Free Software Community/Volunteers Aren't Circus Animals of GAFAM, IBM, Canonical and So On...
Playing with people's lives for capital gain or "entertainment" isn't acceptable; that's why many countries banned every element of circus animals
THE exploitative nature that's deeply inherent these days, more so within Microsoft's GitHub, was explained here in a series by Andy Farnell a few years ago. They want people to work for free and, if or once they complain, they will be banished using some baseless or irrelevant pretext, typically citing a Code of Censorship (CoC). There's a really good logic or legitimate reasons for doubting the merits of a Code of Censorship; it is based not on any laws, it's not grounded in ethics, and it is governed by large corporations, not lawmakers or judges. That's like giving a banhammer to Vladimir Putin, even with international scope (we've already seen a CoC enforcement in one project gets extended onto others).
"Apropos kangaroo court," an associate has noted. "The Southeast Linuxfest interview from some years ago went into detail about a lawyer's critique of a group having the arrogance to try to develop a parallel society or legal system."
Misuses of some CoC or lynch mobs online aren't about justice but Ritual Defamation - and I too was once subjected to this. They try to silence or eliminate people based on false accusations and innuendo disguised as real substance.
In the case of Debian, we've already seen people expelled for no good reason/s. Sometimes the victims get expelled, not the abusers who assert Mexican women are prostitutes and then float libellous rumours about dentists from Mexico.
There's a problem in Debian when girlfriends of developers get baselessly promoted (basically promotion for sex) and are then publicly blasting people who don't run afoul of any actual laws, typically for things like politics or ideology, demanding a destruction of their lives and careers.
There's a severe issue when people blast a person for talking about a Debian suicide instead of demanding accountability for those who caused the suicide. The story below shows that a friend of a suicide victim, Wouter Verhelst, was subjected to "expulsion" - either intentional or by accident (or maybe decision to step away, followed by a reversal and tale about keys).
The screenshots at the bottom help affirm the theory. █
Reprinted with permission from disguised.work (article 2 years old) with an update indicating a cover-up and supposed excuse:
Wouter Verhelst & Debian: another expulsion for vigilantism?
21 Aug 2022 Update: People clicking the link are now seeing a Page not found error. We attach screenshots below to show what was there on 21 August when the blog was published. It appears that Debian may have simply expelled Wouter by mistake and now they are trying to cover it up.
Wouter Verhelst is the latest Debian Developer to be removed from the Debian keyring.
Nobody has publicly stated whether this was a resignation or an expulsion. Sometimes there is little difference. Sometimes people are blackmailed to resign.
Wouter was responsible for acts of vigilantism against another volunteer at FOSDEM 2022. Wouter's behavior and anger problems have contributed to the ongoing disclosures that multiple people have made from debian-private (leaked) gossip network.
Wouter effectively used the resources and infrastructure of FOSDEM VZW, a Belgian non-profit, to continue a vendetta from the FSFE e.V., a German non-profit.
In particular, Wouter has been removed from Debian shortly after the disclosures about the Debian Day suicide of Frans Pop. Pop was from Netherlands, Wouter is from Belgium, an adjacent country. Many developers who know Pop personally are frustrated that the vendettas have reached this level.
We found this little gem in debian-private
Subject: Re: debian-private archives Date: Mon, 20 Aug 2001 09:13:14 +0200 (CEST) From: Wouter Verhelst <wouter@debian.org> To: debian-private@lists.debian.org CC: Debian Private-mailinglist <debian-private@lists.debian.org>
On Sun, 19 Aug 2001, Aaron Lehmann wrote:
> And I found the key by grepping through that archive today. IIRC it > was redhatsucks but they rearranged the letters.
Yup, that should now be "rashduckset".
-- wouter dot verhelst at advalvas dot be
"Human knowledge belongs to the world" -- from the movie "Antitrust"
It looks like his departure from Debian was very sudden because his name is still associated with all his packages. One of his packages is sreview, it is used for post-conference video review at events like FOSDEM. Will another volunteer take over this package? We are waiting for the Statement on Wouter Verhelst
