Mark Shuttleworth resigns from Debian: volunteer suicide and Albania questions unanswered, mass resignations continue

According to the Debian people tracker, Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Ubuntu and Thawte Consulting, is formally removed from Debian today.

I previously covered the first round of mass resignations from Debian in June. The mass resignations have continued. Eight more people departed shortly after my last blog and another five were removed from the Debian keyring today.

That is a total of thirty Debian Developers resigned/removed in approximately three months. This is an unprecedented exodus from the Debian community.

It is pure coincidence that these resignations have occurred while Debian funds are being used to pay lawyers to defame volunteers and censor web sites about Debian.

It is pure coincidence that volunteers are now picking through emails from the early days of Ubuntu, between 2004 and 2010, to determine the connection between pressure from Ubuntu and the suicide of Frans Pop in 2010.

The UK law on corporate manslaughter was introduced in 2008, shortly before the suicide of Frans Pop.

Out of respect for Frans Pop, Lucy Wayland and their families, I feel that Debian should terminate the expenditure on legal action at WIPO and use the money to pursue advice from experts on workplace health and culture.

There is a lot of shame in suicide and addictions. If the organization takes some responsibility that will reduce the shame for the families of Pop and Wayland.

Pictures have emerged of Frans Pop and Sven Luther in the Debian Dev-room at FOSDEM. I was there in the same room.

In 2017 the Free Software community elected me as a representative. Serving the families of Pop, Wayland and other victims is equally as important as serving my clients. Ubuntu and Google have never been a client.

Here we can see Neil McGovern, Steve McIntyre and I all standing side by side at FOSDEM 2007. These were happier times, before money from Google initiated all the conflict in Debian. We are standing in almost exactly the same position where Frans Pop is pictured above, room AW1.125 at ULB, Brussels.

These are all the recent resignations, most of them in June 2022:

More blogs about Frans Pop, the Debian Day volunteer suicide.