Messages

1

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: Phil Wyett & Debian harassment

« on: September 13, 2025, 01:24:08 pm »

Contributing code to the project does not entitle you to using their trademark without an agreement from Debian community

Actually, it does

Read the definition of legitimate interest

Read the definition of fair use

Fact check: somebody spent $120,000 on legal fees to have a lawyer ignore decades of unpaid voluntary work and write that 14 out of 2,700 domain names are inconvenient.

Fact check: the Debian Social Contract, point 3, says "we won't hide problems".  (Except for the Debian suicide cluster.)

Remember: the death on our wedding day, Adrian von Bidder-Senn, if it was a suicide, it could be a copy-cat suicide because another Debian Developer, Frans Pop, had sent his suicide note a few months before that.  In other words, the death of Adrian von Bidder-Senn could have been avoided.

A death that can be avoided is a manslaughter.  It is the second most serious crime after murder.  This death, which may be a crime in some jurisdictions, happened on our wedding day.

Manslaughter is such a serious crime.  Is that why somebody spent $120,000 on legal fees to fool you about what is really at stake here?

This is not about domain names.  This is about censoring leaks.  This is about people who spent $120,000 on legal fees to violate the transparency commitment of the Debian social contract.  This is about a death that could have been avoided.

Please go and check on the above facts and contact me privately when you are ready to discuss it in a more mature manner.  Asking me to repeat myself, in such tragic circumstances, is incredibly unreasonable.

2

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: Phil Wyett & Debian harassment

« on: September 13, 2025, 12:31:14 pm »

violated Debian's trademark

There are over 2700 domain names containing the Debian trademark

Every real co-author of Debian, everybody with a "legitimate interest", can use the trademark

With 2,700 domain names using the name Debian, why do you have this paranoid obsession with my 14 domain names?

Archive.org (Wayback machine) captured the contents of the Debian.day web site.  "bad faith" would imply that somebody forged the leaked messages.  But the leaked messages are not forgeries: there really was a suicide cluster in Debian and it was hidden in debian-private

The writings of the lawyer are libellous and I have challenged them in a new legal procedure. Therefore, his allegation of "bad faith" is a libel and anybody repeating it risks being sued for libel.

Given the connection to institutional abuse in the Catholic church, the rumor of "bad faith" is a tactical insult and people who created this rumor will face criminal prosecution for harassment and privacy offences.

3

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: Phil Wyett & Debian harassment

« on: September 13, 2025, 10:06:55 am »

14 domain names

They insulted my family when my father died.  Their ongoing harassment is a violation of privacy because they imposed it on us at a time of grief.

Had they simply apologized and stopped the violation of privacy, I may have simply given them the Swiss trademark for the cost of the registration fee (it cost me $500).

They spent $120,000 on legal fees to avoid all the solutions that involve apologizing.

Whenever somebody mentions the size of the Debian legal expenditures, they make a big panic to have the mailing lists censored.  Is it a coincidence that the forum is not continuously accessible now, could it be some kind of DoS attack now that I mentioned Debian gives money to lawyers but not to the people who do all the other work?

4

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: Phil Wyett & Debian harassment

« on: September 12, 2025, 02:10:53 pm »

An angry mob that violently hunts down Debian leadership and harms them?

Anybody planning a mob is wasting their time and energy.

Notice how in the middle of DebConf23, another volunteer died all by himself.  No mob was necessary.

They gave $120,000 to the lawyers but the volunteers who worked on DebConf23 did not receive any payment.  Not one dollar and not even one rupee.  In fact, they asked the volunteers to cough up some of their own money to pay for the kayak trip.  The volunteer who didn't contribute money did not receive a life jacket and he drowned.

All I do is document the facts.  I am not asking anybody to do anything.

5

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: Phil Wyett & Debian harassment

« on: September 12, 2025, 01:24:58 pm »

Once again, you try to guess about things you don't see and don't know anything about.

