How much does Google pay to destroy a man and his family?
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock.
I've started creating this page to keep track of the kill money that I feel Google is laundering through the bank accounts of Software in the Public Interest, Inc and the Debian "Project". This page may be updated from time to time as more of this dirty money is uncovered.
On 20 March 2013, a report in the French senate expressed great concern that European countries are becoming digital colonies under the reign of foreign companies like Google.
Organizations like Free Software Foundation Europe e.V. (FSFE) are being used by Google for the purpose of astroturfing in Europe.
In January 2017, I nominated myself as a candidate in the FSFE elections.
The FSFE voting was conducted using the Cornell University CIVS online voting service. Voting finished on 24 April 2017. That is the anniversary of the Easter Rising when Irish citizens rose up against colonisation. Coincidentally, I was the first Irish citizen elected into this role in the German FSFE.
FSFE typically obtains up to twenty percent of of their budget from Google.
I made a series of discoveries about corruption in the FSFE.
I completely resigned from the organization in September 2018.
After my resignation, the Googlists have attacked my family constantly with a campaign of online harassment.
Here I look at the money Googlists paid for these attacks and I contrast that against money that these Googlists have refused to pay in other situations.
Unexplained death of Adrian von Bidder
These details are extracted from the more comprehensive blog about the mysterious death.
von Bidder had an official role as secretary of the Debian.ch "Verein" incorporated under Swiss law.
Andreas Tille, who is a candidate in the 2024 Debian election did not want any Debian money to be used towards the cost of a wreath or flowers.
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
... [snip] ...
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.
... [snip] ...
In the end, individual donors contributed approximately CHF 682.78 to AMICA Schweiz, a charity supported by von Bidder's family. Not one Swiss Franc was contributed from Debian itself.
DebConf13 refusal to pay for dish washing
Local organizers of the conference estimated we would need to budget CHF 5,000 for casual workers to do dishwashing each evening over 2 weeks.
Debian oligarchs pushed for volunteers to do the work so they could save Google's money for other projects. Like paying the lawyers.
DebConf13 huge surplus in Swiss bank account
They couldn't pay for a wreath for Adrian von Bidder, despite the fact he was an officer of the association.
They couldn't pay for casual staff to wash dishes.
They had CHF 38,000 leftover at the end.
This money was kept in reserve for future vendettas.
Subject: Call for ideas -- useful ways of spending Debian money Date: Tue, 1 Oct 2013 21:46:17 +0200 From: Lucas Nussbaum <leader@debian.org> To: debian-private@lists.debian.org CC: auditor@debian.org, philipp@hug.cx
[ TL;DR: ETOO_MUCH_MONEY -- need ideas to flush queue ]
Hi,
Thanks to the fantastic work of the DebConf13 sponsorship (fundraising) team, DebConf13 generated a surplus. The current estimate of it is CHF 38k (that's USD 42k, or EUR 31k). That's excellent news.
The not-so-excellent news is that it means that the debconf13 association will have to pay income taxes for it. (no estimate yet; Philipp Hug (DC13 and debian.ch treasurer) will get in touch with a tax expert).
Even if Switzerland has been very welcoming towards Debian, it would not be a bad idea to try to avoid paying too much taxes. A good way to do that is to spend some of the surplus (in ways useful to Debian, of course).
Could you start thinking of useful ways to spend some money? servers? porter boxes? buildds? sprints? Of course, it would need to be spent before the end of 2013. There are no known restrictions on what we can buy or where we can ship. What we end up buying will of course be made public as usual. To move forward, please reply to this mail, providing an estimate and a justification. Or mail leader@ + auditor@ if you prefer.
Somehow related: we are participating in GNOME's Outreach Program for Women, winter edition[1].
As already stated in April[2], I wouldn't favor a situation where Debian funds are used to pay OPW participation on a regular basis. However, as an experiment, it makes sense to help that happen for the first time (it didn't happen in the summer edition).
So, if the fundraising effort currently being set up fails to raise enough money for one stipend, but still raises a significant amount of money, I will authorize the use of Debian money for the difference (likely for at most $2900 -- that's half the stipend, so the other half needs to come from fundraising).
[1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-women/2013/09/msg00058.html [2] https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2013/04/msg00108.html
Q: Why is this on -private@? A: Because I'm not sure yet how cautious we need to be about the DC13 surplus situation. Better safe than sorry. We can restart the discussion on a public list when/if things are cleared. Thanks,
Lucas
Google Summer of Code kickbacks
I resigned from mentoring in Google Summer of Code at a time when I lost two family members.
Google sent this money into Debian bank accounts. I never received any recognition for my own efforts as a mentor between 2013 and 2018.
Subject: Re: Payment Instructions for GSoC 2018 Organizations Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2018 11:39:41 +0200 From: Martin Michlmayr <tbm@cyrius.com> To: Molly de Blanc <deblanc@riseup.net> CC: Daniel Pocock <daniel@pocock.pro>, treasurer@debian.org, outreach@debian.org, treasurer@spi-inc.org
This is just to let you know that we're about to receive the funds from Google for GSoC 2018.
