Diversity, Grooming & Debian transgender Zero
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock.
19:00 Fri, 23 Jan 2026
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the stance of Techrights, which explained its stance on diversity of voices and why they ought not be impeded (or authors obstructed when it is convenient)
Root cause analysis: this could be the first evidence of Debianists offering money to transgender people. Spot the ethical problem there.
Flashback to 2004 with another leak from the debian-private whisper network (below).
It probably didn't seem controversial at the time but Dr Norbert Preining paid the price for this as the Zizian phenomena emerged and these people ganged up on the rest of us and Norbert in particular during the Debian Christmas Lynchings in 2018.
It raises various ethical questions, for example, is a payment reserved for transgender people discriminatory against those who are not transgender? More seriously, given the culture of these hobbyist groups and the lawlessness of DebConf could we contemplate that these payments violate prostitution laws?
In some countries, prostitution laws have a very broad definition of the remuneration. In other words, if an internship is arranged for somebody with the expectation that they will participate fully in DebConf then the law, in some jurisdictions, sees that arrangement the same way as the traditional cash-in-the-hand arrangement. From the UK law:
A person commits an offence if they cause or incite another person to become a prostitute in any part of the world with the expectation of gain for themselves or another.
The offence requires control or influence over the other person and that the offender contemplated or desired that the act would ensue.
Consider the case that has now come to light in the Debian Paris ENS Cachan / CRANS love nest. It appears that the candidate proposed for $6,000 Outreachy money in 2016 was actually recruited out of high school and may have undergone some process of indoctrination and conversion to transgender while simultaneously being remunerated at the support desk of the CRANS "nest".
The thing that makes all this problematic is the presence of money. â–ˆ
Subject: Re: Nut-case of the day - Was: [Fwd: URGENT: This is potentially a threat to your and others personal security] Date: Tue, 6 Jan 2004 12:53:33 -0700 From: Joel Baker <fenton@debian.org> To: debian-private@lists.debian.org
On Tue, Jan 06, 2004 at 03:28:03PM +1100, Russell Coker wrote: > On Tue, 6 Jan 2004 15:23, Joel Baker <fenton@debian.org> wrote: > > I could probably arrange for Debian to have a TG developer, but somehow, > > this doesn't seem like a primary qualification; we don't have quotas. :) > > If they can code well or can be taught to code well then please get them in! > > Especially if they have some skills at kernel coding. I think that we could > do with having more skilled developers dealing with the kernel patch > packages.
What I didn't mention is that it would probably involve me bribing her to deal with it; she doesn't find Debian to be quite worthwhile enough on its own merits (she likes it, she just likes FreeBSD better, and has little enough time to spare overall that short of someone making it worth giving up what else she does, it isn't worth it).
This would be the primary reason she isn't already a DD, since the only part of NM that would pose any issue at all is the wait (I can sign her trivially, and passing the requirements is a no-brainer). But we don't really need another developer not doing much most of the time, and I have better uses of the money than paying her to work on it. :) -- Joel Baker <fenton@debian.org> ,''`. Debian GNU/NetBSD(i386) porter : :' : `. `' `-
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the stance of Techrights, which explained its stance on diversity of voices and why they ought not be impeded (or authors obstructed when it is convenient)