The things relevant here are the things that undermine the critical mass in the open source software projects and make the projects ineffective

Looking at the way GNOME publicly slighted their outgoing Executive Director, what do you think happens when you make a comment like that about an employee in Japan?  It is totally against their culture.  They go and jump off the roof.  We had a German developer who did exactly that in Debian.  Read about Jens Schmalzing

People have tried to speculate about Jens but as I don't have any proof I didn't publish anything more.

6

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: Phil Wyett & Debian harassment

« on: September 12, 2025, 12:42:01 pm »

What happened between GNOME and Steven Deobald is between them and not germane to this conversation

Every person is equal (article 1, Universal Declaration of Human Rights) and therefore defending all the victims is equally important.

It the matter is "between them", why did the GNOME board have to slight him publicly?

I don't care what the details are.  Even if one side or the other side tried to publish details after the fact, we might not be able to trust them.

The important thing for all of us is that GNOME and Debian using their websites to slight people is putting off other volunteers and developers.

People see these mantras about "feeling safe" in every newsletter and every web site and they form the impression that these groups are paranoid about feeling safe.  Feeling safe and being safe are not the same thing.  Some people feel more safe keeping away from groups that publicly denounce their employees and volunteers.

7

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: Phil Wyett & Debian harassment

« on: September 12, 2025, 10:37:57 am »

again focusing on negative energy instead of working towards more constructive outcomes

The negative energy doesn't come from me.  I opened the topic because of what happened to Phil Wyett and other people.  You turned it into a discussion about attacks on my family.

But have a look at the new post in the GNOME Foundation blog

Steven Deobald was an employee at GNOME.

Employees come and go in different companies all the time.

99.999% of companies do not make any public comment when an employee leaves.

GNOME Foundation writes:

The Foundation Board is extremely grateful to Steven and wish him the very best for his future endeavors.

and then they go on to snobby comments like

Despite these many positive achievements, Steven and the board have come to the conclusion that Steven is not the right fit for the Executive Director role at this time. We are therefore bidding Steven a fond farewell.

They are basically saying they want to have the last word.  They are giving a hint that they sacked him while trying not to make it a libel.  These are the snobby people who create and sustain negativity.  They can't let sleeping dogs lie.  They have to put a spin on everything.  Every time somebody resigns, every time somebody takes a vacation, somebody else on social media is making up a story about it.

Now think about it for a minute: will those words undermine Steven's next job?  Will other people want to work for GNOME and other organizations that will denounce them after they leave?

8

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: Phil Wyett & Debian harassment

« on: September 12, 2025, 10:17:08 am »

No the issue is that you are making statements that are demonstrably false and border on libel

Have you seen the things they wrote about my family and I when my father died?

you had legal judgements against you

No, I don't.  The judge retracted that because it was not valid.

I also published the letter from the Swiss Intellectual Property Institute to show it was not a valid judgment.

The rogue Debianists spent over $120,000 in legal fees in 2022 / 2023.  In other words, they paid strangers in wigs to write insults after my father died.

It's a lot of negative energy and surely it drags you down as well.

As I said, they are violating the privacy of my family.

They also violated the privacy of other volunteers.

Did you see my new blog post about the censorship in Mozilla?

9

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: Phil Wyett & Debian harassment

« on: September 12, 2025, 08:19:58 am »

I am curious if Raptor would actually ban somebody from the forum for a post that promotes the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Wouldn't that contradict a lot of their marketing?

When I attended the UN Forum on Business and Human Rights (video online) the slogan was "Stand up for human rights"

Once again, if rogue Debian collaborators want to reduce the state of hostility, they need to stop violating the privacy of my family.

10

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: Phil Wyett & Debian harassment

« on: September 12, 2025, 08:03:55 am »

but I don't see him willing to let go and move on

Copyright lasts for 70 years after the last author dies.  Why should any one of us have to "let go" of our copyright?

If you and two friends build a house together, you all become 33% shareholders.  The other two friends can't just take your share and tell you to "let go".  Your mentality is the mentality of theft.

Debian community has moved on

No, they are actively stalking me and broadcasting insults on the Debian web site.

