Summary: One reader of ours, who has inside/deeper knowledge, suggests that political endeavours rather than technical endeavours are partly to blame for massive increase in travel-related spendings

THIS morning we published a reader's concern about DebConf spendings. She worried that the Debian Project was overspending and not disclosing the reasons. She also suspects that a corporate-led coup is in motion, but her efforts to understand it fell short.

It did not take long for another reader to clarify things to us, calling it "bribes for bribes?"

“Debian in turn uses the money to bribe participants...”
      --Anonymous"Saw your post about DebConf sponsors bribing Debian," said the reader. "Why would anybody in Debian worry about that though? Debian in turn uses the money to bribe participants..."

Maybe "bribe" is too strong a term, but this is what we call it every time Microsoft pays Debian (whilst also attacking Debian).

"After all the work some Debian volunteers did in the Balkans," our reader explained, "they decided to fly all the women from Kosovo and Albania to Brazil for DebConf19. You can find them in the published photo albums.

“Many of these women hadn't actually made any contributions as developers, it has been suggested they were brought to DebConf for political reasons.”
      --Anonymous"Some had been to DebConf18 too but they really took this to extremes with DebConf19.

"That could be one reason why the travel spending was more than double in the last report. Many of these women hadn't actually made any contributions as developers, it has been suggested they were brought to DebConf for political reasons.

"Maybe "bribe" is too strong a term, but this is what we call it every time Microsoft pays Debian (whilst also attacking Debian).""Some or all of these women were taken aside one-by-one and encouraged to betray the volunteers who helped them get started in free software. The only thing is, there was nothing bad for them to say.

“The message going out to these young women is very clear: these holidays have strings attached.”
      --Anonymous"Not long after that, one of the women was given an Outreachy internship too. Some of them feel very uncomfortable about being used like this.

"The message going out to these young women is very clear: these holidays have strings attached. Fortunately women from the Balkans are not stupid." ⬆