A/Prof Susan G Kleinmann, Enkelena Haxhija & Debian-private risk to MIT
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock.
22:00 Fri, 20 Mar 2026
When the women from Kosovo invited me to their Hackathon for Girls in Prizren, one of the more unusual things that happened was people telling me things about Enkelena Haxhija.
All the girls were really enthusiastic about the weekend. On the other hand, they were keen to let me know that their friend Enkelena was not like the other girls.
A few weeks later, I was at the pub in Prishtina with a much smaller group. Enkelena was there and while we were talking and having drinks, Enkelena was doing her homework. It looked like she was solving partial differential equations. We did the same homework in our engineering maths course at the University of Melbourne.
After the gossip and rudeness to my family, many of the women from these events decided they didn't want any further involvement with Debianism.
At OSCAL in 2018, Enkelena did not ask for permission before setting up my radio equipment. She just went ahead and did it. People waste so much time arguing about the definition of diversity.
We gave a talk together in the same conference:
One member of the audience was Arjen Kamphuis. He asked us a question. It was Enkelena's first talk and it was the last time we saw Arjen Kamphuis before he disappeared.
In 2025, Enkelena submitted a request to be on the list of Debian Developers (authors of Debian).
Enkelena: I would also like to be able to participate in debian-private and use the Debian infrastructure more easily e.g. for sending and receiving emails.
As it turns out, large sections of debian-private from the 1990s have been leaked on IPFS and much more of it is being offered in the crowdfunding campaign.
Personally, I started doing voluntary activities in amateur radio when I was fourteen years old in 1993. I went on to doing voluntary things with Debian and Linux shortly after that but I wasn't in any rush to be part of debian-private. I don't think I ever mentioned debian-private to anybody until after the Debian leader Chris Lamb started attacking my family in 2018.
The first woman in Debian was Associate Professor Susan G Kleinmann from MIT. She also had to ask for permission to use debian-private:
Subject: Susan Kleinmann <sgk@tiac.net> needs debian-private subscription Date: Fri, 28 Jun 1996 11:52:44 -0700 (PDT) From: Bill Mitchell <mitchell@mdd.comm.mot.com> To: debian-private@lists.debian.org CC: sgk@tiac.net
Susan said, in private email:
> I've been working on building a greatly expanded FAQ, and I'm planning on > installing it on my WWW server this weekend. It desperately needs input > and correction from people that actually know what they're doing before > it is foisted off to the general public. > > In order to get that input, Joost Witteveen recommended that I send a > notice to debian-private after I put the new FAQ up, but I don't know > who to ask re: getting a subscription to debian-private. Can you help me? > If the person I need to contact is Bruce, and if he's not available > (which I suspect is the case) then would you be willing to post the > notice for me?
Last I heard, Bruce was out of touch. Could someone who knows how please subscribe Susan to debian-private?
Here is the crisis for MIT. They really need smart women like Enkelena to replace A/Prof Susan G Kleinmann, who is around retirement age.
But if Enkelena wastes her youth on debian-private and all the other dirty politics, she may never get to MIT.
Looking back to the notorious conference dinner at DebConf19 in Brazil, there are four Albanian women seated at the table with the former leader of Debianism. From left to right, they are Anisa Kuci, Kristi Progri, Elena Gjevukaj and Diellza Shabani. At the next table below that, we can see Enkelena.
Elena Gjevukaj told us about the relentless emotional blackmail from certain people who pressured her to betray my family. See the video.
People need to ask Enkelena if she was subject to the same pressure from people who wanted to hurt my family and I.
The Debian elections started recently. There is only one candidate.
Sruthi Chandran, the wife of a male developer who hides conflicts of interest submitted her nomination on Friday the 13th. From a technical perspective, Enkelena is far more skilled as a developer and as a leader.
The voting period ends on 17 April, the 15th anniversary of Adrian von Bidder's death, which had been discussed like a copy-cat suicide. He died on our wedding day. If the culture on debian-private is really that bad, what impact will the lost time and lost energy have on the career of a high-achiever like Enkelena?
Adrian's wife became the mayor of Basel, which seems to be a factor in the extraordinary amount of money, over $120,000, spent attacking my family and I.
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. █