Bonum Certa Men Certa

Whistleblowers from Open Labs Hackerspace, Albania in GNOME, Wikimedia, OpenStreetMap & Debian

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Jul 04, 2024

In some of my previous blogs, I've published the emails from the women who asked for support with harassment and abuse in Albania.

I was invited to go and spend weekend time as a speaker at the OSCAL conference. The request to support harassment victims was not something that was anticipated.

In April 2024, I published the internal email exchanges with Larissa Shapiro and Emma Irwin at Mozilla. In any serious organization these matters would have remained private but Debian has forced them into the open by spreading false rumors and even creating a falsified legal "judgment" purportedly from a Swiss judge. We can see the so called "judgment" is not plausible by checking the trademark registry as I explained last week.

The photos published below prove beyond any doubt that these women came to me for assistance and the problem lies entirely with the men who control the money.

The emails published in that blog post reveal that two of the whistleblowers were Kristi Progri and Anisa Kuci.

At the time I published those emails in April 2024, Kristi's profile on the GNOME web site told us that her job title was Program Manager (snapshot from April 2024). After her identity was revealed in the exposure of the people trafficking at Open Labs, GNOME foundation has changed her job title to Director of Program Management (snapshot from 1 June 2024).

At the same time, GNOME foundation's profile removed all references to the Open Labs hackerspace from the employee profile. That isn't a coincidence.

The former web sites and forums of Open Labs hacker space have been aggressively taken down.

This incident tells us a lot about what is wrong with running your community on the Discourse software. When people use Discourse through the web site, they don't get any local copies of the messages unless they explicitly opt-in to the email mode. Many of the members are now left without copies of evidence.

Usually when an open source project shuts down they find a way to keep a static copy of the web site running somewhere else. In the case of Albania, they are deleting evidence.

The Discourse web sites don't work well through the archive copies at the Wayback Machine.

The Albanians have used a Facebook post to tell us that Open Labs has closed down. They posted the message as a series of screenshots so the text can't be cut and pasted or indexed by search engines. The board members don't include their names in anything, despite having a manifesto boasting about transparency.

Open Labs, Albania, Tirana, Hackerspace

Open Labs, Albania, Tirana, Hackerspace

Open Labs, Albania, Tirana, Hackerspace

Why on earth did Chris Lamb & Debian people spend the last six years trying to protect these practices after Larissa Shapiro at Mozilla told us clearly that "kids are at risk"?

Women didn't receive compensation

The abuse in the Australian parliament allegedly took place in March 2019. She reported it to her employer very promptly.

Her male colleague was given a reference letter and went to work for a new employer in the tobacco industry. In the Albanian case, the man concerned resigned from his role as a Fedora ambassador and a short time later reappeared as an Ubuntu employee.

The Australian woman who made the complaint was moved from the office in Canberra to an office in Perth. She continued to be an employee of the parliament although she now had a different boss and her new workplace was 4,000km away from Canberra.

Kristi was given a trip to DebConf18 in Taiwan. People distributed a photograph where Lior Kaplan has his arm around her. A few months later she was given the job at GNOME. At the time GNOME was being run by Neil McGovern. McGovern was closely associated with the Debian Project Leader Chris Lamb and all the rest of the dirty politics.

The other whistleblower from 2017, Anisa Kuci, is the same woman who was subsequently pictured on a series of trips with Chris Lamb. Anisa Kuci and Kristi Progri are the same women seated next to Chris Lamb in the photos from the DebConf19 dinner in Brazil. Two months after that dinner and Anisa Kuci was selected for Outreachy. Anisa was subsequently relocated from Albania to Italy with a job at Wikimedia Italia, giving her a residence permit for the European Union via Italy.

All of this good luck came their way, to the exclusion of other candidates, after they made harassment complaints about men who controlled the flow of donations from Silicon Valley to their local hackerspace.

In the case from the Australian parliament, the woman subsequently decided that she wasn't happy being moved from place to place and she told the real story publicly in 2021. A new government was elected and they gave the woman a compensation payment of $3 million. That is a lot better than relocating her to do the same job in a different city.

Do any of the women who experienced harassment and abuse in the Open Labs Hackerspace have an equally valid claim for financial compensation?

Which organizations sponsored the hackerspace and why did they cover this up?

