Messages

16

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.

17

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.

18

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.

19

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.

20

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

« on: September 10, 2025, 01:41:43 am »

But two wrongs don't make a right.  Groups of women or groups of LGBTQ+ people assembling on social media to attack straight white males only contribute to more division.

Again, you suggest violence comes from diverse groups, when ...

I wrote "attack" in the general sense.

Statistically and historically, you may be right about far right groups made up of straight white males.  This actually happened in Melbourne just the other day.

Nonetheless, a group of transgender people who get together online and decide to make an example of a straight person is evil in its own way.  Even if their activity is entirely online and entirely psychological, it is still bullying and bullying coincides with a whole range of problems from alcoholism, to illegal drugs right up to suicides.

The same goes for women.  Groups of women working together to spread a lie seem to get away with it in the short term.  They celebrate every time some victim loses his job because of a lie.  Over the long term, however, people seem to be less willing to trust women because everybody knows these vendettas are purely political.  Look at how the prosecution of Bruce Lehrmann failed when one of the jurors went online and found a report about women who make false accusations, he printed the report and brought it into the jury room.  The trial was aborted and Lehrmann walked free.

In effect, #MeToo has become the boy who cried wolf, or perhaps the girl who cried wolf to be precise. When confronted with a compelling example of something that looked like a wolf, in the form of Mr Lehrmann, the jury was very hesitant to be 100% certain he was a wolf.

The various groups, including non-binary and women are making a lot of noise and when they get in a group they do attack people in a virtual sense.

21

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

« on: September 09, 2025, 12:09:52 pm »

And yet in spite of apparently having at least some knowledge of what was occurring, he remained silent.  You see, among a lot of straight white males, someone who scores with very young women is someone who is a hero to them.  I was in and around academia for many years, and I saw first-hand how female students were treated by untouchable faculty.  I also saw those who could have said something remain silent.

Many corporations tell their employees quite explicitly that you can't comment on social issues and bosses often give people strong hints not to put anything in writing that could appear in a future court case.  There are a whole range of rules and bad examples that keep people silent.

I also heard a lot of stories from women and they vary from very mild incidents to extremely serious cases of violence.  But two wrongs don't make a right.  Groups of women or groups of LGBTQ+ people assembling on social media to attack straight white males only contribute to more division.  The proof is clear in the results of the US election: pronouns in email signatures and many similar things were hard to defend in the long term.  All the energy used up fighting for the pronouns could have been put into other campaigns with more long term irreversible benefits.

If anything, the pronouns in email signatures provided a convenient target for the anti-woke agenda to mobilize their counter-movement.

22

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

« on: September 09, 2025, 02:31:02 am »

I have absolutely no doubt that his comments at the time drove off people who disagreed with him and supported the real victims, the very young girls that were recruited for Epstein.

His comment was actually cut in half and then replayed to people out of context.

When you look at the full email that RMS wrote about the situation, he had acknowledge earlier in the same paragraph that the women were under a coercive influence.

Sadly, the whole Internet works like that today, people are quoted out of context and then mailing lists are censored so that people can't correct things.  It happens over and over again.

Congruently, mentors who express support for RMS based on his contributions to the GNU operating systems and ecosystem are also likely to drive off the people whose needs are being addressed by DEI initiatives.

People were not only expressing support based on his contributions.  People express support based on the presumption of innocence.  People have a misunderstanding in their job and they have a beer together with their colleagues and they clarify the situation and move on.  In these online communities, there are certain people who want the power to have something akin to capital punishment, to completely destroy people.

Perhaps that is where Debian failed, and has a 70 to 1 male to female ratio?

We can't say they failed because we don't actually know what their goal was.  It was something like "GNOME has this internship thing, we should do it too"

Perhaps, Daniel, you could help Debian by investigating the causes of the 70 to 1 male to female ratio, examine the demographic profile of the people who got to choose the people that developed the program, and to seek out pro bono help from DEI experts who might be able offer professional-level management of such a program.

There are some clues about the problem.

Look at the men working alone at their computers without pay.

