Bonum Certa Men Certa

Gerrymandering in Free Software Communities

Reprinted with permission from Debian Community News

One of the revelations from the expulsion of Dr Norbert Preining is the role of Laura Arjona Reina (larjona) sending him nasty emails a few days before Christmas.



Drawing attention to an email chain like this inevitably encourages other victims to ask for help. We now know that Dr Preining isn't the only recipient of harassment and abuse from Arjona. With that in mind, we are doing a more thorough analysis to see if other victims of the Anti-harassment team will come forward.



Dr Preining has contributed many years of effort maintaining the LaTeX packages. Debian records show that Arjona is only a novice, non-developing Developer who has been present for a much shorter period. Unlike Dr Preining, Arjona never contributed a single package.



Let's see how Arjona interacts with Dr Preining:



From: Laura Arjona Reina
Date: 27 Nov 2018
Subject: Blog disabled on Planet Debian

... snip ...

we believe the recently published post
https://www.preining.info/blog/2018/11/on-lars-wirzenius-fun-and-debian/
has a tone that is inappropriate for Planet Debian.

Maybe it's written with no intention to do harm, but it seems it's not written to *not do harm* either


Tone policing at its worst. Dr Preining didn't do any harm but maybe he was thinking about it so trigger-happy Arjona censored him just in case. Beware the Thought Police!



Dr Preining replied politely to Arjona and after a week of radio silence, re-enabled his blog without that particular post being visible.



From Dr Preining's perspective, the radio silence continued for another couple of weeks. Rather than trying to establish a dialogue with Dr Preining in a professional manner, Arjona was sneaking around in the corridors of the palace, trying to get support for a drone strike.



Out of the blue, days before Christmas, without any warning or any professional attempt at communication whatsoever, Dr Preining received:



Subject: Debian Developer status
From: Debian Account Managers <da-manager@debian.org>
Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2018
To: Dr Preining

... snip ...

We do not believe that you currently
have any intention of being a constructive member of Debian, and we see
little hope for improvement as it is.

Therefore, we are revoking your status as a Debian Developer with
immediate effect. You remain a Debian Maintainer for a minimum of 6
months, after which you can apply for getting your Debian Developer
status back.


How could they make such a conclusion about somebody who has done decades of work for Debian and free software users? It is completely out of touch with reality.



Imagine for a moment that you were a novice female developer and you want to have this level of influence to call these drone strikes and expel people high above your pay-grade. How do you get that power?



Most answers to that question are really degrading to women but this is what people say about Debian when they see the emails certain women are sending to the developers like Dr Preining. Nonetheless, there is at least one other possible explanation.



It appears that this was some kind of gangster's initiation ceremony. For example, low level gangsters in London are challenged to prove themselves by sneaking into the backseat of a woman's car while she pays for fuel.



Debian community team, anti-harassment, code of conduct

In northern Italy, not far from the Debian Snow Camp, police secretly filmed an initiation ceremony of the ‘Ndrangheta mafia (alternative link to video):







Send in the Clowns



Yet the case closest to Laura Arjona Reina's right-of-passing may be the Carnival Mafia murders in the USA.



One of the workers at the carnival convinced more junior colleagues that he was a representative of the carnival mafia. He offered them the opportunity to join this fearsome group if they would volunteer to snuff out some more senior carnival associates who operated a rival food van. It is a tale remarkably similar to the plot to snuff out the more experienced and respected developer Dr Preining. (alternative link to video)





Carnival novices followed their orders to the letter, just as Arjona may have been manipulated into this plot by those around her.



Detecting Thoughtcrime™



Arjona's initiation task was to expel somebody for the evils of thoughtcrime™ and Dr Preining was the random victim she picked.



Unfortunately, one of the carnival victims was able to put in a call to the police before they had completed the killings and disposed of the bodies. In much the same way, Dr Preining was able to raise the alarm and now we can all see how Debian is propagating the most vulgar aspects of Debian culture to junior members like Arjona.



The non-developing developers



Our emphasis on gender is no accident. We believe in diversity.



Let's have a closer look at where Laura Arjona Reina sits in the non-developing developer keyring.



debian non-uploading developer, women, statistics


The main developer keyring has less than two percent women. The non-developing developer keyring has thirty-one percent women. Why this huge gender disparity?



If you randomly select somebody from the non-developer keyring, they are almost sixteen times more likely to be female than somebody randomly selected from the main Debian Developer keyring. These people are permitted to vote and to participate in the debian-private (leaked) gossip network but are not trusted to do anything else.



Whenever a system of segregation like this appears, the same pattern emerges.



debian non-uploading developer

There are various Debian-specific explanations for this disparity.



One suggestion is that they've been given these honorary titles to help them get jobs, such as the title that former Debian Project Leader Chris Lamb gave to his girlfriend, Molly de Blanc when she had to leave her job at FSF. Shortly after, she was given a job that was never advertised at GNOME Foundation.



Another theory is that this disparity represents and perpetuates mistrust of women. Being on the non-developing keyring implies that the person is not trusted technically to modify an operating system and furthermore, it implies there is no point trying to train these people. As females appear so much more likely to be shunted away there, it gives us an insight into the way Debian's stalwarts perceive women's future potential. In other words, most women will never be trusted, so they should not set their sights higher than non-developing developer status. This behavior in Debian is entirely consistent with practices in industry: for example, a recent study (Birminghamton University, State University of New York) found that 34 percent fewer women receive pay for college internships.



