FOSDEM 2026: democracy panel: FSFE uses women as stooges, gerrymander
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock.
12:00 Tue, 27 Jan 2026
In the previous blog about the FOSDEM democracy panel discussion, I looked at how GNOME misfits attacked the volunteer Sonny Piers.
What does an ideal community representative look like? Well, there isn't one. The overlords prefer to have stooges and puppets in the boards and committees.
Now we pull aside the skirt of the FSFE misfits and look at how two female employees were given voting rights. There are thousands of very talented female developers out there who will never be allowed to vote or speak.
Why do they put these two paid employees on the voting roll but there were over 1,500 Fellows doing voluntary work and making donations to the FSFE misfits and none of those Fellows can vote any more?
Subject: GA membership application From: Polina Malaja <polina@fsfe.org> Date: 06/10/2017, 17:23 To: Matthias Kirschner <mk@fsfe.org>
Dear Matthias,
I would like to apply for the FSFE's GA. Please see my application below.
Thank you in advance.
Kind regards,
Polina
--
# Application
I have been involved with the FSFE already for more than 2 years. During this time, in addition to becoming a full-time staffer, I have become a strong supporter of the Free Software movement in general. I fully support the ideas behind openness, collaboration and Free culture (as in free from restrictions to reuse ideas, mix and match for a greater creativity and innovation, and not 'free' as in 'gratis') where Free Software is one of the strongest and most crucial movements for the modern society.
I can say that the time spent in the FSFE has greatly contributed to my personal and professional growth in both legal and policy work, and I would be delighted to participate in the discussions on the GA level concerning the future of the FSFE. I believe I can bring in a point of view of a non-technical Free Software supporter who is affiliated with the movement from policy and legal perspective.
-- Polina Malaja - Policy Analyst - Legal Coordinator Free Software Foundation Europe, Schoenhauser Allee 6/7, 10119 Berlin Contact: t +49-30-27595290 | Blog: blogs.fsfe.org/polina Your support enables our work (fsfe.org/join)
From: Ulrike Sliwinski Date: October 2017 To: Matthias Kirschner <mk@fsfe.org>
Hi Matthias,
hereby I am applying to become a member of FSFE's General Assembly. Even though I am neither very familiar with the technical sides of Free Software nor with FSFE's political undertakings I am sure I can contribute from FSFE's administrative perspective, e.g. being the person who sees and distributes lots of incoming requests in our ticket system.
Another reason for the decision to become part of the General Assembly is that all male staffers of FSFE are members but none of the female staffers are. With my application I would also like to help to support FSFE's public image in this regard.
Kind regards, Ulrike
--
Ulrike Sliwinski, Office Manager Out of office on Fridays. Free Software Foundation Europe e.V. Schönhauser Allee 6/7, 10119 Berlin,+49-30-27595290. Registered: Amtsgericht Hamburg, VR 17030. Your support enables our work (fsfe.org/join)
In the detailed history of Amandine "cryptie" Jambert, we looked at how Jambert eventually admitted that "harassment" rumours were a lie to cover up her conflict of interest.
As part of the analysis, we presented evidence that Jambert is not mentioned in any of the 20,000 copyright files in Debian because she isn't a developer either. None of the women granted voting rights by the FSFE misfits appear to have any authorship status under copyright law.
To make an analogy, under real estate law, the owners of buildings are the landlords and the people who live in the buildings are the tenants. Imagine if the tenants could form an association, keep all the rent for themselves and make decisions for the landlords. Imagine if the landlords were not allowed to vote or make decisions. It sounds absurd. But that is the very nature of these free software umbrella groups. It is people who write no code trying to make decisions on behalf of the people who do write the code.
Debian is one of the largest collections of free, open source software with over 20,000 packages. We can search the copyright notices of all 20,000 packages using the Debian search system and see if any of these women have any status or if they are just two more stooges:
Click here to search for Polina Malaja, from the FSFE misfits in the debian/copyright files:
Click here to search for Ulrike Sliwinski:
Polina Malaja and domain name censorship facilitating plagiarism
Notice how Polina Malaja has gone to work for CENTR, Council of European National Top-Level Domain Registries.
In recent times, people have sought to hide the identity of real Debian co-authors by censorsing/stealing domain names. This is basically a form of plagiarism.
Has Polina Malaja, with her job at CENTR, had some role in facilitating this plagiarism and obfuscating who the real authors are?
Copyright law is clear. The joint authors are entitled to speak and enjoy recognition for our work.
The manner in which Matthias Kirschner has granted voting rights to various women like this causes a lot of embarrassment for all the women.
People should not be angry at me for simply disclosing the emails and revealing the truth about this corruption. If anybody is angry about this, look at the overlords who do the choosing.
In a blog about grooming, Queen Kwong puts it like this:
The Curse of Being Chosen
Not all abuse is obvious. It can look like praise. It can look like opportunity. ...
At nineteen, Cassie met Sean Combs. He was her boss, her label head, her mentor, and eventually, her boyfriend. According to her lawsuit, she was surveilled, isolated, coerced ... . But this isn't only a case of blatant violence. It's one of domination disguised as devotion. It's a portrayal оf how grooming conditions victims for escalating patterns of control and harm.
...
Being chosen is the oldest trick in the book.
Say what you will about Baby Reindeer, but it did something most shows avoid—it depicted the messy, convoluted truth about abuse. ...
...
Using women as stooges, giving these two women the power to vote so they can jump the queue, makes them feel "chosen". Many abuse victims have also spoken about feeling "chosen". It is just another form of exploitation because everybody realizes these women were not chosen for the quantity of code they shared.
What happens when women were not willing to be complicit and subservient for the overlords? Ask Susanne Eiswirt and Galia Mancheva and read the harrowing story of why Galia sued Matthias Kirschner and FSFE:
Even after my lawyer warned him to terminate all attempts to communicate with me and send someone else to pick up my work laptop, he came in person to my house, and was very irritated that I was not alone.
Read more about the FSFE misfits. █