Messages

1

Open Source and Libre Systems / ActBlue: disappearance of IT director, Decklin Foster & Debian

« on: April 17, 2026, 08:31:38 am »

ActBlue is the fundraising platform for the US Democrats and some affiliated groups.

There is quite some controversy about their ability to protect the system from foreign interference.  It is well covered in the press and some official reports from committees so I'm not going to elaborate on whether those accusations are valid or not.

Nonetheless, their former IT director is a Debian Developer.  They also worked in Harvard helping with research into depression.  They disappeared.

I pulled out various messages and links to relevant material and published them all in a single page for those who want to do fact checking.

Some of their old blog posts may be worth a deep-dive.  The names of people they were connected to.

2

Open Source and Libre Systems / Debianism: voting to prioritize diversity over freedom and security

« on: March 23, 2026, 01:07:07 pm »

Debian elections are under way.

The nominations were due on Friday the 13th and only one person nominated.  People still have to vote, it is a choice between accepting and rejecting the candidate.

The candidate is the wife of a male developer but she does not declare the conflict of interest.

In parallel, there is a public CIVS poll where anybody can now cast a vote.  The community poll also includes Dr Norbert Preining

Having nominated on Friday the 13th, the votes finish on 17 April, the anniversary of a notorious Debian death that took place on our wedding day.  This was the source of a lot of the conflict in the community over 15 years now.

Sruthi Chandran has said she wants to focus on diversity and there is a big risk that more developers will be humiliated or blackmailed.

Sruthi Chandran is one of the DebConf organising committee but they never provided any public report when Abraham Raji died at DebConf.  When two workers at Amnesty International died they had external consultants prepare independent reports about the workplace.

Please use the debian-vote (subscribe) mailing list to ask questions of the candidate(s).

3

General OpenPOWER Discussion / Queensland Health, IBM's 12 year ban and the future of POWER

« on: March 02, 2026, 05:45:40 pm »

I put up a fresh blog about Queensland Health's IBM fiasco.  The whole company, including POWER components, was subject to a ban for 12 years in the state of Queensland public sector.

It is worth reading the official report and thinking about how it translates to behaviour in the Linux ecosystem.

Has anybody got any feeling about the future of the POWER platform?

Are any other vendors likely to come forward with a 100% open CPU like the POWER9?

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Open Source and Libre Systems / Re: Open source aspirations of credibility exploited to legitimize Bitcoin

« on: February 28, 2026, 02:47:29 am »

I started putting some of my observations in blog posts, this one begins to cover the relationship with open source phenomena

I don't have a comment overall, but I find it ironic that very early on in his post, Daniel posts an 2011 email from the debian-private mailing list in which Philip Hands says "Likewise IANAL, but as I understand it, if one does not defend a trademark, one risks losing it."

If you accept Bitcoin from anybody who wants to use your trademark and then the Bitcoins lose all their value, what was the point?

A reminder to the readers that after Daniel had been expelled from Debian and stripped of his developer status,

I resigned from some voluntary activities at a time when I lost two family members. People spreading rumours about relationships with interns are lying, please read the proof about the relationships

There is nothing in copyright law to say people can expel each other.  If authors stop working together they still have to recognise the status of their peers.  Not respecting the status of a co-author is not expulsion, it is plagiarism.

he registered multiple domains with "debian" in them, forcing Debian to file suit against Daniel to defend their trademark (Daniel was ordered to turn over the domains).

DNSLytics found over 2,850 domain names containing the Debian trademark.  They did not start a trademark dispute about any of those domains.  They only attacked approximately a dozen domains registered by me because they want to censor debian-private emails revealing the the real history of Debian

Daniel states Debian has spent $120,000 in legal fees as a result of his actions.

In every serious development team I've worked in, if you have a dispute between people, you have a meeting and you look each other in the eye and you sort it out.

Debian didn't spend $120,000 because of my actions.  They spent $120,000 to avoid looking me in the eye.  They spent $120,000 to avoid apoligising to my family.  They spent $120,000 because they want other developers to be afraid of them in future.  They hope they can give people orders and people will obey them out of fear.  That is modern slavery.

