Jekyll2024-03-18T13:05:08+01:00https://danielpocock.com/feed.xmlDaniel Pocock’s personal blogSoftware engineer, Free, Open Source Software Consultant, Innovator, Fedora & Debian Developer
Adrian von Bidder, homeworking & Debian unexplained deaths2024-03-18T12:00:00+01:002024-03-18T12:00:00+01:00https://danielpocock.com/adrian-von-bidder-homeworking-debian-unexplained-deaths<p>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
<a href="https://danielpocock.com/category/debian-day-volunteer-suicide/">
Debian Day Volunteer Suicide</a>.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>von Bidder's death was less than a year after the death of Frans Pop.</p>
<p>Debian published a public obituary. The <a href="https://www.debian.org/News//2011/20110423">
location, circumstances and the official cause of death is not
mentioned</a>.</p>
<p>The Debian Social Contract tells us
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian_Social_Contract">
We will not hide problems</a>. 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 <em>debian-private</em> gossip network.</p>
<p>It is vital to do some fact checking.</p>
<p>For starters, there have been various complaints about blackmail in
Debian. The <a href="https://disguised.work/debian/debian-blackmail-thought-reform-quickstart/">blackmail of Dr Preining</a> 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.</p>
<p>I found this <a href="https://grosserrat.bs.ch/dokumente/100084/000000084267.pdf">undated petition</a> 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 <a href="https://search.ch/tel/?was=von%20Bidder">Swiss phone book</a> 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.</p>
<p>There are minutes of a meeting from November 2007 where the petition
<a href="https://grosserrat.bs.ch/dokumente/100259/000000259530.pdf">
was discussed by the council</a>.</p>
<p>Here is a translation of the petition into English:</p>
<blockquote><em>
<p>Petition regarding suicide prevention in the canton of Basel-Stadt</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Switzerland is one of the countries with the highest suicide rate.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>From a medical perspective, this is a blatant misjudgment with often fatal consequences.</p>
<p>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!</p>
<p>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</p>
<p>- whether and, if necessary, how the necessary professional training of doctors (especially general practitioners) and teachers is ensured
<p>- whether and, if so, how our canton will become more involved in researching the causes
<p>- whether the statistical data collected on suicides and suicide attempts in our canton are regularly evaluated and adequately published
<p>- whether the government council is planning a prevention campaign and possible further steps</p>
<p>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,
<b>A. von Bidder</b>, 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</p>
</em></blockquote>
<p>Frans Pop had committed suicide around Debian Day, which
was 16 August 2010.</p>
<p>Not long after the suicide, Mark Shuttleworth suggested
<a href="https://danielpocock.com/mark-shuttleworth-debian-day-volunteer-suicide-cover-up/">not to give Frans Pop too much attention because we don't
want copy-cat suicides</a>. 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
<a href="https://danielpocock.com/cult-brainwashing-charles-manson-andrew-cater-debian-family-fallacy/">Debian is some kind of family</a>. Shuttleworth's
orders included the following comment:</p>
<blockquote><em>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.</em></blockquote>
<p>von Bidder's death, with no official details provided, occurred
exactly eight months after the confirmed suicide of Frans Pop.</p>
<p>In my analysis of the
<a href="https://danielpocock.com/category/debian-day-volunteer-suicide/">
Debian Day Volunteer Suicide</a>, 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 <em>debian-private</em> world.
We have all been exposed to aspects of that so it needs the
most careful analysis and fact checking.</p>
<p>Now we need to look at what happened in the same secret cubby house,
<em>debian-private</em>, in the subsequent eight months after the suicide
of Frans Pop and up to the unexplained death of von Bidder.</p>
<p>On 27 October 2010, Daniel Baumann, who also resides in Switzerland,
<a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-switzerland/2010/11/msg00004.html">
publicly resigned</a>:</p>
<blockquote><em>
<p>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.</p>
<p>therefore, i do effective immediately resign as actuary for debian.ch,
and leave the association.</p>
</em></blockquote>
<p>In early November 2010, there was a noisy debian-project thread about
<a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2010/11/msg00010.html">
censoring political content on Planet Debian</a>. 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Here are some more messages that give an insight into the Debian
group during the period following the Frans Pop sucide:</p>
<pre style="white-space: pre-wrap;">
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
</pre>
<h3>Thought police again:</h3>
<pre style="white-space: pre-wrap;">
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/>
</pre>
<h3>Mark Shuttleworth admits wanting to steer Debian</h3>
<pre style="white-space: pre-wrap;">
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
</pre>
<h3>William Lee Irwin III (disappearance) discussed</h3>
<p>This was covered in great detail <a href="https://disguised.work/debian/people/william-lee-irwin-wli/">on other web sites</a>.</p>
<h3>Online forums: a Debian mental health crisis</h3>
<pre style="white-space: pre-wrap;">
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 <b>the energy (mental or physical) to constantly babysit them</b>.
At the moment ( <b>and this may just be through mental exhaustion</b>) - 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.
</pre>
<p>The emphasis on mental exhaustion is analogous to the comments made
by Frans Pop before his first resignation. His second resignation was
the suicide.</p>
<h3>von Bidder complains about threats from Gianugo Rabellino</h3>
<p>In a blog post on 2 March 2011, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20110609013925/http://blog.fortytwo.ch/archives/106-Open-Letter-to-Gianugo-Rabellino.html">von Bidder published a blog, an Open Letter to Gianugo Rabellino</a>, complaining about patent threats.</p>
<h3>von Bidder's birthday, 6kg of camera gear and a Balkan DebConf at Banja Luka</h3>
<p>Here is von Bidder's <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20110609013925/http://blog.fortytwo.ch/archives/108-New-Toy.html">second last blog post</a>. 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.</p>
<p>He mentions he is going to the first Balkan DebConf in Banja Luka. Coincidentally, a lot of more recent Debian problems involved <a href="https://danielpocock.com/category/outreachy/">the perception that Balkan women were trafficked to DebConf19 in Brazil without any justification</a>.</p>
<h3>Multiple nuclear reactors go into meltdown at Fukushima</h3>
<p>A tsunami hit the coast of Japan, crippling the Fukushima nuclear plant.
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_nuclear_accident">Multiple
reactors simultaneously went into meltdown</a>. 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.</p>
<p>The concerns were felt very strongly at a political level in
Switzerland. The Swiss government resolved to
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Switzerland">phase
out all nuclear power plants</a>. Two of the three Swiss nuclear plants
are rather close to von Bidder's home of Basel. Residents of Basel
are required to <a href="https://www.iamexpat.ch/expat-info/swiss-expat-news/why-do-people-switzerland-receive-iodine-tablets">
keep iodine tablets at home in preparation for a nuclear crisis</a>.
On the other side of the border,
<a href="https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/science/french-nuclear-plant-earthquake-risk/6314808">France's oldest nuclear plant, Fessenheim, is a major
concern for Swiss residents</a>. 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.</p>
<p>Surely Debian would provide a safe-haven for people to avoid the
negative news about a nuclear catastrophy? Not quite.
Even <em>debian-private</em> was in the grip of the crisis, dozens
of messages were exchanged about this topic across all the open source
communities.</p>
<pre style="white-space: pre-wrap;">
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
</pre>
<p>Here is the thread:</p>
<img width="100%" alt="debian-private, Fukushima, Japan, nuclear" src="https://danielpocock.com/assets/fukushima-thread-debian-private.jpg"/>
<p>Various other threads started to pop up elsewhere.</p>
<h3>Martin Krafft told us about the death</h3>
<p>Two days after von Bidder died, the following appeared on
<em>debian-private</em>:</p>
<pre style="white-space: pre-wrap;">
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,
<b>most probably of a heart attack</b>.
