Hi all, This month it appears that at least two women (I hope I haven't missed any others) have spoken up about their experiences with Google and FSFE. FOSDEM has been accepting money from these organizations and maybe now is the time to reject their sponsorship. For those who don't know, FSFE receives significant[1] funding from Google, a model that has been compared to tobacco industry sock puppets[2]. Timnit Gebru was told to censor[3] a research paper. She refused and she was sacked. She had the courage to speak up. Susanne Eiswirt and Galia Mancheva were the only two female permanent employees at FSFE. According to another courageous blog[4], they spoke about why women are paid less and they were almost immediately fired, both of them. The intimidation described in those blogs is comparable[5] to the intimidation I faced after volunteers decided to elect me as a community representative. As I was never an employee of Google or FSFE, as I was elected, they couldn't sack me. After I resigned, they have been spreading defamation, sabotaging my contributions to other projects like Debian, sending me threats, just as described in Galia's blog. I first met FSFE at FOSDEM. I would hate to see any other visitor or volunteer suffer what Galia and other people, especially women, have described. During my time as fellowship representative, I frequently heard from people who didn't just quit FSFE, they quit free software altogether because their experience with FSFE was so bad. It is the duty of any elected representative to report that. Many free software organizations made a big fuss about banning Jacob Appelbaum yet /not one woman ever took him to court/. While I don't want to deter anybody with a genuine case from speaking up, I'm convinced that at least some of the claims against him appear to be exaggerated[6]. In comparison, multiple women have showed significant courage facing Google and FSFE in the courtroom. Therefore, should Google, FSFE and Matthias Kirschner face the same treatment as Appelbaum and be publicly shamed and excluded at every opportunity? Regards, Daniel -- Debian Developer https://danielpocock.com 1. https://fsfe.org/donate/thankgnus.en.html 2. https://venturebeat.com/2020/12/11/what-big-tech-and-big-tobacco-research-fu... 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timnit_Gebru 4. https://write.as/malinagalina/i-took-fsfe-to-court 5. https://fsfellowship.eu/court-case-fsfe-women-and-volunteers-face-modern-day... 6. https://danielpocock.com/debian-falsified-harassment-claims-appelbaum-expuls...