FSFE received a bequest of EUR 150,000.  That is money that probably was meant for the real FSF.  The Fellowship had elected me as their representative and I didn't want to see the money wasted so I tried to provide some constructive suggestions about how to use that money.  The FSFE lost over $500,000 because they didn't listen to when we tried to discuss it

5

Open Source and Libre Systems / Open source aspirations of credibility exploited to legitimize Bitcoin

« on: February 25, 2026, 06:46:51 am »

Free / Open source is not absolutely perfect or secure but many people feel it gives a better hope of security and independence than proprietary software.

Over many years, proponents of Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency have tried to align themselves with open source developers and well known projects or organisations.

Many people have remained neutral about this topic up to now.  Recent news reports talk about a "death spiral" or "crypto winter" after the BTC price crash.

Does anybody feel projects should do more to distance themselves from Bitcoin?

Could Linux distributions be legally liable for including Bitcoin packages in their distribution?

When Bitcoin  does implode, whether it is next week or in 10 years, could it impact the reputation of other open source initiatives and people promoting geeky innovation?

What would be the criteria for an open source project, such as a Linux distribution, to include or exclude a particular Cryptocurrency?

I started putting some of my observations in blog posts, this one begins to cover the relationship with open source phenomena

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Open Source and Libre Systems / Re: Censorship pressure on Raptor, messages missing

« on: February 23, 2026, 07:22:50 am »

When the conversation begins to focus on you,

so you admit stalking me

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Open Source and Libre Systems / Re: Censorship pressure on Raptor, messages missing

« on: February 23, 2026, 06:59:18 am »

Now, Daniel, do you spent any time contributing to open source efforts in a manner that does not seek to tear down what others have created?

What am I tearing down when I documented the cases of volunteers being tricked to join the fake FSFE instead of the real FSF?

If you did so much work yourself, why do you think tricking people to give time and money to fake FSFE is acceptable?

8

Open Source and Libre Systems / Re: Censorship pressure on Raptor, messages missing

« on: February 23, 2026, 06:29:48 am »

Isn't it too late for people to see the doctor after they joined the there is no Debian Suicide cluster?

I am suggesting you need to see a doctor.

Have you ever paid any open source developers for the work we do?

Are you writing and publishing any code yourself?

Or you only contribute medical advice?

9

Open Source and Libre Systems / Re: Censorship pressure on Raptor, messages missing

« on: February 23, 2026, 06:08:41 am »

Extreme position exhibiting paranoia. 

Are you saying there is no Debian Suicide cluster?

Or are you saying that loss of life in such a group doesn't justify any detailed investigation and report?

"I think you should see a doctor about that."

Isn't it too late for people to see the doctor after they joined the there is no Debian Suicide cluster?

10

Open Source and Libre Systems / Re: Censorship pressure on Raptor, messages missing

« on: February 23, 2026, 05:52:20 am »

Again, I see all the hallmarks of mental health issues ...

I see somebody pretending to be a doctor

Once again, if you are such a brilliant psychiatrist, please answer: are you telling everybody that the
Debian suicide cluster is all because of me and not because of the cultural defects of groupthink?

11

Open Source and Libre Systems / Re: Censorship pressure on Raptor, messages missing

« on: February 23, 2026, 05:25:27 am »

your actions would harm Debian

So you are saying all the people who died are dead because of me?

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Open Source and Libre Systems / Re: Censorship pressure on Raptor, messages missing

« on: February 23, 2026, 04:21:22 am »

I haven't attacked you at all, Daniel.  This again is consistent with your far-right attitudes, where you strike out at people and then claim to be the victim.

In the same sentence, you say you haven't attacked me and then you try to demonize me with the "far-right" classification

In one of your posts, you compared yourself to a woman who says no, but in reality you are the relentless pursuer of Debian, who has repeatedly said no to you but you never walk away.

Debian diversity statement says everybody is welcome.  Therefore, if everybody is welcome but some people are being told "no", those people are victims of discrimination and the diversity statement is a lie.

Nonetheless, people can not say "no" to recognition of our copyright interest.  Saying "no" to recognition is plagiairism.

As for my attacking you as a "Debian developer," in fact, it is Debian who says you are not a "Debian developer."  Debian is trademarked.  Your contract with Debian was rescinded and any rights to use the name with it.  You are misrepresenting yourself.  A correct title could be "excommunicated Debian developer," but to represent yourself as an authorized Debian developer with commit privileges is a falsehood.

The email archives show the word Debian Developer in use from 1996 and earlier, many years before the trademark.

Most people understand a Debian Developer is somebody who has the skill, integrity and history of doing the work.  Those who tick all those boxes have the right to use the term Debian Developer.