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
</pre>
<p>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.</p>
<p><em>debian-private</em> discussed Krafft's report at length:</p>
<img width="100%" alt="Adrian von Bidder, debian-private, death" src="https://danielpocock.com/assets/von-bidder-death-thread.jpg"/>
<h3>Death notice and funeral invitation</h3>
<p>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.</p>
<img width="100%" alt="Adrian von Bidder, Debian, AMICA Schweiz, Diana von Bidder" src="https://danielpocock.com/assets/von-bidder-death-notice.jpg"/>
<p>Of particular interest, the announcement tells people that instead of
sending flowers, they would like us to send donations to
<a href="https://www.amica-schweiz.ch/">AMICA Schweiz</a>, an organization that helps trafficked Balkan women.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>The selection of this charity strikes me as a very awkward coincidence
when you consider the subsequent crisis around DebConf19
<a href="https://danielpocock.com/category/outreachy/">
bringing women from the Balkan countries to Brazil</a>.</p>
<p>The notice tells us that von Bidder's body will be cremated and
they will bury the urn privately.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<h3>Comments on debian-private</h3>
<p>The comments that appear on <em>debian-private</em> don't mention
von Bidder's health, they emphasize his state of mind, how happy he
appeared to be.</p>
<pre style="white-space: pre-wrap;">
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
<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20110903175759/http://blog.fortytwo.ch/archives/80-Yay!-Debian-Logo!.html">http://blog.fortytwo.ch/archives/80-Yay!-Debian-Logo!.html</a>
In that picture <b>he seemed quite happy</b> and young.
His death is quite shocking and sad.
a.
</pre>
<p>Here is the picture referred to in A Mennucc's email:</p>
<img width="100%" alt="Adrian von Bidder, Debian" src="https://danielpocock.com/assets/von-bidder-debianumbrella1.jpg"/>
<p>and another email making similar observations:</p>
<pre style="white-space: pre-wrap;">
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. <b>He seemd very happy</b> 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 ~
</pre>
<h3>Feedback from von Bidder's wife</h3>
<p>Diana von Bidder sent a private email to Stefano Zacchiroli,
the Debian Project Leader. Stefano forwarded the email to
<em>debian-private</em>.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<pre style="white-space: pre-wrap;">
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. <b>I was glad that he was not only sitting alone in
front of his computer</b> 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
</pre>
<h3>von Bidder's insights on Cuba</h3>
<p>Shortly before the suicide of Frans Pop, <em>debian-private</em>
had discussions about how to engage Debian Developers from Cuba.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<pre style="white-space: pre-wrap;">
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!
</pre>
<h3>Ongoing impact of emotional stress in the Debian community</h3>
<h3>Resignation of Steve Kemp</h3>
<pre style="white-space: pre-wrap;">
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
--
</pre>
<h3>Gerfried Fuchs / Rhonda D'Vine</h3>
<pre style="white-space: pre-wrap;">
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 |
</pre>
<h3>Censoring discussions about suicide again</h3>
<pre style="white-space: pre-wrap;">
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
</pre>
<h3>Mooing</h3>
<p>Krafft is the developer who was closest to von Bidder and reported
the death to us.</p>
<p>Switzerland takes great pride in the cows and dairy products.</p>
<pre style="white-space: pre-wrap;">
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 <debian-private@lists.debian.org>
[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 <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
on the other hand, you have different fingers.
</pre>
<h3>Balkan DebConf11 in Banja Luka, Bosnia</h3>
<p>The final report notes that
<a href="https://media.debconf.org/dc11/report/DebConf11_FinalReport.pdf">
thirty eight women attended, eleven
percent of the total</a>. Local Bosnian women.
This is really high for Debian.</p>
<h3>Final report about the tombstone</h3>
<p>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 <a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-switzerland/2011/11/msg00019.html">
distributed on Debian mailing lists</a>.</p>
<p>Out of 350 people at the funeral, only 5 people came from Debian.</p>
<img width="100%" alt="Adrian von Bidder, Debian" src="https://danielpocock.com/assets/von-bidder-tombstone.jpg"/>
<p>It is worth contrasting that image with the emails from
<em>debian-private</em> about whether or not Debian money could
be contributed to a wreath or similar expense.</p>
<p>After the death of workers at Amnesty International, the organization
<a href="https://danielpocock.com/debian-open-source-volunteer-suicides-compensation/">
made public reports about the deaths and gave substantial compensation
to at least one of the families</a>.</p>
<pre style="white-space: pre-wrap;">
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
</pre>
<h3>Individual Debian Developers donated to AMICA Schweiz (people trafficking charity)</h3>
<pre style="white-space: pre-wrap;">
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.
</pre>
<h3>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</h3>
<p>Here is the <a href="https://lists.debian.org/debconf-team/2019/05/msg00012.html">budget for DebConf19 in Brazil</a>. Look for
the lines about <em>Diversity</em>. 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>
<a href="https://danielpocock.com/debian-security-advisory-dsa-lovestruck-leaders/">
The woman sitting closest to Lamb</a> 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.</p>
<img width="100%" alt="Chris Lamb, Anisa Kuci, Debconf19" src="https://danielpocock.com/assets/lamby-lovestruck.jpg"/>
<p>Please see my <a href="https://danielpocock.com/debian-history-harassment-abuse-culture-evolution/">chronological history of how the Debian harassment and abuse culture evolved</a>.</p>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.Flashback 2003: Debian has always had a toxic culture2024-03-17T22:30:00+01:002024-03-17T22:30:00+01:00https://danielpocock.com/flashback-2003-debian-has-always-had-a-toxic-culture<p>People are estimating that Debian has spent over $200,000 paying
women to be volunteers through Outreachy. At the end of their Outreachy
programs, they all disappear. Would it be better to use this money
to get advice about fixing the culture? The payments to women are
an admission that Debian culture is bad and women won't
have anything to do with it voluntarily.</p>
<p>Despite everybody knowing the culture of the group is the root of
all evil, they continue to look for scapegoats. If they can just
punish one more person, everybody else will behave nicely, Debian
will be "safe" and women will join.</p>
<p>Here is an email from the <em>debian-private</em> (widely leaked)
gossip network giving an insight into the culture in 2003. It looks
a lot like the culture today. In 20 years, despite
<a href="https://danielpocock.com/debian-history-harassment-abuse-culture-evolution/">all the forced resignations and expulsions</a>
nothing really changed.</p>
<pre style="white-space: pre-wrap;">
Subject: Re: Fwd: Rejecting NM applicant <a href="https://norm.tovey-walsh.com/">Norman Walsh</a> <ndw@nwalsh.com>
Date: Thu, 3 Jul 2003 20:47:58 +0000 (UTC)
From: Martin Wheeler <msw@startext.demon.co.uk>
To: mark@dulug.duke.edu
CC: debian-private@lists.debian.org
On Wed, 2 Jul 2003 mark@dulug.duke.edu wrote:
> > Dang. Maybe we should streamline our process.
>
> Double dang. If we can't find a way to get Norm in (who BTW offered to maintain
> all the DocBook packages), then something about the application process needs to
> be fixed.
. . .
> > I am rejecting the Debian New Maintainer Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com> on
> > his own request. Norman, unfortunatly, does not have enough time to spend
> > for the NM process
I heartily concur.
I too, have abandoned the process of attempting to become an NM.
And, I suspect, for many of the same reasons.
Having had to wait for over a year for any real response to my initial
enthusiasm, I had already lost most of my interest in becoming a DD
(for documentation only), and had only lukewarm reactions to the mails I
eventually received. (Mainly upbraiding me with comments like: "you have to
really, really want this, you know" -- at the same time making me wonder why
the hell I ever thought I might want to join this group of narcissistic
navel-gazers -- and generally attempting to make me feel like a fourth-class
citizen because my interests lie only in lowly documentation, NOT in the
highly-valued elite skills of programming/packaging.)