The most compelling theory is that the non-developing developer keyring is simply a giant gerrymandering exercise. Incumbents have created this inferior status which allows their wives, girlfriends, male partners and a few political allies to vote in project elections, diluting the votes of people who do the real development work. These votes act as a buffer against calls for accountability and reform.



When serious female developers recognise a barely-disguised system of segregation like this and they see the former leader's girlfriend being catapulted into keynote speaking opportunities, they run a mile. Gender disparity is therefore perpetuated.





Call for witnesses



Have you experienced harassment and abuse from Laura Arjona Reina or anybody else in Debian's Anti-Harassment team? Please email the Debian Community News Team so we can investigate and assist you.



Recent Techrights' Posts

Representing and Speaking for Animals
If I ever choose to take this matter to tribunal with animals-centric NGOs on my side, it'll get some press coverage for sure
Slopwatch: Fake Articles About "Linux", Slop Images in VentureBeat, Linux Foundation Spam Made With LLM Slop and Slop Images
The only relief or upside - if any exists - is that the pace of slop was down a bit this week
 
Financiers and Sponsors of the Slop Hype (Pyramid Scheme Waiting to End, Bubble That Will Inevitably Implode)
It's also burning the planet
Slopwatch: Fake Articles About "Linux", Google Helps Ponzi Schemes and Slopfarms in Google News
Slopfarms are a real pain
Gemini Links 29/08/2025: Retiring at 62 and URL Filtering HTTP(S) Proxy on Qubes OS
Links for the day
Links 29/08/2025: Lisa Cook Sues Convicted Felon and Backdoor Mandate in UK Resisted
Links for the day
Links 29/08/2025: Arti 1.5.0, War on Public Health (CDC), and Slop 'Bros' Made to Pay for Their Mass Plagiarism
Links for the day
No, 4Chan is Not Fighting for You by Lawyering Up Against Ofcom (UK)
Don't mistake proto-fascists for people who "fight for you". They don't.
Downlplaying the Impact of "UEFI 9/11" is a Losing Strategy
we won't publish much whilst on holiday
In Many Places in the World Vista 11 "Market Share" is Going Down, Not Up
In some countries Windows is already down to third place or lower
More Microsoft-Connected Layoffs, at Least Third Time This Month! (Also Another Death on Campus)
Microsoft as a "gaming" company is where studios, projects, games, and even developers come to die
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, August 28, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, August 28, 2025
Gemini Links 29/08/2025: Poems, Games, and Java 25 Performance
Links for the day
Links 28/08/2025: Greenland 'Interferences' by US and Skinnerboxes to Get Banned in Korean Schools
Links for the day
Richard Stallman (RMS) Talk in Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress Will be Remote
This past week RMS received lots of accolades online
The Register MS (Run by Microsoft Operatives): Free Software is Putin, Hence Evil and Dangerous
The current editor in chief is an American Microsofter, the previous one went to work for Google (US)
Links 28/08/2025: Chatbots Distorting/Fabricating History and Also Driving Suicide
Links for the day
Gemini Links 28/08/2025: Back in Japan and Why "Hacker News" Sucks
Links for the day
A Much-Needed Wake-up Call to Users of Wordpress.com, Blogspot, Substack and All Those Other Outsourced (and Centralised) Platforms
There are several lessons in there
The UEFI 9/11 - Part II - Campaign of Censorship and Defamation Against Critics
In dictatorships, humour serves an important role. It's tragic.
Open Source Initiative (OSI) Resists Software Freedom, Even by Attacking Its Own
The OSI is compromised
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, August 27, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, August 27, 2025
Slopwatch: linuxsecurity.com, Slopfarms in Google News, and More
Some readers of ours end up sending us links that are from slopfarms, not realising those are slopfarms
Gemini Links 27/08/2025: Katrina Memories and Google Versus Software Freedom
Links for the day
Links 27/08/2025: Police Against Media Freedom in the UK, Energy-Hungry Countries Targeted by China
Links for the day
Microsoft Windows Fell to All-Time Lows in Egypt This Summer, Vista 11 Adoption Decreases While GNU/Linux Increases
Vista 11 is going down rather than up
Links 27/08/2025: Microsoft Demoralises Staff With Slop Demands, Leaving Mastodon Explained
Links for the day
12 Hours Ago The Register MS Published a Fake (Paid-for) Article, But This One for a Change Did Not Promote a Ponzi Scheme
There are also Free software alternatives, but they don't pay The Register MS for "synthetic" so-called 'journalism'
More People Need to Call Out and Put a Stop to Serial Sloppers
Unless slopfarms are stopped, people will read and share Microsoft propaganda made by chatbots
Gemini Links 27/08/2025: Headphones and Tartarus
Links for the day
Morale at Microsoft is Terrible (Proprietary Plagiarism Machines Have No Future, LLM Slop is a Bubble)
The slop sceptics/critics are going to have lots of "told you so" moments
GNOME "governance issues, staff reduction, etc." amidst Albanian whistleblowing and women trafficking
Notice the connection to Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) and GNOME
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, August 26, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, August 26, 2025