I have repeatedly reminded you that these insults appeared at a time when I lost two family members.  Yet you keep repeating the same insults.

Your personal blog has repeated posts with anti-LGBTQ themes and support for far-right authoritarian strongmen.  I quote from your blog and show you have mental health issues, you respond by locking the thread.

There is nothing "anti-LGBTQ" here.

The blog talks about conflicts of interest.  It looks at heterosexual conflicts of interest and it looks at LGBTQ conflicts of interest with equal concern.  The gender is not the reason for those blogs, it is about the conflicts of interest.

I have never called for censoring your posts, but

I never said it was you.  I simply asked Raptor / the site admin to clarify who made those requests and show us exactly what they wrote.

13

Open Source and Libre Systems / Re: Censorship pressure on Raptor, messages missing

« on: February 23, 2026, 01:41:02 am »

... at which point we simply decided that the posts in question had strayed so far away from the nominal purpose of these forums that we didn't want to leave the two posts up on our site.

The post by the other user had strayed and I had responded to it as a right-of-reply.  Together, I agree these messages had detracted from the original intent of the topic.  I noticed the same thing happened in multiple topics that I had created.

Note we are not weighing in at all on the validity of either side of the protected attribute argument,

Having looked at the messages again, I feel that the protected attribute was mentioned for factual purposes and not to vilify anybody.  It is particularly relevant when two or three people in a group all have the same protected attribute.

Looking at the bigger world of politics, I saw many news reports about a person with a weapon at Mar-a-Lago.  So far, all the news reports mention, in a factual sense, the person was a man.  They are not seeking to vilify men, they are just reporting a fact.

Very regrettably, when talking about certain open source software projects, certain protected attributes appear to have had an extreme impact on collaborators.  Whenever a straight white male is publicly humiliated, it is hard to defend that person without factual reference to the people who inflicted the humiliation.  Those references are not intended for the purposes of vilification or revenge, they are only for establishing fact.

If the person who disputed the thread has made any more specific accusation about vilification of the protected attribute then it would be useful to see their accusation otherwise it isn't possible to respond to it.

14

Open Source and Libre Systems / Re: Censorship pressure on Raptor, messages missing

« on: February 22, 2026, 05:13:19 pm »

We're not trying to censor anyone.

The point I was making is that other people sending demands to Raptor are trying to achieve censorship.  Once again, I would kindly ask you to consider posting copies of the demands you received from third parties.  Combined with the same efforts in other forums, I feel these demands amount to a pestering campaign.

In general, we've tried to provide a wide latitude for various opinions without detracting from the primary purpose of these forums, specifically, the discussion of self-sovereign computing on OpenPOWER systems.

According to most studies in computer security, social engineering is a significant risk.

What one person calls politics or culture war is what another person calls social engineering attack.

Raptor users appear to be motivated by the hope of having a higher level of security so I felt the coverage of social engineering attacks is relevant.

We would prefer that all forum participants be respectful of the legally protected attributes (gender, religion, etc.) of others, and for discussion on those particular topics to take place elsewhere.  This is primarily to avoid "hot button" topics that are not related in any significant way to the primary purpose of these forums, and is not attempted censorship, rather it is to keep discussion at least tangentially related to the core purpose of the forums.

As the post is deleted, I can't easily remember exactly what was in it and I can't reply to whether it was challenging any protected attributes.  Nonetheless, the focus of the post was on the social engineering and there was no intention to be disrespectful to those attributes.

Some extremists are nitpicking any post that mentions women.  I feel those people are overreacting and often trying to avoid responding to the substantive issue in a particular email or forum thread.  So they latch on to some metaphor or poor grammar and they cry murder.

15

Open Source and Libre Systems / Censorship pressure on Raptor, messages missing

« on: February 22, 2026, 01:04:43 pm »

I received the following by private message.  I agree with the decision to have a separate area in the forum for open source politics.

I mildly agree with the decision to move the topic about the Debian lawsuit from the operating systems section to the water cooler section.

Each time I start a topic, I notice that Tim Kelly posts messages attacking my credibility as a developer and most of his messages make no reference to the topic itself.

Nonetheless, if people are lobbying Raptor to censor things, I feel their messages should all be published.

In the process of moving the topic, I notice the last message that I posted in the topic was lost and I kindly request that it be reinstated.