They told us that the Outreachy program was intended to promote diversity. What we see here is that an Outreachy internship was awarded to a whistleblower and it helped buy her silence. The sponsors may have avoided paying out millions in compensation to other victims, including the underage participants. That is the very opposite of promoting diversity.

The origins of the harassment complaint

2017: the FSFE fellowship elected me as their representative on April 24, the anniversary of the Easter Rising. Women began making reports to me about abuse in non-profit organizations receiving funds for the promotion of women in technology.

Here is the internal complaint about the harassment. The date is 12 October 2017 so the misfits publishing alternative statements about harassment are lying. I have redacted the section that identifies underage victims.

The next internal email from Larissa Shapiro at Mozilla admits that kids are at risk.

Emma Irwin from Mozilla admits this is a serious matter and asks me to speak to Marta, Mozilla's HR investigator.

2018: one of the women writes an email thanking me for my support to victims of harassment and abuse.

Whistleblower summit in Switzerland. Chris Lamb & Debian consumed by jealousy

The Albanian whistleblowers made a number of visits to Switzerland.

Chris Lamb was Debian Project Leader. The title really got to his head. He couldn't understand why the women spoke to another volunteer about their concerns rather than sending statements directly to him in formal emails at leader@debian.org

People have speculated that he was dating one of these women but that isn't completely clear. Rogue members of Debian may be spending all this time and money denouncing me to cover up their relationships with the women. Or maybe they are wasting all those resources because they don't want any other woman to do what these women did, to come and tell me about the real impact of "diversity" funds as a catalyst for exploitation in developing countries.

Anisa Kuci, motorbike

Anisa Kuci

Anisa Kuci

Anisa Kuci

Anisa Kuci

Anisa Kuci

Anisa Kuci, Kristi Progri

Anisa Kuci, Daniel Pocock, Kristi Progri

Anisa Kuci, Kristi Progri

Anisa Kuci, Kristi Progri

Anisa Kuci, Kristi Progri

Anisa Kuci, Kristi Progri

Anisa Kuci, Kristi Progri

Anisa Kuci, Kristi Progri

Anisa Kuci, Kristi Progri

Anisa Kuci, Kristi Progri

Anisa Kuci, Kristi Progri

Anisa Kuci, Kristi Progri

Anisa Kuci, Kristi Progri

Anisa Kuci, motorbike

After all they told me, exactly the same two women are taken to DebConf19 in Brazil and seated right beside the former Debian Project Leader Chris Lamb. Coincidence? Conspiracy? Or just jealousy?

Anisa Kuci, Kristi Progri, Chris Lamb, Holger Levson

Please see the chronological history of how the Debian harassment and abuse culture evolved.

Other Recent Techrights' Posts

What's Very Vexing to GAFAM, EPO and Others Is That It's Incredibly Hard to Censor Us (and Nobody Ever Successfully Did That Before)
resist, do not capitulate
Receiving SLAPPs and Collecting Them Like Trophies (the SLAPPs Always Fail)
People who file lawsuits bring even more attention to themselves (or to embarrassing statements about them)
Year of GNU/Linux on the Laptop?
It's not happening only in Lenovo
What People Must Understand About the Open Source Initiative (OSI)
some facts about the Open Source Initiative (OSI)
More Copyright Lawsuits Against LLM Slop Providers and Suppliers of LLM Slopfarms Would Benefit Society
It's not just bad for the Web and for society; it's also legally dangerous
In defence of JD Vance, death of Pope Francis
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Three Years in Prison for Disney Employee’s ‘Menu Hacking’: The Economic Fallout of Digital Menus
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
 