Overall, I was given a very strong impression that DDs regard themselves as
being the 'l33test of the 'l33t; that in going through the NM process it is
more important to be recognised as being a putative member of a highly
exclusive undergraduate-style sorority / club than it is to have any
technical
expertise to offer to the group; and that unwarranted sobbery and attitudes
of exclusivity of the group reign supreme. (Really. This attitude came
over
to me more strongly than any other -- which surprised me greatly, as I am
personally acquainted with a few DDs, none of whom comes over to me in that
way at all.)
Frankly though, I eventually lost interest. (Is it any wonder?) To the
point where I couldn't even be bothered to reply any more to any of the
mails
I received. (Round about the P&P stage.) There was NO real or effective
dialogue between myself and the group I thought I could offer something to;
and in fact, very little real desire to offer anything any more, on my part.
Is it any wonder then that in these circumstances once-enthusiastic
folks just
quietly drift away?
My last dealings with the NM process were when I went on an irc channel
-- to
be met instantly with a hostile: "what are you doing here? I thought we got
rid of you two weeks ago."
Why on earth should I persist in trying to offer my skills to a group like
that?
Genuinely puzzled,
</pre>
<p>Here is what the thread looks like. Women seem to have a nose for
this type of thing. They feel really uncomfortable when their name
appears in something like this so they don't even begin to get
involved.</p>
<img width="100%" alt="Norman Walsh, Debian, gossip" src="https://danielpocock.com/assets/rejecting-nwalsh-thread.jpg"/>People are estimating that Debian has spent over $200,000 paying women to be volunteers through Outreachy. At the end of their Outreachy programs, they all disappear. Would it be better to use this money to get advice about fixing the culture? The payments to women are an admission that Debian culture is bad and women won't have anything to do with it voluntarily.Incident report March 20242024-03-09T23:30:00+01:002024-03-09T23:30:00+01:00https://danielpocock.com/incident-report<p>The other day, I was walking down the street and I noticed an unusual plume of smoke about two hundred meters away in a side street. It was a residential area.</p>
<p>I decided to proceed down the street to check on it. As we are in the tail end of European winter, it could have simply been somebody burning rubbish but I never take these things for granted. One mistake I made at this point: I failed to check the name of the side street.</p>
<p>As I approached, I could see the smoke was coming from the back of a small two-storey house. The source was very close to the building. I continued past the building and from the other side, I could see a jet of flame coming up at the point where the house meets the boundary wall. This clearly wasn't a controlled fire.</p>
<p>Sadly, when the situation is so obviously out of control like this, I didn't get out the camera and I have no photos to share.</p>
<p>I checked my watch. This is a vital step in any crisis. Knowing the SLA for the fire service, you need to know how long you are going to be on your own.</p>
<p>I could see a small group of men further down the road watching. They were some distance away and didn't appear to be occupants. It wasn't clear if any of them had already called it in. I immediately made the call and was pleased to be greeted with a recorded announcement asking me which service I needed. One of the men started walking up the street, talking on his phone. It sounded a lot like he was speaking to a real person at the fire brigade so I hung up my phone and decided to commence a search. The fire service is on an SLA which I'm familiar with and I began counting down the minutes.</p>
<p>Around the same time, I had noticed somebody coming down an external stairway from the first floor on the side of the burning building. I assumed (incorrectly) that the first floor had been cleared.</p>
<p>There was a warehouse and office on the opposite side of the wall, just meters from the fire. As that was closest to me, I ran across the car park, banged on the door of the office, turned the handle and went inside. A woman was sitting there, completely oblivious to the situation, her back to the wall that was burning. I told her there was a fire, asked how many people were in the building and whether we could exit to the rear of the building. I asked three times and she insisted she was the only one there and we could only exit through the door where I came in, which meant passing the fire a second time. She grabbed her handbag.</p>
<p>Instead of crossing the car park, we went past the front of the warehouse to the next building. The woman went to alert the next neighbor and I went diagonally back across the car park.</p>
<p>At this point, I noticed that smoke was now coming out from the eaves at the front of the ground floor.</p>
<p>In the two minutes I had spent evacuating the office, an undercover police car had arrived. These guys are like ghosts, they just show up out of nowhere. I have no idea whether they were responding to the call or whether they were just going past. Within 30 seconds they had put on their police armbands and broken down the steel double-gate to access the ground floor entrance.</p>
<p>This is the point where the situation really hit me. We could see through the windows that the smoke was filling the ground floor. It wasn't simply a fire at the rear of the property, it was either burning inside or the smoke was getting inside somehow. I had no idea if anybody was inside but I had the gravest fears for the lives of any occupants. The police had made a quick meal of the steel gate but the double glazed windows were a much bigger challenge. They threw some large rocks at the windows but despite multiple attempts, they were unable to shatter all the layers of the glass. The smoke continued to become thicker inside.</p>
<p>I noticed a campervan at the rear of the house, very close to the fire. The risk of the campervan being equipped with a gas cylinder was immediately obvious.</p>
<p>I had stayed on the footpath, a step behind the police not wanting to get in their way. Then there was a huge surprise: a woman in pyjamas came down the stairwell from the first floor with a dog on a leash. I had seen a man come down from there two or three minutes ago and I had incorrectly assumed the first floor was clear. That is one reason I had focussed my initial effort on the adjacent office.</p>
<p>At this point, with the police fighting to break open the doors and windows, I went to speak to the woman: could there by anybody inside? Was there a gas supply, stored fuel or any other hazard that would be bad for the fire fighters?</p>
<p>The woman told me that the neighbor downstairs always works during the daytime. I didn't take this for granted but there was nothing anybody could do about it at that point. The only people who could enter the ground floor now would be firefighters with breathing apparatus.</p>
<p>I had been checking my watch continuously. Ambulances arrived next. The first firefighting appliance arrived within the period of 15 to 20 minutes after the call. It was followed by two more appliances within another 2 to 3 minutes. It was only at this point that they got all their hoses set up and started to take control.</p>
<p>These guys have the right gear, they know what to do and at this point I stood back with the occupant and the neighbors to watch. Within another ten minutes or so they had verified that the building was clear and stretchers were being put back into the ambulances. Nonetheless, it was a nail-biting wait for about thirty minutes from the beginning of the incident to know that nobody had lost their life.</p>
<p>I asked the occupant about smoke alarms. She told me there was an alarm but it had not activated. In other words, the occupants of the building and the occupants of the adjacent building were all completely oblivious to the fire and their lives may have been saved by the decisive actions of the passers-by who intervened.</p>
<p>The fire itself continued to burn in the roof and the firefighters spent some time climbing across the roof, removing the slates and spraying water inside.</p>