At least once every week somebody sees the insults against my family and asks me a question about it.  As long as they are provoking people to talk about the death of my father, they are fully responsible for sustaining the hostility.

You were evicted as a tenant

My father died.  I resigned from some voluntary roles.  Why do you try to write the death of my father in such horrible terms?

You say I can't "move on" but then you try to insist that I did something wrong, when I have the death certificate of my father right here in front of me.  Do I have to send you a certified copy of that to wake you up to the extreme violation of my family's privacy?

What was the language regarding copyright holder rights in the Debian developer agreement you signed in order to be an official Debian developer?

Under copyright law, your right to recognition as an author or developer arises automatically upon creating something.

You only lose those rights if you sign a contract giving away your rights.  By default, co-authors have rights.

These rights are derived from Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

Article 27
1. Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the
community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and
its benefits.
2. Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests
resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the
author.

When you talk about banning and evicting people, you are talking about violations of Article 27(1)

When you remove somebody's name from the list of Debian Developers, or if you refuse to give Phil Wyett equal recognition on the list of Debian Developers, you are violating Article 27(2)

Instead of asking me these questions, why don't you post Article 27 to the debian-project mailing list and ask them to explain whether they respect human rights or not?

11

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: Phil Wyett & Debian harassment

« on: September 12, 2025, 12:07:17 am »

The Swiss Intellectual Property Institute said that the so-called "judgment" is not relevant or valid because I canceled the trademark.  Therefore, things you are quoting are irrelevant.  The judge retracted it and annulled his previous correspondence.

When you try to work out why they started the attacks against my family in 2018, looking at an invalidated judgment from 2023 will not help you because it was only created five years after they attacked my family.    Therefore, things you are quoting are irrelevant.

linked by the above statement from Debian

Debian Developers are joint authors under copyright law.  We are not employees and the Debian leader is not an employer.  So we can't give each other orders.  We can ALWAYS use the Debian trademark in cases of fair use and legitimate interest.  The WIPO web site says that in the UDRP. 

They told us that in the UDRP: Here it is.  The term "legitimate interests" is repeated many times.  Joint authors always have a legitimate interest in using the name of Debian because we all helped create it together.

If you are an employee of a company then you sign an employment contract and the contract usually has a paragraph in it where they tell you that you give the employer full copyright in all the code that you create.  That is why employees don't have legitimate interest but open source developers do have a legitimate interest in using the trademark.

resemble the obsessive paranoia you exhibit

If you are a landlord, as long as you own the property, you want to collect rent from the property.  Is that obsessive?

If you are an author, or in the case of a joint author of an open source product, you always have a right to recognition.

Some of the misfits started undermining my right to recognition in 2018.  I will never consent to somebody taking my name off the list of authors just as a landlord will never consent to somebody just moving in to a house without paying rent.

Debian is possibly the most inclusive of OSes and actively concerns itself with the mental health of its community

Why did one of the other developers die on our wedding day?  Why do we find his name on a petition about suicide in Kanton Basel?

Read the resignation letters from other people who quit.  You are contradicting many people who worked on Debian for years.  If you were not there working on Debian with us, if you did not read debian-private, and if you are not a doctor, why do you now consider yourself an expert on both Debian and mental health?

Your insinuation that other people can retrospectively extinguish our copyright after we did the work is an absurdity.

12

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: Phil Wyett & Debian harassment

« on: September 11, 2025, 01:19:41 pm »

I just want to repeat a comment I made much earlier in this discussion:

I do not see enough information to be sure either way

In many of these discussions about Debian, people only see 1% of the information.  99% of the information is hidden in debian-private and private IRC chats.

The PGP keys for Dr Norbert Preining and I were removed in 2018.  That was a period when I lost two family members.

The trademark was only registered in 2022.  The 14 disputed domain names were only registered in 2022.  Therefore, none of these things have anything to do with them violating the privacy of my family in 2018 when they removed the PGP keys and started spreading rumors by email and social media.

