Debian Pregnancy Cluster, when I stopped using IRC
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock.
In my last blog, I started to explore the phenomena of a Debian pregnancy cluster that occurred in the lead-up to DebConf13 which was held in Switzerland.
Ana, from Spain, was another case. Around the time that Marga started the conspiratorial emails, Ana started contacting me almost every day on IRC. The plotters saw me as the most open-minded person in Switzerland and hoped that I would be able to exert influence on other members of the local team.
If Ana's employer was a client I would have had to bill an hour per day, approximately five hours per week, for the discussions that appeared on IRC and elsewhere. I eventually stopped using IRC:
Subject: Re: not on IRC Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2012 13:18:31 +0100 From: Ana Guerrero <ana@debian.org> To: Daniel Pocock <daniel@pocock.com.au>
On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 09:03:49AM +0000, Daniel Pocock wrote: > > > > Hi Ana, > > I'm on the road for a few more days, so I am not monitoring IRC at all > and only intermittently accessing email > > Can you please email me if there is any urgent question, etc? > > What do you think of Marga's current direction? Do you think other > people may get involved now? >
Don't worry too much and keep a low profile. We have almost gotten they postpone the contract signing tomorrow. that's a first step. I'm serious abotu the low profile thing, they like blaming things on you and if you're not active, they cann't.
A few months later, the email appeared on debian-private confirming that Ana had been part of the Debian pregnancy cluster. The baby arrived just two months before DebConf13. Now we know the real reason women were pushing to change the venue.
As a senior developer, I felt that IRC did not give me a net benefit for the time I was online. Whether it is on IRC, on social control media or on a self-managed social media/forum like Discourse, there is a tendency for everybody to focus their questions on the senior developers and we get swamped.
Subject: A different kind of release Date: Sun, 12 May 2013 18:53:56 +0200 From: Aurelien Jarno <aurel32@debian.org> To: debian-private@lists.debian.org CC: Ana Guerrero <ana@debian.org>
Hi,
We are happy parents of a son called Manuel, born a few days ago. Everybody is fine, and we are trying to get used to our new schedule. Therefore our time to contribute to Debian might vary from day to day.
Ana & Aurelien
[ This message is to be kept private forever ]
-- Aurelien Jarno GPG: 1024D/F1BCDB73 aurelien@aurel32.net http://www.aurel32.net
Privacy & Debian hyprocrisy
The email concludes with a footnote, [ This message is to be kept private forever ]. When my father died, rogue Debianists demonstrated utter contempt for the privacy of my family. Yet they impose upon the rest of us to hide their conflicts of interest and the notorious Debian suicide cluster.
It is important to look at the full email and the pressure on DebConf13 and then take a fresh look at the attacks on José Manuel Santamaría Lema ("santa"). Looking at the attacks on Santa, Ana sent the mail to start the lynching just a few weeks before she went on maternity leave.
Then they chose the name Manuel for their new son.
I feel that other people have paid a price for Ana's insecurities during her first pregnancy, yet the pregnancy was hidden from most people, especially from Santa. When they named their son Manuel, did they realize they were borrowing from the name of the volunteer they lynched?
Subject: Removing a non-DD member of the Qt/KDE team Date: Thu, 28 Mar 2013 10:00:57 +0100 From: Ana Guerrero <ana@debian.org> To: debian-private@lists.debian.org, nm@debian.org, leader@debian.org
[sorry for the duplicated email if you receive it twice]
Hi,
This email is about the decision of the Qt/KDE team [1] of banning José Manuel Santamaria Lema, aka santa, from the team. This means removing him from the pkg-kde alioth group and removing him from all the group maintained packages. After that there are only 4 packages maintained only by him, that are KDE related and you can find plans at [2]. José is also a DM [3], at the moment, he's only allowed to upload a single package that as seen in [2] will go to the hands of the KDE team. The DD who authorized him the rights for uploading this package is revoking them. With this email, we are also asking FD/NM committee to remove him as DM.
First of all, none of us have any doubt of the technical skills of José. However, he has shown he doesn't know how to work inside a team, ... [ snip defamation ] ...
That is from the woman who didn't tell other team members that she was in the final stages of her first pregnancy.
It looks like Ana and other team members couldn't keep up with the pace at which Santa was working. Ana's availability was changing due to her pregnancy and other team members would have had extra effort because of that. Is it fair that other developers are punished at a time like that?
I fully support the right of women to participate in technical hobbies like Debian. Employers have certain obligations to women during pregnancy. Volunteers collaborating remotely over the Internet often have no idea whether a woman is pregnant and even if we did know, it isn't fair that other volunteers have suffered adverse consequences in that period.
