How does unpaid Debian work impact our families?
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock.
We can see that a WIPO panel was deceived about the origins of references to branding in the nether regions. This controversy, which was mentioned in the panel's finding against another domain, is rooted in the manner in which the misfits created rogue commits in source code repositories on the anniversary of our wedding.
There is a site DebianCommunity.org that explores the way this situation evolved step-by-step. I didn't make this up and I'm not responsible for it. It was imposed on my family by the culture of bullying. Other volunteers have noted similar phenomena with the pack attacking them on their birthdays, Christmas and Easter among others.
Specifically, we completed a civil wedding on 23 September 2010 and then we completed the religious ceremony a few months later on 17 April 2011.
Here is the civil wedding certificate:
Here we can see the rogue commit in the Debian keyring repository, on the date of the civil wedding, overlaid with the photo of genital branding from NXIVM.
Given the way this extreme harassment simultaneously intrudes on both my professional life and my family life, I find these images even more horrific than they were for the WIPO panel. Nonetheless, the images of genital branding are as relevant as they are horrific when you consider the deliberate way these misfits impose on our lives and our reputations.
Here is the date of the religious ceremony on my wedding ring, alongside the tombstone of Adrian von Bidder, secretary of Debian.ch who died in what appears to be a possible suicide on exactly the same day, 17 April 2011:
What an incredibly toxic culture the Debian misfits are trying to hide with the $120,000 spent on legal fees.
The misfits have made multiple intrusions in the lives of volunteers. While the scars are not identical, the mentality behind those scars is much the same. In both Debian and NXIVM, some of the people feel they have a sense of entitlement to impose upon all aspects of our lives and our future, whether it is through branding, through gossip or through demanding that WIPO denounces individual volunteers.
Here is one of the resignations from debian-private:
From Jérôme Marant:
I must confess the load flamewars over the past months, along with the growing practice of public humiliation, personal attacks and hate campaigns made my last bits of motivation disappear entirely. Debian is no longer fun to me and I’m not interested in doing volunteer work in such a context one usually wouldn’t be able to avoid in real life.
and from Glenn McGrath:
Due to mostly social and some technical aspects of debian i have lost my motivation to contribute directly to debian.
Quoting John Hasler:
I’ve resigned. Your resignation procedure says I must announce that fact to this list. I’ve sent the requisite message to keyring@rt.debian.org and orphaned my packages. Please notify me if there is anything I’ve missed. Otherwise please do not respond.
December 2013: Meike Reichle resigns
Reichle explains she met her husband through Debian. Sadly, this is part of a pattern.
August 2014: Wesley J. Landaker resigns from Debian
From debian-private: █
Anyway, times, beliefs, and policies have changed, and the easiest path for me right now is just to retire rather than waste precious time fighting for special exemptions or being forcefully kicked out. I always thought I’d be a Debian Developer until the day I died, but I’d rather retire than be run out of town. ;)