Microsoft Isn't on the Map in USSR
To them, it's either Google or Yandex
In Central America Windows Became a Small Force
These are countries where Windows used to have well over 95% of the "market"
Site May be Even Faster Now
It basically takes less than a tenth of a second to serve the page
Many of the Scandals Are Interconnected (Overlapping People and Corporations)
We're only getting started
Links 26/04/2025: General Assassinated in the Town of Balashikha, US Promoting Seafloor Mining
Links for the day
Links 26/04/2025: Facebook Layoffs Again, Remembering What's Real, and Say No to Mass Surveillance
Links for the day
Links 26/04/2025: NOAA Budget Cuts and "Dog Days Ahead"
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, April 25, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, April 25, 2025
Links 25/04/2025: Slop Fatigue and Patent Judges Flocking to Fake, Unconstitutional and Illegal Kangaroo Court (UPC, Captured 'Justice')
Links for the day
Gemini Links 25/04/2025: Night Manager and Devuan in Hosting
Links for the day
Approaching 10,000 Articles/Pages Since Going Static
Trying to silence or derail the site was always a dumb strategy
Windows Falls to New Lows in Nicaragua, Now Below a Quarter (It Used to be Almost 100%)
Another all-time low for Windows
Microsoft is Shedding Off Loads of Staff and That Can be Dangerous Too
Working for Microsoft is a choice; nobody forces you to do it
Richard Stallman and the Unix Philosophy
When asked about systemd people must remember that RMS speaks as an active Board member of the FSF and also the founder of the FSF
The Cost (to Linux) of LLM Slop
Slop 'artists' like Fagioli are far from harmless
Links 25/04/2025: Ubisoft Spyware, Hegseth Fails at Tech on Every Level
Links for the day
Gemini Links 25/04/2025: Food Forest Update and Facebook Destroying the Net
Links for the day
Get Rid of Back Doors, Don't Obsess Over Bounties and Other Corporate PR Stunts (or Needless Reboot Rituals)
Security as a term has mostly lost its meaning due to repeated misuse for many years
Serial Sloppers Are Killing the Web (They Probably Don't Care, Either)
Slop is a disease on the Web
Streaming Apps Are “Investor Fraud” That Kills the Planet
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Things Get Increasingly Nasty at Microsoft Ahead of the Fake Results and May's Mass Layoffs Wave
They try to get people to 'resign' so that they won't count as layoffs and the company's 'wellbeing' will seem better
IBM's Debt Ballooned by 8.5 Billion Dollars in Just 3 Months!
Hallmark of a company in a state of disarray, trying to spend its way out of trouble
Big Trouble in GNOME
even GNOME people admit the CoC went wrong
Slopping the Trough: Disney Plus Loses Billions and the Decline of Physical Media in America
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, April 24, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, April 24, 2025
Links 24/04/2025: GAFAM Problems and No Peace (or Ceasefire) in Sight
Links for the day
Slopfarms on the Web Almost Always Generate Anti-Linux FUD When They Produce "Linux" Output
Welcome to the dying Web
Richard Stallman's Oxford Talk Has Just Ended, Here Are Some Photos
he might hop over to another European country
Gemini Links 24/04/2025: Birthday and Good Work of Academia in Esotericism
Links for the day
Links 24/04/2025: EU fines Apple and Facebook, Another Microsoft GitHub Security Blunder
Links for the day
New Article Explains How the GPL Came About and WordPress Having Copyleft Obligations
Having been involved in the WordPress development community since almost the beginning, I know why it chose the GPL and how it restricts abuse by Automattic
IBM Gained Almost 6 Billion Dollars in "Goodwill" Value in Just 3 Months, According to IBM
Congrats to the management!
In Belarus, Yandex is Now Measured as 50 Times More 'Popular' (by Usage) Than Microsoft
Yandex continues to gain, whereas Bing cannot even register at 1%. Last month it was registered or measured at a measly 0.65%.
IBM Cannot Lie to Shareholders Anymore
"I would not be surprised if we see a layoff every quarter this year."
Dr Richard Stallman (RMS) Gives Talk in Oxford University in 4 Hours
If you live nearby, go there (it's free as in gratis)
Using a Law Firm's Licence to Exercise Politics Through Frivolous SLAPPs and Nastygrams (to Silence People, Remove Pages, Demand Fake or Forced 'Apologies')
Things must be getting really bad when lawyers act for raving antisemites
We're Working to Make Full-Site Search Available
This site has over 1,000 'wiki' pages, many thousands of documents, several thousands of videos, and about 50,000 blog posts or articles. We need to make them easier to find/navigate.
Links 24/04/2025: IBM Loses Many Contracts, Intel to Lay Off Over 20% (Not Counting Those Who Leave 'Voluntarily')
Links for the day
Richard Stallman Can Explain to Oxford Artificial Intelligence Society Why LLM Slop is Not Artificial Intelligence and Why It Hurts Society
another 'crop' of LLM slop that damages GNU/Linux and facts
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, April 23, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, April 23, 2025