 USD Currency-Gain
3.94 USD 0 -3.94 USD Currency-Loss
256.41 USD 5127.35 USD 4870.94 USD Donations
--------------------------------------------
41819.49 USD 5132.17 USD -36687.32 USD
If we followed the advice from the experts at Columbia University we would divide the sum of $32,000 between all 1,720 joint authors. Each person (or their estate if they are dead) would receive $18.60. If some of the co-authors want to contribute their money to a fund for diversity then they can do so. Each co-author must make a personal decision whether they put their share of the money in the diversity fund or whether they keep it for themselves.
When the GNOME foundation created Outreach Program for Women in 2006, a little bit less than two percent of Debian Developers were female.
When Debian decided to start contributing money to the program in 2013, the percentage of women was still about two percent.
Today, in 2025, twelve years after Debian started contributing authors' money to the Outreachy internships, we still have less than two percent women.
Out of the entire history of the program only one of the women, Ulrike Uhlig became a Debian Developer. She participated for a couple of years and then she quit.
Therefore, what is Debian receiving in exchange for this money? Or what are the men in charge hoping to receive in exchange for $32,000 per year?
When we put the events in the correct order and look at the evidence about the Debian pregnancy cluster it becomes very clear.
The next pregnancy we look at is the email from Meike.
GNOME launched Outreach Program for Women and in the same year we saw Meike Reichle at DebConf6. Here is a snippet of the video:
In 2008 Meike and Alexander Schmehl announced their wedding:
Subject: [VAC] Going to the chapel ... Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2008 23:19:48 +0200 From: Meike Reichle <meike@debian.org> To: debian-private@lists.debian.org Hi all! We'll be offline from the 24th to the 30th of June, getting married at Lake Constance. Our packages should be in good shape, but you may NMU if necessary. Best, Meike and Alexander
Incidentally, the city of Konstanz, on Lake Konstanz, was the birthplace of Debian's founder, Ian Murdock.
They shared a wedding photograph with the filename DDs.jpg:
Molly de Blanc became an intern for the FSF in 2010.
Right in the middle of the Debian pregnancy cluster, when all the other couples we discussed previously had their babies, Meike also wrote to us about maternity leave:
Subject: [VAC] Feb 13th to May 21st - maternity leave
Date: Wed, 08 Feb 2012 15:27:55 +0100
From: Meike Reichle <meike@debian.org>
To: debian-private@lists.debian.org, Alexander Reichle-Schmehl <tolimar@debian.org>
This message is to remain private forever!
Dear all,
February 13th will be the beginning of my official maternity leave[0]
from work and I've decided to also take a leave from my Debian work for
this period of time.
My packages should be in reasonably good shape and I'll occasionally check
my mail in case something grave comes up. Alexander and I have already
begun last year to organise a follow-up/stand-in for our work as Press
Officers, so hopefully press work will not suffer from our absence.
Since this is our first child we do not yet have a clear idea how our
lives will change once the baby is here, but we hope to be able to
return to most of our respective Debian duties after an initial
adaptation phase.
This is, however, a bridge we will cross when we get there. For now we
are very happy and excited and eagerly looking forward to finally
meeting our newest family member. So, spare us a few good thoughts
around the end of March :)
Regards,
Meike
[0] The legal maternity leave in Germany is six weeks before the
estimated date of birth plus eight weeks after
Ana, Marga, Pei-Hua Tseng and others all had babies within the space of about a year. Some babies arrived at almost exactly the same time, as documented in the previous blogs about the phenomena.
