How to get selected for Outreachy internships
[Article 3 years old]
Reprinted with permission from disguised.work.
Photos contributed by Aigars Mahinovs and Andis Rado.
We recently documented the series of encounters linking Chris Lamb with an Albanian woman who received travel grants and a $6,000 Outreachy internship from Debian.
Other women may want to apply for the same funds in future. We don't want to cause any embarrassment, we are simply providing more details to help other women decide if they want to take risks with Debian.
The woman began contributing as an OpenStreetMap (OSM) volunteer. She has contributed as a mapper, not as a developer. She was invited to the State of the Map conference to give a talk about community. She has good speaking skills.
She enrolled in undergraduate studies in agriculture. She worked part time in various jobs that do not involve technology.
OSM Belgium runs a monthly Mapper of the Month interview. In 2018 they selected this woman for the interview, she answers a wide range of questions.
It is an unfortunate coincidence, these interviews were run by OSM Belgium and her ex was an OSM mapper from Belgium. He blogged a series of photos from the infamous FOSSCamp where Albanians used funds from free software organizations to travel to the Greek island of Syros. Here they are together:
Free software organisations ask people to write a blog in exchange for travel funds. We know that the men asked Debian to pay for this woman's travel, we don't know if Mr Beliën requested or received funds from OSM or any other organization. Nonetheless, he wrote a blog.
People came to know her at large events like FOSDEM. Despite not writing any code, she was showered with funds from other organizations, including Debian.
A male candidate with this profile would not be selected for Google Summer of Code or Outreachy.
The woman had numerous trips to attend events where Chris Lamb was present. Each trip costs more than the normal monthly salary in Albania. We don't know which organization paid for some of these trips. The woman didn't give any talks at those events and we don't know what criteria were used to justify her funding.
She was one of the Albanian women given an all-expenses-paid trip to Brazil for DebConf19. Other developers were told they could not bring wives or girlfriends because those people never contributed to Debian.
The average salary for a woman of this age in Albania is approximately $350 per month. Her Outreachy stipend, $6,000 for 3 months, could be used to employ six women at the market rate in Albania. If the market rate for 3 months is approximately $1,000 then we could think of the other $5,000 as a bonus, bribe or lottery prize.
phpList has opened an office in Albania. They employed at least four women there and the total of all the salaries is between $2,000 and $3,000 per month. Some of the women are also producing code, we found Github profiles for some of them:
Chris Lamb and his mates at Debian paid more for one woman than phpList paid for four women. We can only wonder why. It is not the woman's fault. The problem is men.
Evidence released by British police suggests that Albanian gangmasters buy and sell women for $5,000 each. Debian tried to rent one for the same amount of money but we doubt they got any action in return for that money.
Interns are expected to write a report every week during their 12 week internship. This woman only wrote five of the twelve reports, they are on her blog:
- 2019-12-13
- 2019-12-20
- 2020-01-10
- 2020-02-14
- 2020-03-24 - Final report
According to her reports, the woman was asked to update the sponsorship brochure and send bulk email to 100 potential sponsors. This doesn't appear to require 12 weeks work and $6,000. This task could have been outsourced to a publicity or fundraising consultant.
Molly de Blanc (cyberbully) had no control over the mentoring programs, she resigned with the comments:
I’m attempting to step down from the Outreach team, which is more work than I thought it would be.
What a massive understatement.
What has happened here is that Debian oligarchs have taken women from developing countries, trafficked them into a tech conference, DebConf and asked them to audition and compete to win $6,000, a huge sum of money in the eyes of a woman from a developing country.
Andis Rado has published photos showing how this woman progressed through the open source ecosystem. We present some of them together with the photos from DebConf19 in Brazil.
We don't publish these photos to vilify this woman. While looking at these pictures, please contemplate what motivated Chris Lamb and other Debian oligarchs to bend all the rules trying to buy this woman and give her so many trips and an internship. Maybe they were simply blinded by her smile.
At the DebConf19 dinner, the Albanian women were all seated at a table in the middle of the room with the former leader, Lamb. They were photographed from every direction and the photos have been widely shared. Debian oligarchs appear to be showing off their power to buy Albanian women ($10,000 for "diversity" in the budget) like they are trophy wives or spoils of war.
OSCAL 2016
OSCAL 2017
Here we see the woman pictured with Elio Qoshi, that is the Ubuntu employee who employed his underage girlfriend using funds from free software organizations:
OSCAL 2018
DebConf19, Brazil
These photos were taken about 8 weeks before the Outreachy selection process. The woman was subsequently selected for a tindernship.
DebConf19, Brazil, Outreachy candidate seated beside Chris Lamb, ex-Debian Project Leader at conference dinner
Wild Orchid
Within the trailer lasting barely two minutes, we encounter ominous references to the central themes of the DebConf19 Outreachy tindernship scandal: a woman, her first internship and first trip, coincidentally, in Brazil. Men with power and money. Public exhibition. Humiliation of a woman. This could be a Debian Outreachy tindernship but it is just a movie. █
Enjoy it. Here is the trailer:
