Bonum Certa Men Certa

Matthias Kirschner, Jonas Oberg & FSFE: Paternity, Maternity, Sick Leave Hypocrisy

Reprinted with permission from the Free Software Fellowship

FSFE, Matthias Kirschner, student union, sexism

Today the Fellowship is proud to leak to more messages from the FSFE proving the hypocrisy of Matthias Kirschner.



To recap the sequence of events:



  1. A fellow left a EUR 150,000 bequest to the FSFE.
  2. There was fighting about the money and Matthias Kirschner, President, fell out with Jonas Oberg, Executive Director
  3. To avoid being sacked, Oberg took paternity leave while looking for another job.
  4. Kirschner had a huge fit. He wanted to fire Oberg but he couldn't. So Kirschner took paternity leave too, his message announcing paternity leave is leaked below
  5. When Kirschner came back, he was still pissed off so he decided to remove the elections from the constitution.
  6. The representative elected by the community resigned in disgust
  7. Kirschner was angry that all the serious people quit and he had nobody to blame. So he spread rumours that the community representative, who had already resigned, is a spammer and pedophile
  8. When the two female employees, Susanne Eiswirt and Galia Mancheva, spoke about wage equality, Kirschner sacked them. Finally, he got to fire somebody. Women. In particular, he sacked Galia while she was on sick leave, he didn't give her the same support that people gave Kirschner during his paternity leave episode.


To summarize: the only people Kirschner actually sacked or expelled were women. All the serious people resigned in disgust before Kirschner could get out his knife.



Leak 1: Matthias Kirschner paternity leave



Matthias Kirschner, President, FSFE, paternity leave, sexism, baby

Subject: [GA] New fork / MK off until 23 April
Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2018 07:33:09 +0200
From: Matthias Kirschner <mk@fsfe.org>
To: FSFE General Assembly <ga@lists.fsfe.org>, FSFE EU core team <team@lists.fsfe.org>



This week my child Paul Benjamin Kirschner was born. We are all fine and enjoy those wonderful and unique moments of our lives. Until 23 April I will be offline to spent time with my family.



I am very happy that the FSFE is in a state which enables me to take this time off, knowing that all day to day operations will be performed reliably by our volunteers and staffers. During that time some topics will be on hold, and I will not follow-up any e-mail discussions. Heiki and Patrick will decide if something is important enough to contact me. In case you have issues to discuss which are not absolutely urgent, I ask you to wait with bringing them up, until I am back again.



Thank you for enabling me to enjoy the birth of my child and fully concentrate on my family for the next weeks. All the best from a tired but exuberantly happy,
Matthias



--
Matthias Kirschner - President - Free Software Foundation Europe
Schönhauser Allee 6/7, 10119 Berlin, Germany | t +49-30-27595290
Registered at Amtsgericht Hamburg, VR 17030 | (fsfe.org/join)
Contact (fsfe.org/about/kirschner) - Weblog (k7r.eu/blog.html)



Galia Mancheva's comments about her medical leave



Does Kirschner's wife, Kristina, know that Kirschner intruded on Galia's home?



An extract from Galia's full report:



I suspected Matthias was preparing to fire me, and indeed I was on a clock. He needed to make sure he was re-elected FSFE president before he could get rid of me. It would have damaged his chances to have fired all the full-time women in the office in the two months leading up to the elections – an unnecessary risk – but once approved he would have another two years' free reign. At this time my friends were starting to worry – the psychological pressure and lack of enough time off caused my condition was decline. I had to take a sick leave. Certain that I was about to get fired, my friends encouraged me to seek legal counsel, if so only to keep myself focussed on constructive tasks. Immediately after my sick leave announcement, Matthias fired me over the phone on a Friday night, and threatened me to immediately go to the office to hand over work-related items. Appearing in the office during a sick leave is illegal in Germany, so I refused. A weekend of non-stop calls followed, including from hidden phone numbers. He even texted telling me I should answer my phone, for my own better. 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.



Leak 2: Jonas Oberg paternity leave



Subject: Continuation in volunteer roles
Date: Thu, 8 Feb 2018 09:55:47 +0100
From: Jonas Oberg <jonas@fsfe.org>
To: team@lists.fsfe.org



Hi everyone,



I just reviewed the mailing lists where I was subscribed for the FSFE, and wanted to give you a heads up about what you can expect from me in the coming months (and years!).



From the 14th of February, I will be largely disconnected from the day-to-day operations of the FSFE, owing to my parental leave. I'm still a member of the association, and I still have an interest in many of our activities, so I will continue my work in some areas as a volunteer.



Specifically, I will, as a member, remain subscribed and part of the ga@ and team@ lists, but I will read team@ less seldom and focus my attention to the much needed work in the GA.



I will also remain as a volunteer for the following activities:



- Our Legal team
- The FSFE Nordic local group
- REUSE



In addition, I plan to volunteer time to oversee some of the work with the AMS implementation and system administration. It's not conceivable we will manage a proper handover of all tasks in the time remaining, and I have a personal interest in making sure this is properly done.



This all being said, you can of course always rely on my help or guidance if you need it for any other activity too. Just make sure that you ask me specifically (direct mail) about it, and understand that from the 14th, my ability to respond will be much lower during the days and I'll catch up more infrequently, often in the evenings.



