The Establishment, Cambridge, Steve McIntyre & Debian suicide cluster
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock.
14:30 Wed, 05 Aug 2026
In most communities, if a participant runs for public office, other participants have a discussion about how to support them.
In the cult of Debianism, we see the polar opposite. The overlords develop a rash and they try to tear down anybody who speaks in public as an independent adult. Members of a cult are expected to behave like wives or children and remain silent until given permission to speak.
The Debian Social Contract tells us, in Article 3, "we will not hide problems". Most people understand this is a contractual promise. A promise of free speech.
In the Clacton by-election, the guy who resigned has told us the community should be suspicious of the Establishment. Who is the Establishment? To answer that, let's look at some people from Cambridge medling in elections.
Steve McIntyre served as deputy director of Debianism from April 2006 to April 2007, a period that included the notorious DebConf6 fight. From April 2008 to April 2010, Steve McIntyre was the director of Debianism. This was the period when Richard Rothwell committed suicide and immediately before the Debian Day suicide of Frans Pop. The next death after that was Adrian von Bidder-Senn on our wedding day.
Despite the empty promises of the Debian Social Contract, it looks like something about the suicides is being hidden. Messages have been censored from the Debian-UK mailing list:
Each summer, McIntyre invites the UK free software community to a BBQ in Cambridge. This year, two days after I announced my nomination for the Clacton by-election, we were told the BBQ will not happen:
Subject: [Debian-uk] There is **NOT** a Debian UK BBQ this August in Cambridge Date: Sat, 18 Jul 2026 19:03:21 +0100 From: Steve McIntyre <steve@einval.com> To: debian-uk@chiark.greenend.org.uk CC: debian-events-eu@lists.debian.org
Hey folks!
As Jo and I are in the middle of moving house, we will **not** be hosting a BBQ this year.
I'd not announced that there would be, but I've just been asked about it by people at DebConf who were assuming that we might be! :-)
We *may* host something similar at our new place in future, but definitely *not* in 2026. FTAOD.
Cheers,
Steve
-- Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK. steve@einval.com You raise the blade, you make the change... You re-arrange me 'til I'm sane...
_______________________________________________ Debian-uk maillist - Debian-uk@chiark.greenend.org.uk https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/debian-uk
There have been a series of money scandals over the years, including the notorious Debian UK society and the Freexian cabal. In the case of Richard Rothwell we know that pressure on money and time was a factor in his decision to suicide. In the case of the Debian Day suicide of Frans Pop, we can see the opposite: he was recruited and tricked to work for free on the premise that this is a hobby or a philosophical mission. Did he come to realize that some so-called volunteers were really getting paid and was that a factor in his decision to die the night before Debian Day?
In fact, after Frans Pop died, his parents received instructions to contact Steve McIntyre directly. Why? What power did McIntyre have over Frans Pop, even months after McIntyre had finished his formal term as director of Debianism? Was it something to do with McIntyre's presence in Cambridge?
This isn't the only scandal to come out of Cambridge. Remember the case of Chris Rutter doing unpaid work when he arrived in Cambridge. Was overworking a factor in his unexplained accidental death?
Then there was the high profile prosecution of Dr Matthew Falder. Dr Falder had used secret cameras to record fellow Cambridge students and he used blackmail and extortion tactics, similar to the so-called "Community team", to manipulate people for his own sadistic pleasure.
In 2017 and 2018, we saw the leader of Debianism, then Chris Lamb, boast about being invited to speak in the Cambridge lab at the same time he was promoting and protecting paedophiles like Jeremy Bicha (full report) and Elio Qoshi (Albania). From Lamb's report:
I was recently invited to give a seminar at the Cambridge University's Department of Computer Science and Technology on the topic of Reproducible Builds. Whilst it was an honour to have been asked, it also afforded an opportunity to drink coffee from the so-called "Trojan Room" which previously housed the fabled Computer Laboratory coffee pot ...
For those unaware of the background, to save hackers in the building from finding the coffee machine empty, a camera was setup on the local network in 1991 using an Acorn Archimedes to capture a live 128×128 image of the pot, thus becoming the world's first webcam.
How ironic the world's first alleged webcam was created so close to where Dr Matthew Falder began his webcam-enabled reign of terror.
If the behaviour and conduct of these people is not linked to the Debian suicide cluster, why have they been so ferocious in their efforts to stop discussion about the themes I raised in the Clacton by-election? █