Pirate Praveen Arimbrathodiyil & Debian denouncing volunteers, hiding romances
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock.
21:30 Sun, 15 Mar 2026
In the analysis of Sruthi Chandran's nomination for Debian Project Leader, we began to examine her relationship with another Debian Developer, Pirate Praveen Arimbrathodiyil.
I know many people from India and some of them are now very ashamed of this behaviour. For others, it is business as usual.
When NR Narayana Murthy founded one of India's biggest IT companies, Infosys, he decided there would be no nepotism and no jobs for family members. The press tells the story over and over again, even after he is dead, to help India learn the lesson.
It’s Not All In The Family
Murthy is the only member of his family at Infosys, and the same holds true for all the other co-founders as well. A decision taken by all the partners.
The tech honcho reportedly told his author and philanthropist wife Sudha that only one of them could be with the company.
The idea was to remove nepotism of any sort, and nurture talent.
As noted in the earlier blog, when Pirate Praveen wrote an advocacy for Sruthi Chandran to become a Debian Developer, he did not make any statement about his relationship with this woman.
Sruthi Chandran did not make any declaration about her conflicts of interests when writing her platforms for previous DPL elections.
When did they become boyfriend and girlfriend? When did they become husband and wife?
Despite not wanting to say anything about their own relationships, remember Pirate Praveen is one of the people who wanted to make big public statements about Daniel Baumann from Bern, Switzerland.
These are people who speak English as a second language. When they are interacting in a mailing list in English, the last thing they need is some group of Indians poring over their messages and nitpicking about their "tone".
What Pirate Praveen demanded was a cyberattack on the reputation of an unpaid volunteer in neutral Switzerland.
Don't hold your breath waiting for a statement about romantic conflicts of interest.
If one of these people is elected, will we see them making statements about other volunteers on a weekly basis?
Subject: Re: Call for moderation and mediation: debian-live vs. debian-live-ng Date: Wed, 11 Nov 2015 20:58:05 +0530 From: Pirate Praveen <praveen@debian.org> To: debian-private@lists.debian.org
On 2015, നവംബർ 11 8:46:15 PM IST, Joachim Breitner <nomeata@debian.org> wrote: >Hi, > >Am Mittwoch, den 11.11.2015, 14:19 +0100 schrieb Miriam Ruiz: >> Just for the record, I don't feel myself capable of acting a >> moderator able to help in this situation, particularly when it seems >> that what's essentially asked for is for someone to talk with Daniel [Baumann] >> and convince him not to get mad and to not make a fuss out of it, and >> to deal with it in a civilized way. Or maybe I'm wrong, but the >> impression I already have about the situation, being an outsider and >> having made up my opinion mostly from what I've seen, heard or read >> throughout the years, is that there is nothing to negotiate or >> moderate here, the decision is taken -for the sensible reasons that >> have already been explained, I'm not complaining about that or >> anything- and the point is essentially trying to convince Daniel [Baumann] et >> al. not to get angry about how things are being done. Am I wrong? > >it might be part of what I am hoping for, but not everything. > >There are a few people out there (and maybe in here as well) who see >(parts of) this story and draw conclusions about how Debian treats >contributors. Conclusions that I hope are in general false, and >conclusions that I’d not like to pervade our image. > >So, a bit more concretely, here are thinks that I such a neutral report >could state. (Read every line with an “if deemed appropriate by the >mediator” – I certainly do not know enough about the issue to make any >such call, and therefore some of these are deliberately contradictory) > > * Outline the history of events that led to this outcome. > * Allow Daniel [Baumann] to not lose his face. This might involve > - acknowledging his work, and thanking for it > - apologize to him, if he was treated wrong on a social level > - outline a way forward to collaborate, or at least to allow > the projects to exist side-by-side in a friendly manner > * Explain why, despite the public perception, nobody has been wronged, > neither technically and socially. > * Explain that “the project” did the technical correct thing, but did > it wrong on a social level, and state that this was a mistake, and > we are all humans, and the project in general does not approve such > behaviour. > >A bit more profanely, one could say that we have a slight PR problem, >and PR problems should better be handled actively.
I agree. There has to be a public statement and this is a good starting point.
Nominations closed on Friday the 13th and the voting finishes on 17 April 2026, the anniversary of a notorious death that was discussed like a suicide, a copy-cat suicide. The victim died on our wedding day. Nobody ever asked for a public statement from the coroner. The victim's widow, Diana von Bidder-Senn became the mayor of Basel in Switzerland.
There was never any statement about why Abraham Raji died after they asked him to contribute his own money to the kayak trip at DebConf23. Over $120,000 from Debian bank accounts was used to attack my family and try to hide the Debian suicide cluster.
The best way to encourage people to nominate for the election will be for the existing leader, Andreas Tille, to withdraw all the privacy attacks, settle the lawsuits proactively and ensure the next leader can walk in and find the desk is clean ready to work on productive things.
Don't hold your breath waiting for transparency about these attacks on my family. There is still time to watch my video and contribute to the crowdfunding campaign. █