<p>One of the guys I used to train with won the award for Emergency Management Practioner of the Year. In other words, the real-world equivalent of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McClane">John McClane from Die Hard</a>. I'm standing on the shoulders of giants simply mentioning that. Nonetheless, I think it is important to mention that because in the world of software engineering today, we can see slimy little cowards trying to use the police as their puppets to censor political blogs. They are dreaming up imaginary laws under the guise of <a href="https://danielpocock.com/category/code-of-conduct-gaslighting/">amateur-hour "Code of Conduct"</a> nonsense. After seeing the way the first two emergency responders, undercover cops, risked their lives, without any protective gear, without any knowledge of the site, I couldn't help thinking of that <a href="https://nazi.compare/en/2024/02/02/berlin-police-decline-investigate-fsfe-nazi-comparisons/">slimy little German Matthias Kirschner at the FSFE in Berlin snaking his way into the police station begging them to obfuscate the fact that people voted for me</a>. Then we have the case of <a href="https://danielpocock.com/perjury-axel-beckert-eth-zurich-debian-scapegoating/">Axel Beckert from ETH Zurich who engaged in <b>extraordinary acts of perjury</b> to try and plagiarise my work in Debian</a>. With so many real problems in the world today, why should the emergency responders have to waste their time on the vendettas from borderline nazis like that?</p>
<p>This blog is dedicated to Lemon. RIP.</p>
<img width="100%" alt="Lemon, cat, Terenure, Dublin" src="https://danielpocock.com/assets/lemon.jpg"/>The other day, I was walking down the street and I noticed an unusual plume of smoke about two hundred meters away in a side street. It was a residential area.Queensland’s new Coercive Control laws challenge Debian Code of Conduct2024-03-08T15:30:00+01:002024-03-08T15:30:00+01:00https://danielpocock.com/queensland-coercive-control-law-challenges-debian-code-of-conduct<p>Just in time for International Women's Day, the Australian state of Queensland has brought in a new <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-06/qld-coercive-control-laws-pass-parliament/103552838">law prohibiting coercive control</a>.</p>
<p>News stories about the new law have emphasized the cases of men who engage in <a href="https://danielpocock.com/category/code-of-conduct-gaslighting">Code of Conduct gaslighting, demanding unreasonable obedience from wives and volunteers</a>.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, it is worth looking back in time to the well-intentioned move by the State of Victoria to allow <a href="https://law.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/1700184/36_1_7.pdf">spouses to kill their partner in self-defence</a>. We were told this would help female victims of domestic violence to avoid jail. In fact, the first person to avoid conviction with the plea of self-defence <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/22/victoria-will-scrap-defensive-homicide-and-offer-simpler-test-for-self-defence">was a man</a>.</p>
<blockquote><em>Robert Clark, Victoria’s attorney general, said the law had been “hijacked” by violent men looking to avoid murder convictions.</em></blockquote>
<p>The coercive control law in Queensland needs similar scrutiny.</p>
<p>The news reports describe four tests to determine if a relationship involves coerceive control and thereby violates the law:</p>
<ol>
<li>They are in a domestic relationship with another person</li>
<li>They engage in a "course of conduct" that consists of domestic violence and it occurs more than once</li>
<li>They intend the conduct to coerce or control the other person</li>
<li>The conduct would be reasonably likely to cause the other person harm – meaning physical, emotional, financial, psychological or mental harm, whether temporary or permanent.</li>
</ol>
<h3>Domestic relationships</h3>
<p>When people see the first point, they will initially think about couples who live together. In fact, this could be any situation, such as a landlord who has lodgers renting rooms in their own home.</p>
<p>There are many types of housemate situations.</p>
<p>One of the more extreme cases was the <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-03-16/afp-call-out-nsw-james-davis-alleged-sex-slave-charges/100013332">prosecution of James Davis for keeping multiple women as slaves in Armidale</a>. Existing laws on modern slavery were used for this case. There are similar cult-like groups that fall below the threshold of modern slavery but lawyers may now try to shut them down using the coercive control laws.</p>
<p>Another notch down from these cults will be events like DebConf where <a href="https://danielpocock.com/fete-de-la-musique">Google told volunteers not to bring spouses because we have to share rooms with other unpaid volunteers</a>.</p>
<p>After all, they keep telling us that <a href="https://danielpocock.com/cult-brainwashing-charles-manson-andrew-cater-debian-family-fallacy/">Debian is a family</a>. If Debian is a family then these laws may apply.</p>
<h3>A "course of conduct" that consists of domestic violence and it occurs more than once</h3>
<p>At first glance, people may be shocked at the thought of domestic violence in the Debian / DebConf world.</p>
<p>Look back to the <a href="https://danielpocock.com/violence-sexism-racism-fosdem-debconf-froscon-debian-osi/">violent expulsion of an election candidate from DebConf6 in Mexico</a>.</p>
<p>People regularly try to brainwash us with the myth that <a href="https://danielpocock.com/cult-brainwashing-charles-manson-andrew-cater-debian-family-fallacy/">Debian is a family</a>. If Debian really is a family then the expulsion of Ted Walther was an example of domestic violence.</p>
<h3>An intent to coerce or control the other person</h3>
<p>This is really clear. We can see this the way Debianists <a href="https://danielpocock.com/debian-transgender-threats-deaths-lucy-wayland/">tried to blackmail one of my female interns, Renata D'Avila</a>.</p>
<blockquote><em>Sadly, time is short, so we kindly request you to reply to this message as soon as possible, so the bursaries processing can be unblocked.</em></blockquote>
<p>Dr Norbert Preining was blackmailed to <a href="https://disguised.work/debian/debian-blackmail-thought-reform-quickstart/">write a self-deprecating public confession</a>.</p>
<p>Then there were all those little manipulations from Chris Lamb during his term as Debian Project Leader. For example, the pressure to spend extra time looking for cheaper accommodation:</p>
<pre style="white-space: pre-wrap;">
Subject: Re: travel request: FOSSASIA March 2018, Singapore
Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2018 05:59:49 +0530
From: Chris Lamb <lamby@debian.org>
To: Daniel Pocock <daniel@pocock.pro>, leader@debian.org
Hi Daniel,
> Accommodation: EUR 500
Can you confirm this amount? It seems rather high for a short conference;
I stayed in .sg for about 3 weeks on this amount last year!
Regards,
--
,''`.
: :' : Chris Lamb
`. `'` lamby@debian.org / chris-lamb.co.uk
`-
</pre>
<p>while there seems to be <a href="https://danielpocock.com/world-ip-day-theme-2023-women-innovation-creativity-debian-vendettas/">no shortage of funds to give to lawyers attacking Debian volunteers</a>.</p>
<h3>The conduct would be reasonably likely to cause the other person harm – meaning physical, emotional, financial, psychological or mental harm, whether temporary or permanent.</h3>
<p>We can see that too.</p>
<p>The most glaring example is the <a href="https://danielpocock.com/category/debian-day-volunteer-suicide">volunteer signalling his intention to commit suicide the night before the Debian Day anniversary</a>. There is no greater example of physical harm than the loss of life.</p>
<p>In the lynchings of Dr Jacob Appelbaum, people expressed <a href="https://danielpocock.com/debian-falsified-harassment-claims-appelbaum-expulsion/">a desire to make him unemployable</a>. Enrico Zini pretended to care with this email:</p>
<blockquote><em>Enrico Zini: and a public announcement will potentially be
googlable forever into the future, and although I feel like I can make a
choice about someone's membership at this point in their and the
project's life, I don't feel like I can make the choice of publishing
something that could, in some faraway future, be a mark of shame
haunting a healed person from their sick long gone past, showing up
forever in recruiter searches.</em></blockquote>
<p>and then shortly afterwards he <a href="https://danielpocock.com/debian-falsified-harassment-claims-appelbaum-expulsion/">wrote to a journalist begging them to make their report more harmful to Dr Appelbaum</a>.</p>
