Richard Stallman lynchings: Sruthi Chandran splitting Debian
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock.
22:00 Thu, 26 Mar 2026
In 2021, Molly de Blanc called for a public lynching of her old boss Dr Richard Stallman (RMS).
Debianists decided to have a vote (General Resolution / GR) on whether the Debian name could be used in the lynching.
The way each developer voted is publicly visible.
We can look back at the way Sruthi Chandran voted and we can see she is one of the villains who wanted the toxic culture of publicly denouncing people.
Sruthi Chandran has failed to identify her conflicts of interest, notably her husband, in her campaign to be Debian Project Leader We can look at how Pirate Praveen voted and we can see he also wanted to have the toxic culture of publicly humiliating people.
When Sruthi Chandran became a Debian Developer, she received advocacies from three people. One of those was her husband, Pirate Praveen, who failed to declare the conflict of interest. The other two are Abhijith PA and Balasankar Chelamattathu. Of the three advocates, two of them voted for publicly humiliating Dr Richard Stallman.
Tally Sheet for the votes cast. The format is: "V: vote Login Name" The vote block represents the ranking given to each of the candidates by the voter. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Option 1--------->: Call for the FSF board removal, as in rms-open-letter.github.io / Option 2-------->: Call for Stallman's resignation from all FSF bodies |/ Option 3------->: Discourage collaboration with the FSF while Stallman is in a leading position ||/ Option 4------>: Call on the FSF to further its governance processes |||/ Option 5----->: Support Stallman's reinstatement, as in rms-support-letter.github.io ||||/ Option 6---->: Denounce the witch-hunt against RMS and the FSF |||||/ Option 7--->: Debian will not issue a public statement on this issue ||||||/ Option 8-->: Further Discussion |||||||/ V: 75418236 abhijith Abhijith PA V: 2123---- balasankarc Balasankar Chelamattathu V: 1234---- praveen Praveen Arimbrathodiyil V: 21338885 srud Sruthi Chandran
Notice how Sruthi Chandran repeated the number 8 three times. This is not a valid vote and it suggests Sruthi Chandran doesn't fully understand the voting system.
If Sruthi Chandran were to be elected leader, would she recruit more people to work on real development or would she recruit more people like her, people who want to humiliate developers?
Remember the way GNOME employees used a generic username to hide their identities when they denounced Sonny Piers.
The vote on lynching Dr Richard Stallman (RMS) already divided Debianism once. GNOME never gave their developers an opportunity to discuss or vote before making a public humiliation of Sonny Piers.
Sruthi Chandran, the wife of a male developer who hides conflicts of interest submitted her nomination on Friday the 13th.
The voting period ends on 17 April, the 15th anniversary of Adrian von Bidder's death, which had been discussed like a copy-cat suicide. He died on our wedding day.
Adrian's wife became the mayor of Basel, which seems to be a factor in the extraordinary amount of money, over $120,000, spent attacking my family and I.
The best way to encourage people to nominate for the election will be for the existing leader, Andreas Tille, to withdraw all the privacy attacks, settle the lawsuits proactively and ensure the next leader can walk in and find the desk is clean ready to work on productive things.
Don't hold your breath waiting for transparency about these attacks on my family. There is still time to watch my video and contribute to the crowdfunding campaign. █