2. Debian Project - $17,200
(note: this is more than you should get according to my calculation, but maybe I'm wrong: >>> 2200 + 500 + 500 * 26 15700 I guess you're getting 4x the student travel scholarship )
Payment for each organization includes:
* Student stipends ($500 per student developer) * Mentor summit stipend ($2200) * Student travel scholarship ($500) * Deductions for missing evaluations ($1100 per evaluation missed)
Martin
A mysterious payment of $300,000
The email tells us they received two payments of $300,000 each. The total is therefore $600,000.
Subject: Realizing Good Ideas with Debian Money Date: Wed, 29 May 2019 07:49:25 -0400 From: Sam Hartman <hartmans@debian.org> Reply-To: debian-project@lists.debian.org To: Mo Zhou <lumin@debian.org> CC: Andrey Rahmatullin <wrar@debian.org>, debian-devel@lists.debian.org, debian-project@lists.debian.org
[moving a discussion from -devel to -project where it belongs]
>>>>> "Mo" == Mo Zhou <lumin@debian.org> writes:
Mo> Hi, Mo> On 2019-05-29 08:38, Raphael Hertzog wrote: >> Use the $300,000 on our bank accounts?
So, there were two $300k donations in the last year. One of these was earmarked for a DSA equipment upgrade. DSA has a couple of options to pursue, but it's possible they may actually spend $400k on an equipment refresh.
$200k doesn't really go that far in terms of big infrastructure projects like bikeshed or similar.
I'm looking for someone who would be willing to guide a discussion of the Money issues Martin brought up in his campaign. I don't have time to guide that effor myself. Real thought needs to be put into it; it will be at least as much work as the discussions I'm leading on packaging practices and git if done correctly.
However it could be very valuable for the project.
--Sam
They told us one payment came from the Handshake Foundation.
They gave us a hint that the second payment came from Google but they refuse to say it explicitly. Why?
Subject: Bits from the DPL (December 2018) Date: Mon, 31 Dec 2018 14:36:49 +0000 From: Chris Lamb <lamby@debian.org> To: debian-devel-announce@lists.debian.org
... [snip] ...
* Acted a central contact point connecting the various parties involved in receiving a significant donation to Debian from their Open Source office [14].
Thank you in particular to Cat Allman for making this happen. :)
... [snip] ...
[14] https://opensource.google.com/
... [snip] ...
The OSI President and Google
One of our collaborators in Google Summer of Code (GSoC) was the OSI President, Molly de Blanc.
At the end of 2018, de Blanc traveled to the GSoC Mentor Summit and had discussions (received orders) from Google.
The OSI President appears at FOSDEM in Brussels where she shows a picture of a cat behind bars.
The OSI President appeared again at FrOSCon a few months later where she promoted pushing people.
WIPO payment in 2022
Here is the money sent to WIPO to censor a web site.
Tribunal of Vaud, Switzerland, February 2023
Here is one of the payments made to the cantonal tribunal in the Canton of Vaud, Switzerland, begging the judge to denounce my company the Software Freedom Institute.
Expenses processed by Software in the Public Interest, Inc
These amounts are extracted from the reports on the SPI web site.
| YYYY-MM | Amount ($USD) |
|---|---|
| 2019-02 | 425.00 |
| 2019-10 | 5005.00 |
| 2020-04 | 3803.01 |
| 2020-05 | 125.00 |
| 2020-08 | 1530.00 |
| 2020-09 | 1365.00 |
| 2020-11 | 153.00 |
| 2021-04 | 6976.21 |
| 2021-05 | 633.00 |
| 2021-06 | 9540.61 |
| 2021-07 | 7161.68 |
| 2021-08 | 2129.34 |
| 2021-09 | 2740.05 |
| 2021-10 | 3570.97 |
| 2021-11 | 5112.72 |
| 2022-03 | 21637.68 |
| 2022-04 | 16341.66 |
| 2022-05 | 9345.12 |
| 2022-06 | 9379.87 |
| 2022-07 | 3681.35 |
| 2022-08 | 2467.62 |
| 2022-09 | 1219.44 |
| 2022-12 | 2340.02 |
| 2023-01 | 4159.91 |
The total of these payments for the period January 2019 to January 2023 is $USD 120,843.26
They couldn't find CHF 200 to buy a wreath for Adrian von Bidder in Basel. They couldn't pay the casual workers to wash the dishes at DebConf13 in Vaumarcus. But they found $USD 120,843.26 to pay the lawyers.
Use of more Debian.ch funds
The reports don't show any more transactions after January 2023. Did they use the Debian.ch bank account in Switzerland to make the subsequent payments?
Software in the Public Interest, Inc, charges a 5% handling fee
When Google and other companies pay money into the account, Software in the Public Interest, Inc, charges a 5% handling fee. Therefore, to pay $120,843.26 to the lawyers, Google has to deposit $128,000.
Money is hidden in other non-profit entities
There is a list of these on the Debian Wiki.
Some of these organizations do not seem to publish any financial reports at all.
There is no consolidated report on Debian revenues and expenditures.
Debian harassment and abuse culture
Please see my chronological history of how the Debian harassment and abuse culture evolved. █