<p>Have another look at the <a href="https://danielpocock.com/world-ip-day-theme-2023-women-innovation-creativity-debian-vendettas/">attempts to spread rumors about a relationship with my former intern, Elena Gjevukaj from Kosovo</a>. They gave CHF 18,500 to a Swiss judge to try and rubber stamp their gossip.</p>
<p>Please see the <a href="https://danielpocock.com/debian-history-harassment-abuse-culture-evolution/">detailed history of Debian harassment and abuse problems</a>.</p>Just in time for International Women's Day, the Australian state of Queensland has brought in a new law prohibiting coercive control.Federal Felony: OSI President promoted Civil Disorder at FrOSCon (Molly de Blanc again)2024-03-07T14:30:00+01:002024-03-07T14:30:00+01:00https://danielpocock.com/federal-felony-osi-president-promoted-civil-disorder-froscon-molly-de-blanc<p>With International Women's Day on the horizon, the equality of women should be at the front of our minds. One of the more interesting cases of equality is the execution of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_and_Ethel_Rosenberg">Julius and Ethel Rosenberg</a> for espionage. Some people expressed total opposition to the death sentence for any criminal, regardless of gender. At the same time, there was a lobby to see Ethel given a lighter sentence or presidential pardon on the basis of her gender.</p>
<p>Many people petition the US president for pardon and very few receive a response. In this particular case, Eisenhower suggested that if Ethel Rosenberg was permitted to live and eventually freed, <a href="https://digitalcommons.tourolaw.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1922&context=scholarlyworks">the Soviets would recruit future spies who were female</a>.</p>
<p>From time to time, I've drawn attention to the drawing the OSI President created and displayed in a talk at FrOSCon, Germany in 2019. The prosecution of Donald Trump supporters for the US Capitol riots of 6 January has created fresh awareness of the federal felony crime of <em>Civil disorder</em>. Here is the <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/232">legal definition of the crime</a>:</p>
<blockquote><em>A public disturbance involving acts of violence by assemblages of <b>three or more persons</b>, which causes an immediate danger of or results in damage or injury to the property or person of any individual.</em></blockquote>
<p>That is exactly what the OSI President drew for us.</p>
<p>Three people pushing a real developer.</p>
<p>Three people pushing <a href="https://nazi.compare/en/2024/02/02/berlin-police-decline-investigate-fsfe-nazi-comparisons/">an elected representative</a>.</p>
<p>Three people pushing their boss. Three people pushing their landlord. These are all crimes. They are all a felony.</p>
<p>The riot resulted in multiple deaths. Four police officers subsequently committed suicide. We have <a href="https://techrights.org/n/2024/02/26/Debian_History_Harassment_Abuse_culture_evolution.shtml">deaths and suicides in the world of open source too and pushing was a factor</a>.</p>
<p>One of the Trumpists convicted of the crime was Taylor James Johnatakis. The judge told him that his defense was <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/taylor-james-johnatakis-convicted-capitol-insurrection_n_655e2098e4b0c0333bee606f">Gobbledygook</a>. We can say the same thing for the snake-oil approach to human relations that is poisoning the free software community under the guise of having a "<a href="https://danielpocock.com/category/code-of-conduct-gaslighting">Code of Conduct</a>".</p>
<p>Here we can see much the same thing, three Trumpists are pushing a police officer:</p>
<img width="100%" alt="Molly de Blanc, pushing" src="https://danielpocock.com/assets/trump-mob-pushing-police.jpg"/>
<img width="100%" alt="Molly de Blanc, pushing, FrOSCon" src="https://danielpocock.com/assets/molly-speaking-froscon-pushing.jpg"/>
<p>Thanks to the strong words of the judge, the Gobbledygook case was widely publicized in the media. Many of the news reports described Taylor James Johnatakis as somebody who didn't physically attack the police himself, he stood back with his megaphone and egged on other rioters. Using a megaphone or using the name of the OSI as a platform is much the same thing.</p>
<img width="100%" alt="Taylor James Johnatakis" src="https://danielpocock.com/assets/TaylorJamesJohnatakis.jpg"/>
<p>Here is the video of Molly's words:</p>
<blockquote><em>We can use our collective power to push others</em></blockquote>
<video controls preload="auto" width="100%" height="531" data-setup="{}">
<!--<source src="https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmYzPj3D4AUEeyq74SYCADjJoRevSn7akrfxbMyXyrdDzh" type="video/mp4">-->
<source src="https://disguised.work/debian/assets/froscon2019-push-others.mp4" type="video/mp4">
</video>With International Women's Day on the horizon, the equality of women should be at the front of our minds. One of the more interesting cases of equality is the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for espionage. Some people expressed total opposition to the death sentence for any criminal, regardless of gender. At the same time, there was a lobby to see Ethel given a lighter sentence or presidential pardon on the basis of her gender.Google sponsorship: failed to pay Open Labs, OSCAL, Albania2024-03-06T19:30:00+01:002024-03-06T19:30:00+01:00https://danielpocock.com/google-sponsorship-failed-to-pay-open-labs-oscal-albania<p>On 7 May 2017 (written below as a US date, 05/07/2017), Cat Allman from Google authorized Google sponsorship of the OSCAL conference in Tirana, Albania. Based on that authorization, the organizers put the Google logo on all their printed materials, banners and web site. $2,000 doesn't seem like a lot of money for Google but it is a lot for volunteers in Albania.</p>
<p>When the organizers pursued payment, it was radio silence. In August 2017, they reached out to me for help.</p>
<p>I tried to contact Google about this. Despite years of collaboration in Google Summer of Code (GSoC), Google wouldn't respond to emails about OSCAL in Albania.</p>
<p>Did Google know something about the problems in Albania before other volunteers found out?</p>
<p>Did Google fail to inform other mentors that there were risks associated with these two men, Elio and Redon and their <a href="https://danielpocock.com/when-i-discovered-people-trafficking-in-open-source-software/">people trafficking culture</a>?</p>
<h3>The email trail</h3>
<pre style="white-space: pre-wrap;">
Subject: Fwd: Fwd: Re: OSCAL '17 Sponsorship
Date: Sat, 5 Aug 2017 13:51:11 +0200
From: Redon Skikuli <redon@skikuli.com>
To: Daniel Pocock <daniel@pocock.pro>
CC: oscal@openlabs.cc
Dear Daniel,
as requested please find below the communication we had with Google
regarding the sponsorship. We haven't had feedback after the last
communication.
Please let me know how you plan to proceed with this.
Please keep this confidential as it involves financial information from
a partner of ours,
All the best from Prizren,
*/Redon Skikuli/*
/*Web:* redon.skikuli.com <https://redon.skikuli.com/>/
/*Email:* redon@skikuli.com/
/*PGP:* redon.skikuli.com/contact <https://redon.skikuli.com/contact/>/
-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: Fwd: Re: OSCAL '17 Sponsorship
Date: Sat, 5 Aug 2017 13:42:49 +0200
From: Elio Qoshi <ping@elioqoshi.me>
To: redon@skikuli.com
-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: Re: OSCAL '17 Sponsorship
Date: Sun, 9 Jul 2017 22:55:31 +0200
From: Elio Qoshi <ping@elioqoshi.me>
To: Cat Allman <allman@google.com>
CC: board@openlabs.cc, Redon Skikuli <redon@skikuli.com>,
oscal@openlabs.cc, sttaylor@google.com
Hi Cat, I'd appreciate a followup on this.
On 06/23/2017 11:45 PM, Elio Qoshi wrote:
> Hi Cat, if you are too caught up for this, is there any other contact
> we can reach out to get this done?
>
> Thanks,
> Elio
>
> On 6/19/2017 5:48 PM, Elio Qoshi wrote:
>> Hey Cat,
>>
>> Kind reminder about this. Sorry for being pushy :)
>>
>> On 06/14/2017 07:05 PM, Elio Qoshi wrote:
>>> Hi Cat,
>>>
>>> Hope you have been well!
>>>
>>> Happy to say OSCAL was a blast! We are still wrapping up reporting
>>> and getting out videos, infographics and photos but you can find the
>>> first official photos from the event on Wikimedia Commons here:
>>>
>>> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:OSCAL_2017
>>>
>>> Let me know if we can report a summary back to you in any format.
>>>
>>> Regarding the sponsorship payment, how do we need to proceed? I
>>> think we are already registered as a Google Supplier as "Open Labs".
>>> We would need to do a wire transfer as discussed.
