GNOME "governance issues, staff reduction, etc." amidst Albanian whistleblowing and women trafficking
Last year: High Adoption Rates for GNU/Linux in Albania, According to statCounter | Revisiting Albania and Neighbouring Countries Where Windows Took the Plunge
When it comes to Albania, Daniel Pocock has many stories to tell about the country, having visited it and seen things that should not have happened, as he explained before, e.g.:
- Holly Million, GNOME Foundation departure after Albanian whistleblower revelations
- Karen Sandler, Outreachy & Debian Money in Albania
- GNOME GUADEC 2022 & Debian Albanian women trafficked to Mexico?
There are also recordings related to that.
Notice the connection to Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) and GNOME. One of its directors has just said: "Though there are reasons to sometimes not discuss things in public, most of my work for the last year can indeed be discussed in public. [...] Overall, I am a bit disappointed with myself, as I would have expected to keep doing a lot of the things I did at the beginning for the whole of my term. At the same time, considering the complete year, I think my overall level of work and engagement was probably on average compared to the rest of the Board. In general, the whole experience was considerably draining, specially emotionally, as we were going through uncommon circumstances, e.g: governance issues, staff reduction, etc."
Sort of like in Sandler's SFC.
While it is still true (this month [1, 2]) that GNU/Linux is growing and Microsoft is rapidly shrinking in Albania, the shenanigans that happened there remain a stain on some projects. It also contributed to resignations and shutdowns. This is also the cost of tolerating bad people in some projects and even promoting them. █