Karen Sandler, Outreachy & Debian Money in Albania

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Apr 26, 2024

[Article 3 years old]

Reprinted with permission from disguised.work.

Photos contributed by Aigars Mahinovs.

We found the six Albanian/Kosovan women who received GSoC & Outreachy money, tickets to DebConf and many other events following the former leader around Europe.

These are snapshots of their Github activity for the last 12 months. We decided not to write their names.

We don't want to vilify these women. We want to ask who decided to spend over $30,000 on them without any plan?

Outreachy

Google Summer of Code (GSoC)

Chris Lamb made it happen

Subject: Re: [TREASURER #2025] [sfconservancy.org #310] [Outreachy] Invoice for Software in the Public Interest, Inc - May 2018 to August 2018 round
Date: Sat, 12 May 2018 11:17:16 +0100
From: Chris Lamb <lamby@debian.org>
To: Martin Michlmayr via RT <treasurer@rt.spi-inc.org>, accounts-receivable@tix.sfconservancy.org
CC: deblanc@riseup.net, leader@debian.org, organizers@outreachy.org, outreach@debian.org

Martin,

> > > Thank you for Debian's continued sponsorship of Outreachy. Please find an
> > > invoice for this round's sponsorship attached. Payment options are listed on
> > > the second page. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact
> > > us.
> >
> > Debian Outreach folks, please confirm this was approved by the DPL.
>
> lamby, can you please confirm that 1 Outreachy student (May-August) at
> $6500 is approved by you. I can't find an approval anywhere.

Not to complicate things any further (and I may be under-caffeinated at this point in the morning) but I remember being convinced by Karen at DC17 that Debian should sponsor two students, not one...

(ie. I think I'm missing something, so I'm not going to jump into an approval...)

Best wishes,

--
,''`.
: :' : Chris Lamb
`. `'` lamby@debian.org / chris-lamb.co.uk

The comments that Sage Sharp sent to Chris Lamb in November 2017:

From: Sage Sharp
Date: November 2017

[... snip ...] While you may not have intended it this way, this sounds like favoritism, ...

[... snip ...] Again, this sounds a bit like favoritism of a person who is already active in open source.

[... snip ...] Again, this may be how your experience with GSoC works, but the goal of Outreachy is to try and get people who aren't currently open source contributors (or who are not as active contributors) to be accepted as Outreachy interns. That's why we have the rule that past GSoC or Outreachy applicants are ineligible to apply.

The woman never saw this email from Sharp. Lamb did see it. Why did he continue to lead this woman on for 2 years and eventually grant her an Outreachy internship? Some men like to have this power over women. █