Diana von Bidder wrote an email about it after her husband died on our wedding day.  "I was glad that he was not only sitting alone in front of his computer"

There is some evidence that women are more inclined to be productive in social environments whereas men are comfortable working for extended periods alone.  Things like this may be a factor in how men and women spend their free time.

Therefore, rather than spending money to mentor and manipulate women to behave more like men, the objective of diversity may be more achievable if the way we work is overhauled.

A lot of genuine female developers also have social and economic pressure, for example, women's salaries are lower so they can't pay for a trip to a conference.  How many female developers can spend their vacation at DebConf if their boyfriend or husband is not interested in Debian too?  These social expectations are never really discussed.

But maybe women have a sixth sense for the problems with the Debian culture and they simply stay away from groups like this.

23

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

« on: September 08, 2025, 03:57:38 pm »

I do not feel Daniel's statements hold up to scrutiny, and I disagree with them.

Coming back to business:

Add up all the money Debian allocated to "diversity" over the years.

Then tell us: what did they get for that money?

What did we get for that money?

Could they spend the same money in a different way and get a better outcome?

And how can we even answer that question if we don't know the outcome we are aiming for?

The word "diversity" is not a measurable outcome.  Diversity is just a word.

24

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

« on: September 08, 2025, 02:48:15 pm »

When I talk about setting goals or quantifying results, I have never actually made any personal recommendation about how to do so, whether to use binary gender identity, disability, race or whatever as a factor.

I want to emphasize that point: when I was part of that team in Debian, we never even started a discussion about goal setting, we never even began to talk about which metrics are relevant.

Personally, I have no bias and no agenda for or against the gender questions, race, religion, age or any other personal characteristic.

Fact check the DebConf19 photo:

- the outgoing leader is sitting at a table with four women from Albanian heritage, the two women sitting closest to him are from Albania, the other two are Kosovan

- a few weeks later, the woman sitting closest to the leader won the Outreachy internship

- the woman next to her was given a job at GNOME Foundation

- after Outreachy, the first woman subsequently got a job at Wikipedia and then another job at GNOME

I don't want to give my personal speculation about that.  I just ask that you think about this: when you give all those facts to other women, do those women feel motivated to make technical contributions to Debian?  Or do they feel suspicious about the way Debian advances women?  Debian does not publish any data about the selection process, so I can't tell you how these situations evolved.  All I ask you to think about is how other women feel when they see these facts in the correct order.

25

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

« on: September 08, 2025, 12:49:20 pm »

I do not see corruption here.  I see a diverse and inclusive community attempting to fulfill their stated goals.

I do not see enough information to be sure either way

In the business world and in sport, we set a goal and we decide how to measure results before the initiative begins.

I was both mentor and administrator in the various programs for internships and diversity and I never recall anybody making goals at the outset or measuring results at the conclusion.

In the financial crisis, the Fed chief Ben Bernanke spoke about dropping money from helicopters.  The Fed has the power to print the money and if they don't have enough helicopters, they can print money to buy helicopters too.  In Australia, people are joking the Securency scandal went even further, they speculate the company printed money to bribe foreign governments to have Australia make their anti-counterfeit banknotes.  But as they are the ones with the trademark for anti-counterfeit polymer banknotes, we can't officially say the bribe money was counterfeit.  Despite having those incredible powers, the Fed and the people who run bribery schemes have a lot of very qualified people ready to measure the quantitative impact of their programs.

The free software organizations appear to drop money from helicopters but without any measuring.  There is a perception and some anecdotal evidence to suggest at least some beneficiaries are related to the helicopter pilots.

The first step is to ask people, before the application process opens, what is the goal of giving money to Outreachy or diversity travel tickets?

The second stop is to ask people, before the application process opens, how will we measure success at the end of the year/semester/season/conference or whatever period?

26

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

« on: September 05, 2025, 08:44:28 am »

... suggests those are cases of a non-straight white male community saying No to straight white males trying to impose their worldviews on others and the straight white males then claim they are victims of oppression and bullying.   ...

Dr Norbert Preining didn't try to impose a worldview, he simply used the wrong pronoun.  English is not his native language.