Santa's activity completely stopped, so the Qt/KDE team simultaneously lost two people:
Resignations followed
Subject: Resignation Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2013 14:59:27 -0500 From: John Hasler <jhasler@newsguy.com> Reply-To: John Hasler <john@dhh.gt.org> Organization: Dancing Horse Hill To: debian-private@lists.debian.org
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. -- John Hasler jhasler@newsguy.com Elmwood, WI USA
and some people just stepped back for a while:
Subject: [VAC] -> end of April Date: Sat, 20 Apr 2013 12:04:05 +0200 From: intrigeri <intrigeri@debian.org> To: debian-private@lists.debian.org
Hi,
I'll be offline until the end of the month. I'll be planting a garden with vegetable seeds... and more generally trying to take care of myself and avoid burn-out while it's still possible.
Regarding the Wheezy release, I won't be able to do any further work on #704754 ("release-notes: [wheezy] mention AppArmor support") that the release-notes manager will deem required, so what's left to do in this area will have to be done by someone else, if at all.
Other than that, my packages should be in good enough state for Wheezy. In any case, most are team-maintained and I'm on the Low Threshold NMU list.
Cheers, -- intrigeri | GnuPG key @ https://gaffer.ptitcanardnoir.org/intrigeri/intrigeri.asc | OTR fingerprint @ https://gaffer.ptitcanardnoir.org/intrigeri/otr.asc
Does Debian vendetta culture impact other families?
Subject: [VAC] 14/04-??/04 Date: Sat, 13 Apr 2013 10:44:18 +0530 From: Kartik Mistry <kartik@debian.org> To: debian-private@lists.debian.org
Hi,
I need to fix, 1. Shifting my home --> new home. 2. Fix health of my wife. 3. Fix myself to get enough motivation.
#3 is not issue, it pops up time to time. #2 is serious and needs urgent attention and medical advices.
I'm also travelling from tonight till Friday.
So, please feel free to release!
To be kept private forever. Apart from #2, many people outside this list knows about my this plan/travel.
-- Kartik Mistry | IRC: kart_ {0x1f1f, kartikm}.wordpress.com
How do you recognize a cult?
Public Health England and the UN DRR tell us that you only need two suicides to declare a suicide cluster. There is no similar threshold for a pregnancy cluster but people were keeping score. Christian Perrier tells us two couples had babies but there were at least three in 12 months. It looks like he didn't know about Marga because she was being even more secretive about it.
Subject: Re: A different kind of release Date: Mon, 13 May 2013 07:14:14 +0200 From: Christian PERRIER <bubulle@debian.org> To: debian-private@lists.debian.org CC: Aurelien Jarno <aurel32@debian.org>, Ana Guerrero <ana@debian.org>
Quoting Aurelien Jarno (aurel32@debian.org): > Hi, > > We are happy parents of a son called Manuel, born a few days ago. > Everybody is fine, and we are trying to get used to our new schedule. > Therefore our time to contribute to Debian might vary from day to day.
\o/ to one more future DD....:-)
Good luck in your new life schedule, A&A...things might change a bit in the upcoming months..
You guys know I like stupid stats, so you won't be surprised to learn that, so far, and unless I'm missing something, that makes two "2nd generation DD" we're aware about....
Lynching on the day you give birth
Ana's baby announced on the same day debian-private started the lynching of Josselin Mouette.
Subject: nomination and call for supporters for expulsion of Josselin Mouette Date: Sun, 12 May 2013 00:15:29 +0300 From: Eugene V. Lyubimkin <jackyf@debian.org> To: da-manager@debian.org
Hello,
[ Josselin and debian-private@ BCC'ed ]
...
Let's not forget that Adrian von Bidder died on our wedding day and it was discussed like a suicide.. As he died in Switzerland, the coroner's report and the official cause of death was kept hidden.
They tried to tell us Adrian von Bidder's death was a heart attack. They never provided a coroner's report for Ray Dassen either but informally they suggested it is a heart attack too. It was right in the middle of the conflicts about DebConf13, Daniel Baumann, Santa & the Debian pregnancy cluster:
Subject: Ray Dassen passed away Date: Wed, 22 May 2013 13:32:04 +0200 From: Thijs Kinkhorst <thijs@debian.org> To: debian-private@lists.debian.org
Hi all,
This morning I've received the sad news that long-time Debian Developer, Ray Dassen, died last weekend from a heart attack, just 40 years old.