The fact that they keep making so much noise about the trademark, which was only registered four years after the fact, only confirms they didn't have any serious reason to hurt my family and I in 2018.

13

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: Phil Wyett & Debian harassment

« on: September 11, 2025, 12:36:09 pm »

dilution by similar works

None of the web sites contain any rival products.  I don't distribute any modified Debian ISO and I don't even make up my own Debian t-shirts.  Some people are doing things like that, not me.

The Debian Social Contract, point 3 tells us we will not hide problems.  Registering a Debian domain name and publishing copies of messages from debian-private is not "dilution".

You did not appeal the decision

I cancelled the trademark.  Therefore, there was no valid decision about the trademark because it is cancelled. A judge can not transfer a trademark once it is in the cancelled state.

Moreover, if the Debian trademark was canceled, there is no "appeal" because that would imply I wanted to un-cancel the trademark.  It is not possible to un-cancel a trademark.

declared your business bankrupt

I never declared my business bankrupt.  The Swiss entity is in liqudiation.  That is a normal procedure for closing a company.

If a business pays all the legitimate debts during the liquidiation then it does not go through a bankruptcy procedure.

Bankruptcy procedures only occur for businesses that don't pay their debts.  Anybody claiming I don't pay legitimate debts is committing libel.

Business owners are free to open and close company registrations when they want and for any reason.

In my case, the liquidation of the Swiss legal protection insurance undermined my confidence in Switzerland as a corporate jurisdiction.

You have found the exact line between free speech and libel

Look at the stories they created about Dr Jacob Appelbaum in 2016.  They started this pattern of creating libel.  It does not originate with me.

If you read through all the hundreds of messages about Dr Appelbaum on debian-private then you might become even more concerned than I am.  What they did to Dr Appelbaum was truly evil.

14

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: Phil Wyett & Debian harassment

« on: September 11, 2025, 11:29:54 am »

You are a victim of social engineering ...

and registered 14 different domains that violated the true Debian trademark.

Under copyright law, every co-author has a right to use the trademark.  The UDRP calls it legitimate interest.  People also refer to this as fair use.  For example, you can use the names of your previous employers on your CV and you don't need permission to use those names.

Fact check: over 2,743 domain names contain the Debian trademark (DNSlytics)

Therefore, the fact they only attack the 14 web sites where I publish my Debian work suggests they are censoring.  If this was about trademarks then they would dispute all 2,743 domain names.

hostile takeover of the project

A hostile takeover would require taking control of debian.org and taking control fo the private keys for the Debian archive keyring.  If any developer tried to obtain either of those things then I hope somebody would provide a very public and factual explanation of how it happened.  If neither the debian.org domain name or the private keys have ever been compromised then there has never been any "hostile takeover".

What we see are people who can't tolerate differences of opinion.  In other words, they behave like a cult.

15

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: Phil Wyett & Debian harassment

« on: September 10, 2025, 04:05:43 am »

your statements about the leadership of Debian and the behavior of non-straight white males

I'm talking about people from any group who form a group and pick out a solitary victim from the rival side.

I'm not saying that every non-straight-white-male engages in such behavior.  All I'm pointing out is that the Internet allows them to get into subgroups that have the critical mass to conduct bullying.  Some of those subgroups then take the next step and bully somebody, others don't.

The Zizians are an example of the phenomena although they are an extreme case.  Nonetheless, it is fair to suggest the Zizians never would have met each other without the Internet.  The same could be said for some far right groups.  I suspect that without social media, some of those people in far right groups would need a lot more time to find each other and get organized.

The Sovereign Citizens and the Zizians are examples of extremes and the Internet makes it easier for these extreme people to validate each other.

POTUS: We fight like hell.

I also pointed out in another blog the Australian far right had used exactly the same slogan one month before the Trump event.

My comments about FSFE were not intended to diminish other aspects of January 6.  I was simply demonstrating that certain FSFE overlords saw demoracy and voting as optional.  They offered annual elections as a gimmick to try and boost donations.  After one person donated a €150,000 bequest they took the voting away again.