>>>
>>> Have a great day,
>>> Elio
>>>
>>> On 05/07/2017 05:54 PM, Cat Allman wrote:
>>>> <b>Please do! And thank you!</b>
>>>>
>>>> On May 6, 2017 11:05 AM, "Elio Qoshi" <ping@elioqoshi.me
>>>> <mailto:ping@elioqoshi.me>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Hey Cat,
>>>>
>>>> Let me know if we shall proceed like suggested with a Silver
>>>> sponsorship. As said, we are in no rush for the payment and we
>>>> can clear out the details after the conference. We will be
>>>> having also a GSOC Meetup as Mario Behling and Oliver Sauter
>>>> will be there (from FOSSASIA and WorldBrain, accepted
>>>> organizations for GSOC) which will be worthwhile for a lot of
>>>> attendees.
>>>>
>>>> Cheers,
>>>> Elio
>>>>
</pre>
<p>Did Google fail to inform other mentors that there were risks associated with these two men, Elio and Redon and their <a href="https://danielpocock.com/when-i-discovered-people-trafficking-in-open-source-software/">people trafficking culture</a>?</p>
<img width="100%" alt="OSCAL, Albania, Google" src="https://danielpocock.com/assets/OSCAL_2017_-_presentations_35_cropped.jpg"/>
<p>Did Google fail to inform other mentors that there were risks associated with these two men, Elio and Redon and their <a href="https://danielpocock.com/when-i-discovered-people-trafficking-in-open-source-software/">people trafficking culture</a>?</p>On 7 May 2017 (written below as a US date, 05/07/2017), Cat Allman from Google authorized Google sponsorship of the OSCAL conference in Tirana, Albania. Based on that authorization, the organizers put the Google logo on all their printed materials, banners and web site. $2,000 doesn't seem like a lot of money for Google but it is a lot for volunteers in Albania.Stephen Milne, consent & Debian Code of Conduct invalid2024-03-06T17:00:00+01:002024-03-06T17:00:00+01:00https://danielpocock.com/stephen-milne-consent-debian-code-of-conduct-invalid<p>After acquiring the Debian trademark in Switzerland (I subsequently <a href="https://danielpocock.com/debian-trademark-canceled/">canceled it</a>), I declared the Debian Code of Conduct <a href="https://danielpocock.com/using-the-debian-trademark-for-good/">to be invalid</a>. Even without the trademark, I remain of the opinion that the Code of Conduct is invalid.</p>
<p>I previously wrote in some detail about <a href="https://danielpocock.com/open-letter-acm-codes-of-ethics-conduct/">the dangers of modern slavery that intersect with Code of Conduct brainwashing in voluntary groups</a>.</p>
<p>Yet understanding what is wrong in the specific case of Debian's Code of Conduct is even easier than that.</p>
<p>When Debian conducted a vote to make people submit themselves to a Code of Conduct in 2014, <a href="https://www.debian.org/vote/2014/vote_002">they presented the results as a majority in favor</a>. According to the page, 1,002 people were registered to vote. <a href="https://www.debian.org/vote/2014/vote_002_tally.txt">Only 288 valid votes were counted</a>. We need to take the numbers and look at them like this:</p>
<table>
<tr><th>Option</th><th>Votes</th><th>Consent</th><th>Percent</th><th>Combined</th></tr>
<tr><td>Accept CoC, DPL can update it</td><td>132</td><td>Yes</td><td>13%</td><td rowspan="2">25% Yes</td></tr>
<tr><td>Accept CoC, Updates via General Resolution vote</td><td>124</td><td>Yes</td><td>12%</td></tr>
<tr><td>Further Discussion</td><td>40</td><td><b>NO</b></td><td>4%</td><td rowspan="2"><b>75% NO</b></td></tr>
<tr><td>Did not vote</td><td>714</td><td><b>NO</b></td><td>71%</td></tr>
</table>
<p>It is interesting to compare this to the <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-11-06/stephen-milne-rape-charges-dropped/5870710">prosecution of footballer Stephen Milne</a>. A crime was reported in 2004 but it took ten years for the police and prosecutors to work out how to proceed. In short, two footballers and two women went back to the home of the other footballer, Leigh Montagna. Both women said yes. At some point, there was a swap and one woman said yes to the other man while the victim has only said yes to the same man again. The swap went ahead anyway. The legal system has decided that under the weight of peer pressure, it is not rape, it is the lesser crime of sexual assault. The victim and many other women fail to understand the logic of this outcome.</p>
<p>It clearly isn't acceptable for women to be used in a swap where 100% of women did not consent. Therefore, how can we have this <a href="https://danielpocock.com/open-letter-acm-codes-of-ethics-conduct/">amateur-hour Code of Conduct</a> if 100% of participants did not consent to the code?</p>
<p>OSI President Molly de Blanc presented that infamous drawing at FrOSCon where three people are pushing one developer. We could think of the three pushers and one victim a lot like the situation in Leigh Montagna's home.</p>
<!--
<a href="https://danielpocock.com/violence-sexism-racism-fosdem-debconf-froscon-debian-osi/">
<img width="100%" alt="Molly de Blanc, pushing others, bullying" src="https://danielpocock.com/assets/molly-de-blanc-pushing-others.png"/>
</a>
-->
<video controls preload="auto" width="100%" height="531" data-setup="{}">
<!--<source src="https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmYzPj3D4AUEeyq74SYCADjJoRevSn7akrfxbMyXyrdDzh" type="video/mp4">-->
<source src="https://disguised.work/debian/assets/froscon2019-push-others.mp4" type="video/mp4">
</video>
<h3>Extracting numbers from Debian votes</h3>
<p>The text files can be transformed into CSV files and then tallied with the <a href="https://manpages.debian.org/uniq">uniq command</a> or any similar tool.</p>After acquiring the Debian trademark in Switzerland (I subsequently canceled it), I declared the Debian Code of Conduct to be invalid. Even without the trademark, I remain of the opinion that the Code of Conduct is invalid.Julian Assange, Wikileaks & Debian-private2024-02-21T00:20:00+01:002024-02-21T00:20:00+01:00https://danielpocock.com/julian-assange-wikileaks-debian-private<p>Julian Assange is back in the news again this week due to the latest episode of his appeals against extradition.</p>
<p>One thing that is crystal clear about the case is that for Vladimir Putin, the persecution of Julian Assange is the gift that keeps on giving.</p>
<p>For starters, Edward Snowden had originally decided to seek refuge in Hong Kong. He came to realize that Hong Kong could extradite him back to the US and so he fled to Russia. This may lead to copycat defections by future whistleblowers, reminiscent of the cold war. Is there any bigger fan of the cold war than Vladimir Putin?</p>
<p>Then there was the small matter of Alexei Navalny dying in a Russian prison last week. It is just coincidence that this mysterious death happened shortly before the latest court decision on Julian Assange. If Assange were to die in the days ahead due to his health, it will be just that little bit harder to criticize Putin over the death of Navalny. It is just coincidence that authorities in Australia, worried about Assange's ill health, are <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/feb/14/australian-mps-pass-motion-urging-us-and-uk-to-allow-julian-assange-to-return-to-australia?s=09">pretending to be on his side</a>. The symbolic vote in the Australian parliament was just that, symbolic and nothing more. If Assange were to die in the days and weeks ahead, the Australian politicians can point to the symbolic vote they just took and say their hands are clean.</p>
<p>Therefore, it is very sad to see that both the Australian Government and the Russian president are simultaneously making opportunistic acts of backside-covering that pivot around the health and wellbeing of Julian Assange.</p>
<p>It is now six years that my family and I have been subject to harassment from rogue elements of Debian and FSFE. These misfits are motivated by nothing other than censorship. People who want to read the blogs that Debian is censoring can follow the <a href="https://debian.news">Debian.News planet site</a> and the related <a href="https://debian.news/rss20.xml">Debian.News RSS feed</a>.</p>
<h3>When debian-private discussed Julian Assange and the NSA</h3>
<p>There are many more threads related to this. Over 80,000 messages on debian-private, the gossip network. Less than a quarter has been disclosed so far.</p>
<pre style="white-space: pre-wrap;">
Subject: Are we owned? How deep are we owned?
Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2014 06:54:35 +0200
From: Jaime Robles <jaime@robles.es>
To: debian-private@lists.debian.org
Hello all,
I have read <a href="http://igurublog.wordpress.com/2014/04/08/julian-assange-debian-is-owned-by-the-nsa/">this[1]</a> and I really think we should do something.
If we are owned (I really think so) we may failing to fulfil the Social
Contract and not doing our best.
It is not easy to fight back and even to detect all the "intrusions" we
may be suffering but we may not be doing our best to provide the best
software we can.
The questions are:
- What can we do?
- Create a list of potentially attractive packages and create an
international team to check the diffs?
- Force "enemies" to work together in security packages?
- Simply forget and continue doing as today?
We need at least to think about this.
To all the "intruders" that will be reading this... It is not personal,
I feel we need to do this. It is not only you, your enemies are also
around us ;-)
[1]
<a href="http://igurublog.wordpress.com/2014/04/08/julian-assange-debian-is-owned-by-the-nsa/">http://igurublog.wordpress.com/2014/04/08/julian-assange-debian-is-owned-by-the-nsa/</a>
</pre>Julian Assange is back in the news again this week due to the latest episode of his appeals against extradition.Perjury: Axel Beckert (ETH Zurich) & Debian lying and scapegoating2024-02-18T19:30:00+01:002024-02-18T19:30:00+01:00https://danielpocock.com/perjury-axel-beckert-eth-zurich-debian-scapegoating<p>In the next snippets of Debian vendetta-by-lawyer, we are going to pick out the examples of perjury.</p>
<p>On 6 November 2023, <a href="https://danielpocock.com/debian-trademark-canceled/">I signed the order canceling the Debian trademark registration in Switzerland</a>. If we were dealing with reasonable people, that would be the end of the matter.</p>
<p>In the bundle of papers submitted to the Swiss judge, Axel Beckert of ETH Zurich writes the nasty accusation that if people don't join Debian then it is all because of the questions I ask. If these Germans get their wish to put subversive people who ask ethical questions back into the gas chambers today, does anybody really believe there will be a rush of new contributors waiting to join the day after?</p>
<img width="100%" alt="Axel Beckert, ETH Zurich, Debian, scapegoating" src="https://danielpocock.com/assets/axel-beckert-eth-zurich-debian-scapegoating.png"/>
<p>In the first week of December 2023, I published the blog <a href="https://danielpocock.com/debian-trademark-canceled/">confirming the trademark registration was canceled</a>.</p>
<p>Another few weeks passed and then on 27 December, Rafael Laboissière started an email discussion about <em>Community renewal and project obsolescence</em>. Clicking his link gives a chart showing that Debian has been slowly declining over more than twenty years. The chart proves this has nothing to do with me. It is a general trend. Stubborn men like Beckert refuse to adapt.</p>
<p><a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2023/12/msg00012.html">The email</a> and report by Rafael Laboissière and Sébastien Villemot proves beyond any doubt that Beckert lied to the lawyers and a judge. Perjury.</p>
<hr/>
<pre style="white-space: pre-wrap;">
Subject: Community renewal and project obsolescence
Date: Wed, 27 Dec 2023 21:12:17 +0100
From: Rafael Laboissière <rafael@debian.org>
Organization: Debian GNU/Linux
To: Debian Project <debian-project@lists.debian.org>
CC: Sébastien Villemot <sebastien@debian.org>
Dear Debian fellows,
This is a very simple-minded analysis about the Debian community (lack of) renewal and project obsolescence:
<a href="https://salsa.debian.org/rafael/debian-contrib-years">https://salsa.debian.org/rafael/debian-contrib-years</a>
containing interesting comments made by Sébastien Villemot.
Best,
Rafael Laboissière, DD
</pre>
<img width="100%" alt="Debian, decline, contributors" src="https://danielpocock.com/assets/debian-contributors-since-year.png"/>
<hr/>
<p>In other words, they revealed this evidence just a few weeks after the conclusion of the legal procedure.</p>
<p>Looking at the years on the X-axis, we can see decline begins with the creation of Ubuntu, it continues through the <a href="https://danielpocock.com/category/debian-day-volunteer-suicide/">suicide of Frans Pop (Debian Day 2010)</a> and the decline is helped by the regular lynch mobs. What will be the final deathblow to this project? The scapegoating, the censorship or the arrogance? There is a steep drop in 2018, coinciding with the leadership of Chris Lamb and the Debian Christmas Lynchings. That is when we saw the high arrogance of Chris Lamb attacking volunteers at Christmas. Many potential volunteers don't know who is right or wrong, they simply avoid groups who behave like this.</p>
<p>Beckert's paragraph of rampant dishonesty suggests that I am responsible for the defamation culture in Debian. But that is also clearly a lie: in one of my previous blogs, I <a href="https://danielpocock.com/debian-falsified-harassment-claims-appelbaum-expulsion/">published a series of emails from <em>debian-private</em> showing how rabid dogs got together to tear down Jacob Appelbaum</a>. One of the most glaring examples of defamation culture in Debian is the email from character assassin Enrico Zini to the ITWire journalist Sam Varghese.</p>
<p>Here is another email from the falsified rape accusations. Russell Coker lives all the way over the other side of the world in Australia, how can he possibly make such strong assertions that a smear from people in Berlin is credible? This is an example of the extraordinary defamation that Debianists are creating all by themselves, they didn't have any help from me in making this up.</p>
<pre style="white-space: pre-wrap;">
Subject: Re: Expulsion of Jacob Appelbaum <error>
Date: Wed, 22 Jun 2016 03:19:15 +1000
From: Russell Coker <russell@coker.com.au>
To: Erinn Clark <erinn@debian.org>, debian-private@lists.debian.org
I agree that the message sent to potential future predators and to victims is more important than harm to Jacob's future life. Jacob could have refrained from sexually abusing other people to prevent harm to his future life, but he chose not to.
It's his choice. If I had a choice I'd have chosen to have all his victims have happy lives free of sexual abuse. Jacob chose otherwise.
When I posted to the Linux Australia list I mentioned all the organisations that no longer count Jacob as a member to encourage people to make a decision that will protect people in my local Linux community.
</pre>
<p>Beckert's testimony claims that the fear of defamation turns people away. But I am not the source of it. It has been there all along. In my writing, I simply try to hold a mirror up to these people and this is the ugly reflection that appears. <a href="https://danielpocock.com/debian-history-harassment-abuse-culture-evolution/">See the chronological history of harassment, abuse, deaths and suicides around Debian</a></p>
<p>The ultimate proof that Beckert's testimony is fraudulent comes from the first resignation of Frans Pop, the <a href="https://danielpocock.com/category/debian-day-volunteer-suicide/">Debian Day Volunteer Suicide victim</a>. In 2007, Frans Pop told us:</p>
<hr/>
<pre style="white-space: pre-wrap;">
Subject: [Very long] Post-partem rant and retrospective
Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 03:56:11 +0200
From: Frans Pop
To: debian-private@lists.debian.org
I've decided to write this in a separate mail because I'm afraid this may get long. Quite a bit of this has been written before, but I hope some of you will bear with me.
[snip]
So, what has made me decide to leave the project. It's a combination of just plain emotional stress over the whole Sven Luther issue, frustration with the inability of the project to deal with that and with some other issues, and frustration with the fact that a fair number of members of the project seem to feel that as long as you don't upload packages with trojans, pretty much anything is OK.