Ray has been a Debian Developer for an incredible 19 years, joining our project in 1994, and continued to be an active contributor just until recently.
They remembered how it was done for Frans Pop (Debian Day suicide)
They went to great lengths to hush up the Debian Day volunteer suicide. Those tactics were recalled when Ray Dassen died.
Subject: Re: Ray Dassen passed away Date: Sat, 25 May 2013 11:04:49 -0700 From: Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> Organization: The Eyrie To: debian-private@lists.debian.org
Dmitry Smirnov <onlyjob@debian.org> writes:
> By the way why is this information only in -private? > I mean when I die please let everybody know so they won't waste their > time trying to reach me...
Usually the initial coordination of our reaction to an announcement of this sort is done in private just in case there are privacy concerns from the family, anything we have to coordinate about how they want to handle notification, etc. That way, we can be careful about how we phrase our first public notice, which has been important for a few instances in the past.
-- Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
Not only women get baby brain
OPW is the Outreach Program for Women, now known as Outreachy. A lot of money is spent on recruiting women to the program. No reports have ever been presented about the economic benefit of those expenditures.
Subject: Re: OPW Student in Kingston, Jamaica Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2013 18:37:36 +0000 From: Joachim Breitner <nomeata@debian.org> To: debian-private@lists.debian.org
Hi,
Am Montag, den 25.11.2013, 13:18 -0500 schrieb Paul Tagliamonte: > She's got a PhD, so I think this could also be a good beersigning, if > she drinks.
not having a PhD yet I wonder what expects me: Will I be a better drinker after I get the degree? Or a better keysigner? /me is confused.
Greetings, Joachim
-- Joachim "nomeata" Breitner Debian Developer nomeata@debian.org | ICQ# 74513189 | GPG-Keyid: 4743206C JID: nomeata@joachim-breitner.de | http://people.debian.org/~nomeata
Debian Account Manager bootstrapped the pregnancy cluster
It looks like Marga and Ana got pregnant immediately after Joerg Jaspert (Ganneff) and Pei-Hua Tseng had their baby.
"I first met my wife at the “International Conference on OpenSource” 2009 in Taiwan. So OpenSource, Debian and me being some tiny wheel in the system wasn’t entirely news to her."
That appears to coincide with a trip to the MiniDebConf Taiwan 2009.
Subject: Little Ganneff says: You are all REJECTED Date: Thu, 03 May 2012 16:38:19 +0200 From: Joerg Jaspert <joerg@debian.org> Organization: Goliath-BBS To: debian-private@lists.debian.org
Hi
litte Ganneff, born 2. May, listening to "[redacted]" (sometimes, I hope), while presenting his mother with the finest set of "You don't want to have this type of labour"-36hours labour, completly ignoring that a day earlier his mother would have been in labour during labour day, showing that he has no sense of humor, just told me, backed with the full weight of his 3780 grams and the fearful height of 54cm, that I should use that magic *m* key[fn:1] and reject all of your approaches to my time, and as such going into a kind of Vacation over the next few days to weeks, though he left an option that it will be forever, forbidding me to talk about the evil grin he had while issuing this order (and yo, I haven't talked about it, so all is fine).
He also turned on a special-for-you-english-natives mode to let me write extra long and slightly complicated sentences.
But to show his evil overlord graciousness, he allowed me to show you http://kosh.ganneff.de/~joerg/paste/2012-05-03-Hd8a1JVfC84/[redacted].png (mind, this is -private).
Footnotes:
[fn:1] In daks process-new it means "Manual reject"
-- bye, Joerg [-private note: All my parts in this post (or citation of them in another) are forbidden to be made public later.]
Will little Ganneff become a Debian Developer?
When he is old enough, he will have access to the full archives. Some of them have already been leaked anyway.
When DebConf went back to the Balkans in Kosovo, why did local women avoid it?
Subject: Re: Little Ganneff says: You are all REJECTED Date: Sat, 5 May 2012 12:07:12 +0200 From: Christian PERRIER <bubulle@debian.org> To: debian-private@lists.debian.org
Quoting martin f krafft (madduck@debian.org): > also sprach Gerfried Fuchs <rhonda@deb.at> [2012.05.04.1936 +0200]: > > > It's called "spring" ;) > > > > I fear you are misguided. It's called "start of summer break", if you > > manage to calculate properly. :P > > "DebConf"
We need to amend the Debconf11 report: "Little Ganneff: yet another achievement made in Banja Luka"
/me runs far away
Please see the chronological history of how the Debian harassment and abuse culture evolved. █