Deja vu: Hitler's Birthday, Andreas Tille elected Debian Project Leader again
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock.
Apr 20, 2025
Adolf Hitler was born on 20 April 1889 in Austria. Today would be the Fuhrer's 136th birthday.
In 2025, just as in 2024, the Debian Project Leader (DPL) election finished on Hitler's birthday.
In 2025, just as in 2024, the Debian Project Leader (DPL) election winner is the German, Andreas Tille.
History repeating itself? It is a common theme in the world today. Let's hope not.
We reprint the original comments about this anniversary from 2024.
In 1939, shortly after Hitler annexed Austria, the Nazi command in Berlin had a big celebration for the 50th birthday of Adolf Hitler. It was such a big occasion that it has its own Wikipedia entry.
One of the quotes in Wikipedia comes from British historian Ian Kershaw:
an astonishing extravaganza of the Führer cult. The lavish outpourings of adulation and sycophancy surpassed those of any previous Führer Birthdays
For the first time ever, the Debian Project Leader election has finished just after 2am (Germany, Central European Summer Time) on the birthday of Hitler and the winning candidate is Andreas Tille from Germany.
Hitler's time of birth was 18:30, much later in the day.
Tille appears to be the first German to win this position in Debian.
We don't want to jinx Tille's first day on the job so we went to look at how each of the candidates voted in the 2021 lynching of Dr Richard Stallman.
This blog previously explored the question of whether Dr Stallman, who is an atheist, would be subject to anti-semitism during the Holocaust years because of his Jewish ancestry. We concluded that RMS would have definitely been on Hitler's list of targets.
Here we trim the voting tally sheet to show how Andreas Tille and Sruthi Chandran voted on the question of lynching Dr 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: 88888817 tille Andreas Tille
V: 21338885 srud Sruthi Chandran
We can see that Tille voted for option 7: he did not want Debian's name used in the attacks on Dr Stallman. However, he did not want Debian to denounce the witch hunt either. This is scary. A lot of Germans were willing to stand back and do nothing while Dr Stallman's Jewish ancestors were being dragged off to concentration camps.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
On the other hand, Sruthi Chandran appears to be far closer to the anti-semitic spirit. She put her first and second vote preferences next to the options that involved defaming and banishing Dr Stallman.
Will the new DPL be willing to stop the current vendettas against a volunteer and his family? Or will Tille continue using resources for stalking a volunteer in the same way that Nazis stalked the Jews?
Adolf Hitler famously died by suicide, a lot like the founder of Debian, Ian Murdock, who was born in Konstanz, Germany.
Will Tille address the questions of the Debian suicide cluster or will he waste more money on legal fees to try and cover it up? █