</pre>
<hr/>
<p>Axel Beckert is one of many stubborn people in the Debian cabal who refuse to listen to Frans Pop and everybody else who resigned or suicided. He is employed as a system administrator in a large Swiss university, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETH_Zurich">ETH Zurich</a>. Having full administrative control of their servers gets to his big head. He thinks he can make judgments over the lives of volunteers and our families, blaming everybody except himself for the decline of Debian.</p>
<p>In a previous blog, I showed how these liars <a href="https://danielpocock.com/world-ip-day-theme-2023-women-innovation-creativity-debian-vendettas/">gave CHF 18,500 to a judge to denounce me after the death of my father</a>. In a country where denouncing foreigners and handling corrupt money frequently makes Switzerland the subject of international ridicule, Debianists like Beckert have brought these two themes together to beat me over the head.</p>
<img width="100%" alt="Axel Beckert, ETH Zurich, Debian, perjury" src="https://danielpocock.com/assets/axel-beckert-debian-signature-lies-perjury.png"/>
<p>Below is an email Beckert sent to the <em>debian-private</em> gossip network, which has been widely leaked now, boasting about all his powers at ETH Zurich.</p>
<p>Working in network security today requires the highest level of integrity. The manner in which Beckert helped to create and propagate lies after the death of my father not only casts doubt on his own integrity but also that of the institution employing him.</p>
<pre style="white-space: pre-wrap;">
Subject: Job change, some RFAs ahead
Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2016 21:30:53 +0200
From: Axel Beckert <abe@debian.org>
Organization: The Debian Project
To: debian-private@lists.debian.org
CC: elmar@heebs.ch
Hi,
TL;DR: I'm still at ETH Zürich, but no more at D-PHYS. Still have root
on ftp.ch.debian.org. Will probably RFA some packages.
FYI: I've changed jobs with the beginning of this month as some of you
already know. It's an internal change and I still work at ETH Zürich,
but I switched from the IT Services/Support Group (short: ISG) of the
Department of Physics (short: D-PHYS) to ETH's central IT services
("Informatikdienste", short: ID), joining their Network Security Group
(short: NSG):
https://www.ethz.ch/de/die-eth-zuerich/organisation/abteilungen/informatikdienste/personen/ict-networks-a-z/id-ictnet-06024.html
The NSG also (but not only) operates as ETH's CERT and is recipient of
mails to abuse@ethz.ch.
My work e-mail also changed, it's now the nice and short axel@ethz.ch
:-) instead of beckert@phys.ethz.ch. And I'm now working on a
different campus (City center instead of Hönggerberg).
With that move I'm following Elmar Heeb (DM, some of you might know
him, e.g. from DebConf13 and DebConf15) who changed from ISG D-PHYS to
NSG about 1.5 years ago already.
The group I have been part of the past 10 years runs and continues to
run debian.ethz.ch aka ftp.ch.debian.org (despite they mostly use
Ubuntu nowadays *sigh*). I though was granted to keep root access to
the mirror, so I can still fix things there in short term. We also
created a dedicated e-mail address mirror@phys.ethz.ch which
reaches both, them and me. (Already recorded in Mirrors.masterlist:
https://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/webwml/webwml/english/mirror/Mirrors.masterlist?r1=1.2567&r2=1.2568)
Since I maintain some of my packages just because they're used at
D-PHYS, there will be some changes, but luckily the impact for Debian
is rather small:
Packages which could need a new maintainer or some help:
* dphys-config: Neither Elmar nor me use it anymore. It's though still
in heavy use at D-PHYS. Will probably RFA it and continue to
maintain it for now unless somebody else steps in.
* ldap-git-backup: Difficult. Elmar and me are both, package
maintainer as well as upstream and we no more use it ourself, but
still like the idea. We consider it being in "maintenance mode",
despite there are some interesting feature ideas in BTS. Also seems
to have performance issues with older Git releases (e.g. 1.7.x as in
Wheezy). Long-term future still unclear. RFA sounds like a fitting
idea, but it will probably include upstream.
* pconsole: Already RFA'ed, see #696888. I use it only very seldomly
(I prefer mssh nowadays), but I will continue to maintain it for
now.
* xen-tools: Took it over (upstream as well as in Debian) in 2010 from
Steve Kemp (when he switched to using KVM only) because it's used a
lot at D-PHYS. I also use it for the Linux User Group Switzerland's
servers, but there I need it far less often. So I expect less
activity from my side on this package and project. A co-maintainer
would be appreciated. Will probably write an RFH for xen-tools and
also post a note on the upstream mailing lists.
Packages which you do not need to worry about:
* gnudatalanguage: Ole luckily agreed quite a while ago to become
co-maintainer and we moved the package under the umbrella of Debian
Astro Team. He even managed to find a fix and do an NMU for plplot
which I didn't managed for the most recent issue. So gnudatalanguage
is in good hands already. Nevertheless I promised Ole to stay a
co-maintainer for now. (It was the only package I never used myself,
but maintained it because my users used it.)
* xymon: Still use it at home and Elmar Heeb and me also plan to
establish Xymon inside the NSG, so I'll continue to maintain Xymon
together with Christoph Berg.
* dphys-swapfile: Still use it at home and is part of Raspbian's
default installation. So for now, I'll continue to maintain it.
* aptitude-robot: Both, Elmar and me still use it and we will continue
to maintain it.
* dh-dist-zilla: Both, Elmar and me still use it and we will continue
to maintain it.
* mb2md: You usually need that package only once in your life. While
D-PHYS no more needs it, I still have to do the migration from mbox
to Maildir on my private mail server. But it's team-maintained
anyways. :-)
* unburden-home-dir: Has been developed for D-PHYS, but never
forcefully used for all users there because in the meanwhile, $XDG_*
variables are recognized by most applications which tend to DoS
D-PHYS's NFS servers, so D-PHYS went for that. I nevertheless still
use and continue to develop it, upstream as well as in Debian.
All of my other packages were not or only vaguely related to my
previous job and are hence not affected by my job change.
P.S.: Never to be disclosed without an explicit grant from me.
Regards, Axel
--
,''`. | Axel Beckert <abe@debian.org>, http://people.debian.org/~abe/
: :' : | Debian Developer, ftp.ch.debian.org Admin
`. `' | 4096R: 2517 B724 C5F6 CA99 5329 6E61 2FF9 CD59 6126 16B5
`- | 1024D: F067 EA27 26B9 C3FC 1486 202E C09E 1D89 9593 0EDE
</pre>In the next snippets of Debian vendetta-by-lawyer, we are going to pick out the examples of perjury.Online dating: where does your data really go?2024-02-14T18:30:00+01:002024-02-14T18:30:00+01:00https://danielpocock.com/online-dating-where-does-your-data-really-go<p>According to a German press release on the Experian web site, they are the <a href="https://www.experianplc.com/newsroom/press-releases/2011/experian-cheetahmail-wird-zu-experian-marketing-services">back-end for the Parship online dating service</a>. Wikipedia has a page <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parship">about Parship, a popular service that started in Germany</a>.</p>
<p>Users periodically see an error like this when accessing the Parship site from Tor, it shows just how tightly integrated Parship is with Experian.</p>
<img src="https://danielpocock.com/assets/parship-experian.png"/>
<p>I wrote about this previously in a <a href="https://danielpocock.com/what-is-the-best-online-dating-site/">blog post in 2018</a>. In the six years that have passed, the surveillance possibilities have only become more oppressive for the ordinary user. The real goals of these services are building profiles of their users that can be useful in a wide range of marketing and price discrimination scenarios.</p>According to a German press release on the Experian web site, they are the back-end for the Parship online dating service. Wikipedia has a page about Parship, a popular service that started in Germany.