Bonum Certa Men Certa

Clytie Siddall & Debian Duty of Care

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Aug 02, 2024

Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock.

Over the last few months, students in numerous countries have organized campus protests about the conflict in Gaza. Each university has responded differently.

At Trinity College Dublin, the messages from management frequently referred to the university having a Duty of Care.

In fact, a duty of care is not something new. This concept is well established in the law.

There is growing concern about the impact that management decisions have on health and safety. While duty of care is not a new concept, the potential compensation costs and risks of criminal prosecution for negligent managers has increased in recent decades. By way of example, the UK defined a new crime, Corporate Manslaughter, in 2008. Managers throughout both the UK and Ireland have been reminded about this in many ways. In Ireland, there was significant public attention on the unlawful killing verdict for the Stardust tragedy at almost the same time as the campus protests at Trinity.

The same concept, duty of care, is important in free software, voluntary groups and the companies that sponsor them.

In early 2015, we were informed that Clytie Siddall had died at Renmark, a remote community in Australia.

Siddall had been doing translation work with Debian and GNOME Project for a number of years. The Debian Contributors report notes her first contributions were in 2005.

There are many public references to Siddall's illness. She told people about it. She suffered from Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

Despite the fact she had been active in community groups dealing with this disease, were Debian collaborators aware of it? Yes, they were. The email below from Christian Perrier, a manager at French aerospace lab Onera, shows that not only did he know about the disease, he also observed the impact it had on Siddall's work and her life.

The coroner for South Australia has a web page explaining they do not publish a public report for every death. If local authorities and medical staff are in agreement about the cause of death then it may only be disclosed to the family. In the UK, far more untimely deaths are subject to a public inquiry by a coroner.

What we know for sure is that people suffering from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome are six times more likely to commit suicide. The cause of death for Clytie Siddall has never been stated and it would be inappropriate to speculate.

It is interesting to look through the conflict in the Debian environment throughout 2014, the year leading up to Siddall's death. This quote from Richard Hartmann stands out:

(on debian-private): words can hardly express how exhausted and chaffed I feel from the constant fighting and in-fighting. I feel confused and scared that what I always saw as the foundation of Debian, it’s social fabric, is not only tearing at the ends but that some rips are making it into the center, the very core.

Public Health England tells us that three suicides constitute a suicide cluster. While we can't speculate about Siddall's cause of death, it seems reasonable to ask, in a general sense, is Debian hiding a suicide cluster?.

Subject: Clytie Siddall passed....
Date: Sun, 1 Feb 2015 08:46:05 +0100
From: Christian PERRIER <bubulle@debian.org>
To: debian-private@lists.debian.org

Keeping this private for now...I'll think and decide what to do later on. Hence, posting to debian-private even though Clytie was not DD nor DM....but definitely an eminent Debian contributor.
Many of you may have seen the name of Clytie Siddall here or there, most of the time in free software credits for translation into Vietnamese language.
Clytie worked for instance for years on the translation of D-I into Vietnamese, as well as several of our Debian-specific software (apt, dpkg, etc.) and documentation.
Her contribution was tremendous though shaky because she was sufferring from a severe illness, namely Chronique Fatigue Syndrom which may completely interrupt her work during crisis.
It has been years since I started working with Clytie even though we never met (she was living in Renmark, South Australia and I think she never met any of the free software community members who she worked with, including folks in Australia).
Her passing is a shock for me and probably the entire Vietnamese localization community, the GNOME localization folks and dozens of other projects.
I'll try to cook up some words to send to Clytie's husband, Peter. If you feel like this and want to contribute, please mail me privately. I'll relay to Peter whatever words, credits, thanks, etc. people want to send.

Other Recent Techrights' Posts

Peter Moon's (Computerworld) Interview With Richard Stallman
Stallman: If you want freedom don't follow Linus Torvalds
At What Point Does Outsourcing Constitute Malpractice?
Brett Wilson LLP's new staff page is misleading
From Do Your Own Research to Do Your Own Search
The Web is full of garbage; search engines amplify this garbage
 
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, June 23, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, June 23, 2025
The "Tarzan Effect" in Compilers and Software
What happens when you forcibly make things 'work', either by hacks or by disregarding warnings (like those that compilers tend to issue)?
Gemini Links 23/06/2025: Mass Tourism, Hair Love, and Google Gemini as a Googlebomb
Links for the day
Law Firm Burgess Mee Does Not Fully Deny Participating in Abusive Litigation for Serial Strangler From Microsoft
I am not unfamiliar with these tactics
The Modus Operandi of Wayland Pushers: Make It Political
do what I say or you're a nazi...
Links 23/06/2025: RFE/RL Contributor Vladyslav Yesypenko Released, Recording Industry Cutbacks
Links for the day
Brett Wilson LLP Solicitors (M): Over 99.9% of Our E-mail is Self-Marketing, We Send You 3.5MB E-mails for Less Than 1KB of Text
Why would tech people entrust legal matters to such people?
United Arab Emirates (UAE) Sailing to GNU/Linux, According to statCounter
countries in that region will quickly learn the price of neglecting digital sovereignty
More People Moving to Geminispace?
at age 6+ Gemini Protocol seems to have gained some maturity and it seems like more people use it
Permutation in LLMs Does, Inevitably, Change Meanings and Therefore LLMs Cannot Properly Rephrase or Summarise Texts
LLMs lack actual grasp or comprehension of what they spew out
Links 23/06/2025: Many Security Breaches, Population Declines
Links for the day
Gemini Links 23/06/2025: "America at the Crossroads" and OpenWRT Surgery
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, June 22, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, June 22, 2025
Pure Dove
Different means different, and sometimes those who "deviate" from "the norm" have a point
Censorship is a Sign of Weakness Which Invites More Censorship Attempts
revolutionaries don't succumb to pressure from bullies
Why It's Unlikely That LLM Slop Will Dominate the Web in the Long Run
Slopfarms will eventually perish (they have no actual value) and "survivors" on the Web will be sites that never depended on search engines and social control media
GNU/Linux in Argentina Now Measured Near 5%
Like in central Europe, they must be seeing an increasingly hostile US
BetaNews is Fake News, Composed by LLM Slop
nothing in BetaNews is written by humans anymore
Links 22/06/2025: Giving Up on Smartphones and 'Jaws' at 50
Links for the day
Gemini Links 22/06/2025: Furniture Construction and Bubble for Comments
Links for the day
Links 22/06/2025: Windows TCO Tales and YouTube Getting More Hostile to Users
Links for the day
The FSF Board and FSF Beard
So the FSF's Board has grown
Law Firms Facing the Consequences for Patently Abusive Litigation on Behalf of Microsoft Employees Who Got Arrested for Strangulation and Had Done Even Worse Things
Having spent 1.5 years bullying me with patronising letters on behalf of Microsofters, last week they got served a massive bill and, in effect, lost the Hearing
New Report From the EPO's Staff Representatives in The Hague (LSCTH) Reveals Many Unsolved Issues
Local Staff Committee The Hague (LSCTH) wrote to staff just before the weekend
LLMs Breaking Everything
Computing and the Net became a playground for scammers and "bros", like people who "invented" fake currencies and also try to tell us that LLMs spewing out things will have some real value
Links 22/06/2025: More Slop Lawsuits (Copyrights) and "America’s Oligarch Problem"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 22/06/2025: Gigantic Toolchest and Annoying Bots
Links for the day