Bonum Certa Men Certa

How Was Linux Australia Coerced to Change Stance on Jacob Appelbaum?

Reprinted with permission from the Free Software Fellowship

We've recently read that Debian Developer Russell Coker spread the vendetta against Jacob Appelbaum from Debian to Linux Australia. It is a vendetta that has spread through the entire free software community in a manner not unlike coronavirus.



Shortly after that, on 22 June 2016, Linux Australia publicly stated they would wait for the matter to become clearer before deciding if any response was necessary.



Eight days later, on 1 July 2016, Linux Australia published a long email publicly denouncing Jacob Appelbaum. They reached the decision to do that in just eight days, but four years later, the situation hasn't actually changed: not one person ever filed a police complaint against Appelbaum.



blackmail

What forces influenced Linux Australia to set their principles aside and publish the defamation?



Fellowship has a lot of experience of these things and we want to put them in the open.



But we don't know for sure. If you have tips, please share them on the Fellowship discussion list.



Blackmailing individual Linux Australia board members



We've already read how Debian does blackmail in quite some detail. The case of Dr Preining was quite extreme but many people in the free software world feel they have a 007-style license-to-blackmail.



Individual board members may have been told they would be denied speaking opportunities or travel grants for events in other countries. They may have been told they would not get technical help in some of the communities that are particularly obsessed with codes of conduct.



Blackmailing at the organization level



Some sponsors may have threatened to withdraw from sponsoring LCA, the largest Free Software event in Australia.



Some individual speakers may have threatened to boycott the event. This is not such a big problem as there are many good tech speakers who can replace them.



Corporate infiltration



Many large free software organizations have been infiltrated by companies like Google. This means there are Google employees who are members and sometimes board members in non-profit organizations like Linux Australia. If one of these companies decided that Jacob Appelbaum is bad for business, their employees would have been ordered to make the kill.



Corporate infiltrators rarely reveal when they are acting on company orders like this. Remember the Google motto: don't get caught doing evil.



Bewitching



We don't like the expression toxic woman. It is sexist and degrading. Nonetheless, Debian Community News has suggested that Erinn Clark may have bewitched the Debian Account Managers in the same way that a woman from Greece bewitched Australian police to prosecute a minister in the Victorian state government, Theo Theophanous.



In particular, Clark wrote multiple emails begging for public shaming. It appears this goal was achieved both in Debian and Linux Australia. Both organizations could have simply made a private communication to suspend Appelbaum's participation pending an investigation but they succumbed to lobbying from people like Clark and made the most damaging public attacks on Appelbaum.



If bewitching does exist, it may represent the phenomena that men in authority are gullible rather than a sign that women have magical powers.



Secret lobbying



The widely publicized email from Enrico Zini is chilling. It demonstrates how there is a little mafia who spend endless hours sending these clandestine emails to different organizations to denounce people. Victims like Appelbaum may never know how many of these emails have been sent.



Enrico Zini strikes us as the volunteer from hell. No coding, just backstabbing.



Nonetheless, organizations get worn out by these letter-writing campaigns and sometimes they change their mind just to stop the nagging.



Subject: On coverage of Abbelbaum being "banned" from Debian
Date: Wed, 22 Jun 2016 09:34:50 +0200
From: Enrico Zini <enrico@enricozini.org>
To: andrew.matler@itwire.com



Dear Editor in Chief of iTWire,

you may want to do something about this article by Sam Varghese on Debian revoking membership of Jacop Appelbaum: http://www.itwire.com/business-it-news/open-source/73441-appelbaum-banned-from-debian-events-after-sexual-misconduct-charges.html

While the first part is factually correct in its DPL quote, the article ends with baseless hints of Debian and Tor having fallen victims to manipulations by GCHQ psyops.

I consider that to be psycological violence[1] against the various well known people who came out to report abuse, and I wish that news coverage about this situation could rather contribute to creating a community that encourages victims of abuse to speak up.

Quoting the DPL again, "In reaching their decision, the Debian Account Managers took into account the public disclosures from members of the Tor project and others, and first-hand accounts from members of the Debian community."

We are not talking about vague rumors spread by a couple of infiltrators, we are talking about first-person accounts provided by well known and respected members of both communities, with a track record of contributions of many years.

These people who had the guts to speak up deserve credit and respect, and the article published on your site gives them none.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting

Regards,

Enrico


Please compare the bolded phrases in Zini's email to the facts in other emails.



Enrico Zini, Debian, Falsified harassment claims, Jacob Appelbaum, Perjury

Enrico Zini, DebConf18, Taiwan

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
 
Links 27/04/2025: Death of Nest Thermostats, Death of Metaverse
Links for the day
Links 27/04/2025: Projects Workflow and Discovering Technology
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, April 26, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, April 26, 2025
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
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
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