On 8 April 2013, right at the peak of the baby-making, Mònica Ramírez Arceda sent an email announcing Debian money would be given to the Outreach Program for Women:
To: debian-devel-announce@lists.debian.org Cc: soc-coordination@lists.alioth.debian.org Subject: Debian joins Free & Open Source Software Outreach Program for Women From: Mònica Ramírez Arceda <monica@debian.org> Date: Mon, 08 Apr 2013 01:05:49 +0200 Free & Open Source Software Outreach Program for Women ====================================================== The GNOME Foundation started the Free & Open Source Software Outreach Program for Women, OPW, in 2006. It was quite successful, and in the January-April 2013 round, many other FOSS organizations joined the program. We are happy to announce that Debian will participate in the next round (June-September) and we'll offer one internship. You can find more details about the program: * http://wiki.debian.org/OutreachProgramForWomen with details about Debian's participation. * http://live.gnome.org/OutreachProgramForWomen with details about the program in general. [ snip ]
Was it simply a coincidence that Debian made the decision to spend money recruiting women immediately after a group of existing women all got pregnant?
On 27 December 2013 Mònica sent an email inviting people to attend a mini-DebConf for women in Barcelona:
To: debian-devel-announce@lists.debian.org Subject: MiniDebConf 2014 Barcelona Call for Proposals From: Mònica Ramírez Arceda <monica@debian.org> Date: Fri, 27 Dec 2013 22:58:15 +0100 =============================================== MiniDebConf 2014 Barcelona Call for Proposals =============================================== Debian Women is proud to announce that it will hold a MiniDebConf in Barcelona on 15-16 March 2014, where Debian enthusiasts from far and wide will gather to talk about the latest Debian changes and the Debian community, as well as to meet new and old friends. We want to have a MiniDebConf with both talks and social events, to which everyone in Debian is invited but where the speakers in the talks are all people who identify themselves as female. [ snip ] We will try to get some sponsorship to help with speakers' travel expenses.
In 2019, Molly de Blanc wrote something on her blog about a breakup. This occurred at exactly the same time she left FSF to join GNOME and it was also a few weeks before the Albanian woman appeared at DebConf19. This is not a comment about Molly herself, it is a comment that reflects the real prospects for all women who enter our industry.
Approximately twenty five percent of students in computer science courses are female. Less than two percent of Debian authors are female. I feel it is important to ask questions about what these figures are telling us.
If men are participating voluntarily but women don't want to associate with us unless we pay them could that be a sign that there is a huge problem with Debian's toxic culture?
One of the biggest concerns for women is the practice of humiliating people. New contributors don't know who is right or wrong in these arguments. They see the Debian web site is used to attack people, they see the press team attacks people and women stay away.
Artificially increasing the number of women by paying them to pose as volunteers means we are ignoring the real problems.
Buying these tickets for women is fooling the community about how many women really participate as volunteers.
Look at the evidence about the Debian suicide cluster. Look at how Adrian von Bidder died on our wedding day. Is it possible that the women who don't join Debian have some sixth sense that tells them this group is exploitative? Women who had that feeling and stayed away from Debian are smart because staying away is better than becoming over-invested in something and then planning your death on Debian Day.
I volunteered to be a mentor for the program when it first started in 2013 and I continued supporting the program until the end of 2017. Women told me a lot of things about what happens when they participate in Debian and other open source communities. The last intern I mentored was Renata D'Avila. Renata was not even using her real name for the internship because she had seen how things work in Debian. Other people sent her threats behind my back. I was shocked and I did not volunteer to recruit or mentor any other women for Debian.
The young women who apply for these internships see the names of other women in the DebConf program. When they arrive at DebConf they immediately see that all the women are coupled with male developers. One new intern told me that she went to an event and she was the only single woman. She felt a sense of expectation, everybody was looking at her wondering if she would hook up with somebody before the event was over. That is how all the relationships started before they became part of the Debian pregnancy cluster. She could feel it and it was a surprise for her.
In other companies, recruiting young people for internships is a step towards a job in the company. Debian is not a company and there is no pathway from an internship to a job in Debian. If these internships don't lead to a full time job, if 12 years of funding these internships has made absolutely no impact on the percentage of women contributing to Debian and if nobody can remember the economic justification of these internships, there is good reason for every new woman to be suspicious about the whole program.
On the other hand, every time we see this money discussed, it is important to remember Abraham Raji and other volunteers were asked to bring their own money or go without a lifejacket.
Please see the chronological history of how the Debian harassment and abuse culture evolved.