In the coming months, I will also have two weeks when I'll work full time for the FSFE; for the REUSE activities we will have at the Open Source Leadership Summit, and for the LLW in Barcelona. So you can expect more mails from me those weeks (w10 and 16) :-)



Best,



--
Jonas Öberg
Executive Director



FSFE e.V. - keeping the power of technology in your hands. Your
support enables our work, please join us today http://fsfe.org/join



Susanne Eiswirth, Matthias Kirschner, Galia Mancheva, FSFE, workplace bullying, harassment

Recent Techrights' Posts

Brett Wilson LLP Reported to Police for Trying to Throw Large Parcel Into Our Home
This morning the campaign of intimidation...
Slop Has no ROI, an Economy Built on False Assumptions of Slop is Doomed
we're all going to suffer from this Ponzi scheme
The Cyber Show Has "Exciting Guests Coming" and a Gemini Capsule
"Site development is ongoing but now settling into a more stable form"
Banning Things Versus Teaching People the Reason/s to Shun/Boycott Those Things
Prohibition has its limits
 
Links 08/06/2026: "Rising Emissions, Depleting Water" Due to the Pyramid Scheme of Slop; "Canada Needs to Rebuild Public Telecoms"
Links for the day
GAFAM Bots Are Not "Good Bots"
There's nothing "Good" about Google
Links 08/06/2026: Criticism of Microsoft Trying to Criminalise Pointing Out Bug Doors, TikTok Now "Climate-Denying Social Media App"
Links for the day
GNU/Linux Measured at 10% in Liechtenstein This Month
it seems like statCounter wrongly classified some GNU/Linux clients as Mac clients and is now issuing a correction
Communicating With Freedom - Part III - Quibble Envisioned as a New and Easily Accessible Communications Platform Based on LibreJS
the FSF really needs to become more active if not proactive in promoting those sorts of things
Clownflare Says Majority of Web Traffic is Now Bots, But the Net is Another Story
Bots are to Clownflare what lawsuits are to lawyers
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, June 07, 2026
IRC logs for Sunday, June 07, 2026
The Strikes at the European Patent Office Planned to Carry on for the Entire Year, Maybe Future Years as Well
There's a cautionary tale somewhere
Number of Patent Grants Has Plunged 23% Amid Strikes at the European Patent Office, Today There Are More Strikes (Strike Participation at Over 3,000, More Than Doubled Since Winter)
There is a growing crisis at the European Patent Office
E.E.E. Still Ongoing, the War on Copyleft/GPL Enables That
It also imperils security.
Gemini Links 07/06/2026: Lynx in the 'Modern' Web and 'Overcooked' (Plagiarised by LLM) Code
Links for the day
Links 07/06/2026: Java Needs Seawall, Egypt Blasted for Arbitrary Detention of Activists
Links for the day
SLAPP Censorship - Part 100 Out of 200: Interlude and Outline of the First Half, 3+ Months That Got Us Death Threats Connected to Brett Wilson LLP (and Cyber Attacks That Are Difficult to Attribute)
This week we plan to have a good time
Links 07/06/2026: NASA's Mars Maven Declared Dead, Telegram Founder Pavel Durov Bemoans Russia's Crackdown
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, June 06, 2026
IRC logs for Saturday, June 06, 2026
Gemini Links 07/06/2026: How to Train Your Dragon (2010) and "Six Days of Play"
Links for the day
Links 06/06/2026: 'Epstein Problem' in Board of Directors of Microsoft, Surveillance Giant Google Under Legal Threats for Online Misuses
Links for the day
Software Freedom Takes a Lot More Than Coding
some of the roles in the Free software community that don't receive (m)any grateful words
Ubuntu is Losing to Other GNU/Linux Distros
"Linux Mint"
Old Articles Explaining That Patents - Especially Software Patents - Are Bad for Innovation
We've omitted more than 50% of the articles we had gathered as candidates for inclusion
European Patent Office (EPO) Crisis: Huge EPO Strikes, Profound Corruption, and Cocaine Use by Managers Tolerated
These strikes won't be ending any time soon
Why GNU and FSF Will Choose AV1 Over AV2 (It's More Widely Supported)
for the foreseeable future they'll stick with AV1
Mass Layoffs (RAs) and PIPs (Excuses to Sack) at IBM: Insiders Tell No Relation to Actual Performance
If many thousands are impacted by this, then certainly it is newsworthy
Links 06/06/2026: LinkedIn Infested With Spies, Ethernet WiFi Router On Pi Pico 2W
Links for the day
25 Years With PalmOS
That my Palm PDA still works in 2026 (not in mint condition but close to that) says a lot about the "build quality" of gadgets 20+ years ago
Why We Dumped Online Shopping (Groceries)
subsidies kept the "online" stuff artificially cheap
Microsoft Fell to All-Time Low in Monaco Last Month
So says statCounter anyway
Lawsuits That Don't Work
Not as expected anyway
SLAPP Censorship - Part 99 Out of 200: Graveley and Garrett Seem to Have Crashed Brett Wilson LLP (Worse Than Taking Russian Oligarchs as SLAPP Clients)
a state of disarray
Microsoft Has Spent Months Preparing Lists of People to Cull in Massive Wave of Layoffs (Allegedly Start of July)
There is some consensus that we're weeks away from mega-layoffs at Microsoft
Gemini Links 06/06/2026: "Competing" With LLMs and "Automation of Any Kind"
Links for the day
Links 06/06/2026: 'Linux' Foundation Openwashing Slop on Microsoft's Payroll, Ukraine Wants Permanent Ceasefire With Russia
Links for the day
50% of the 'Gains' Made by "Quantum" Hype Already Evaporated
"It was all hype about quantum nonsense. Heading back to reality now. Expect sub-$220 after earnings release next month."
Heap of Trash Online, Not Just the Fault of LLM Slop But Enabled by Slop
Google News has just promoted a pair of prolific slopfarms
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, June 05, 2026
IRC logs for Friday, June 05, 2026