If the LGBT+ people want to share rooms with each other at DebConf they are free to do that.  Nobody is asking questions about what they do in their room.  But they are telling straight people we can't bring a partner to DebConf.  We can't share our room with a partner and we can't share the food with a partner.  But they invite LGBT+ people from external groups and they share the money with those people and they call it diversity.  Look at the big fuss about DebConf6 and the DebConf fight.  I was not at DebConf6 so I wasn't involved in that in any way.

Look at the DebConf25 budget:

expenses:travel:bursary:diversity                             10,000 EUR
    ; to do: to be discussed with the bursaries team

expenses:travel:bursary:general                               60,000 EUR
    ; to do: to be discussed with the bursaries team

The money is divided at a ratio of 6 to 1.

The typical straight to LGBT+ ratio in society is 10 to 1

The men to women ratio in Debian is 70 to 1

Therefore, the 6 to 1 ratio for travel funding is a bit odd.

They don't give a list of people who received the money so the rest of us don't know how much work those people do.

27

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

« on: August 20, 2025, 09:21:24 pm »

It is with the higher-ups

Techrights has many articles about their case in the UK High Court

More details will appear soon I suspect

Remember, it is not only about the people they attack publicly.  It is about thousands of other developers who are using open source software but not making any contributions because they fear public reprisals.

Every time I go into a job at some company, I always find a huge archive of bug fixes and patches that they can't be bothered sharing because of the perceived friction.

28

Operating Systems and Porting / Phil Wyett & Debian harassment

« on: August 19, 2025, 08:30:06 am »

On Sunday, Phil Wyett revealed he is another victim of cyberbullying in the Debian environment.  They were benefiting from his work every day but he didn't feel valued and he has quit.

A lot of people reached out to me after seeing news about Phil.  I don't have time to answer people personally but I did create a summary of the Phil Wyett & Debian controversy on my blog.

Have a look at the screenshot at the bottom, the huge number of packages he co-maintained.  He was very active on the debian-mentors list helping other newcomers.

I'm also updating the full history of Debian, based on debian-private.  New things are added into the timeline at least once per month.

For every one person who suffers like this, there are probably another 20 people who quit very quietly or don't join at all.

The impact of this decline is more acute for projects like POWER porting (and any other non-x86 architecture) because we don't have a lot of people here in the first place.

This is not about Phil and it was never about me either.

29

General Discussion / Re: Samsung PRO 980 1TB NVMe is working flawlessly

« on: March 20, 2025, 12:38:07 pm »

I'm using Fedora right now and my impression is they just don't do testing in general,

Fedora users and even the Fedora Developers are the testers.  Unpaid testers for Red Hat.

30

General OpenPOWER Discussion / police rumors, Talos II sold

« on: February 10, 2025, 05:20:32 pm »

Around FOSDEM, various people asked me about the "police" smear campaign.  It is extremely offensive to my family.  I actually resigned from some of my voluntary responsibilities around the time my father died.  It has nothing to do with police.

Jonathan Carter does not want every Debian author to have an equal chance in the elections.  FSFE even canceled their Fellowship elections.  Nonetheless, these people have no right to make defamation around the death of my father.

I put photographs on my blog.  People can look at the evidence in the photographs.

a) police arrested two Outreachy interns in Zurich, Switzerland and now the same two Albanian women were in close proximity to the crisis about Sonny Piers at GNOME

b) Switzerland is planning to ban Swastikas.  I photographed a Swiss woman with a Swastika tattoo but I have no connection to this woman or Nazism.  It is an odd coincidence, but my birthday is the Kristallnacht.

I used to row with a police officer.  He is one of the legends of policing in Australia and he won emergency practitioner of the year, a real life version of John McClane from Die Hard.  I have a lot of respect for the people who serve in the police and the military so I do not publish their names or other identifying details, nonetheless, it is a true story.

I sold both of my Talos II workstations but I was also very pleased with the reliability and features of the platform.  I am still interested in finding positive ways to ensure my open source development work is compatible with the POWER architecture and easily accessible to those people who choose any of the non-x86 architectures such as POWER and ARM64.