Google, FSFE, safety of women and volunteers
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...
Hello I feel concerned by such a mail. It is possible that people have been offended and that others have had bad behaviors. This does *not *mean for me that the institution / association they belong to are inherently bad and should be put aside or condemned without a normal and adequate procedure and instruction that must look at the details of the elements. See in this respect what takes place right now at the highest level in the US . We are first people here (and form me in the free and open-source world) where the institutions comes in second place not in first. This is what many people do not see nor understand and that makes a huge difference with other places. Best regards, Nicolas -- *Nicolas Pettiaux*,phd - nicolas@pettiaux.be
On 11/01/2021 09:23, Nicolas Pettiaux wrote:
It is possible that people have been offended and that others have had bad behaviors. This does *not *mean for me that the institution / association they belong to are inherently bad and should be put aside or condemned without a normal and adequate procedure and instruction that must look at the details of the elements.
There are some people in FSFE and Debian who are not bad people, but: Some of these people have told me that they received threats, they have to stay silent about the problems in these institutions or they will be subject to the public shaming, people will spread rumors about expulsions, their talks will be rejected at events. Some people in FSFE and Debian do not know what is happening because messages have been censored, just like this message was posted in December but only appeared on the FOSDEM mailing list on 10 January. Some people found out for the first time when a woman posted her blog about Matthias Kirschner and workplace bullying. When these people found out the truth, they immediately stopped giving money to FSFE. So we can not blame every individual person connected with these institutions. However, the way the institutions are functioning is very bad. Regards, Daniel
Some people found out for the first time when a woman posted her blog about Matthias Kirschner and workplace bullying. When these people found out the truth, they immediately stopped giving money to FSFE.
this was planned. folks, there is something that you need to be aware of. let me put it this way: if you were an intelligence agency (pick one) and you looked at how these projects such as Debian, FSF, GNU, TOR and so on have "principles" which cannot be bought with money, that compromise that agencies ability to fulfil their "National Security" agenda, would you sit idly by and do nothing? it should be blindingly obvious, to anyone with an ounce of rational common sense, that the answer is, "well duh of course not". next questions is, then: what would such an intelligence agency do? what strategies would they deploy? what tools do they have, and what training do they get? the answers are that they have vast funding, they have hacking, they have disinformation, they have psychological warfare, they have infiltration, and above all they have training to be PLAUSIBLY DENIABLE. remain in the shadows, do nothing that leads back directly to them. attack from multiple angles, a quick email there, a conversation from an "unrelated" company there, none of which *look* coordinated in any way. once infiltrated inside an organisation, their goal is to sow discord, waste resources, destroy relationships, and render the organisation ineffective either to its original goals *or* simply raze it to the ground. compromising an organisation so that it *looks* like it still has integrity on the outside but instead may be used as a further stepping stone to compromising and monitoring other free software projects, that is a bonus for them. the manipulation that went into Dr Stallman was masterful and executed beautifully. lies upon lies in combination with hacking the gnu.org mail server and Dr Stallman's personal blog, sending fake "outrage" messages to well-known lists using triple-barrelled fake female names, monitoring and interception of communications, fueling frenzied outrage from people who did not know that they are responding and reacting to layer upon layer of carefully crafted lies, i mean, you have to admire how well it was done. the point is here: this has been going on for some time. daniel, because he has some degree of awareness of these people, has been targetted already by these teams as a threat to exposing their existence. i am not going to tell you what you should or should not do, here. i am simply making you aware of both the existense of these organisations, and of the lengths to which they will go. the sad thing is that if they read up on Robert David Steele they'd find that collaboration on National Security, in combination with just having an open conversation with Free Software developers, would get them far better results. anyway. just so you know: i'm not going to respond further on this topic, in this forum. the above will suffice. l. -- --- crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68
Hi Daniel, At 2020-12-21Mon19:11:09+01, Daniel Pocock sent:
[…] 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]. 1. https://fsfe.org/donate/thankgnus.en.html
Wow, I was completely unware of Google being a “Gold” sponsor of the FSFE, confirmed on their own website, and I'm very disappointed and unhappy to discover this. I'm unhappy with Mozilla, FOSDEM, you say Debian too, for accepting sponsorship from Google who is repeatedly and increasingly making my daily life difficult, and now I learn that FSFE is influenced by Google too. The problem is that Google splashes so much money around that it's almost impossible to avoid their influence. I don't really know where to go from here, other than expressing my concerns publicly, which I've now done.
2. https://venturebeat.com/2020/12/11/what-big-tech-and-big-tobacco-research-fu...
That's a very interesting read indeed!
[…]
I don't have any means to verify such claims, and others have offered plausible counterexplanations. I can neither verify the claims nor the counterexplanations, and so I do not wish to comment on details that I cannot verify.
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.
Me too, and the good news is that harmless preventative measures can be taken even without being able to verify the claims that call for them.
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.
How do you suppose this can be prevented in future in a way that doesn't risk blaming people who may actually be innocent? Can we find prevention strategies that do not rely on the confirmation or denial of plausible deniabilities?
It is the duty of any elected representative to report that.
Indeed. But don't forget to report the other arguments that you represent too.
[…]
(skipping details that I cannot reliably verify)
and be publicly shamed and excluded at every opportunity?
I don't think that this is healthy, for multiple reasons: • Firstly, you should be very sure about your convictions before attempting to make someone else's life a misery, and with so much misinformation flying around these days, I urge you to think carefully about how you verify such allegations, else you could be doing someone else's dirty work for them. • Secondly, even if you can be absolutely certain that shaming is due, it most likely distracts from constructive agenda intentions at the public opportunity, and makes third parties feel bad about the public event for no fault of their own. Be aware of the side-effects to Free Software due to collateral damage of your shaming at an event about Free Software, especially to new attendees. • Thirdly, I propose that prevention strategies often do not even need to take a side – they merely need to acknowledge the dispute and act as if either side were truthful, finding ways to verifiably expose any future misbehaviour. I'm not seeking to justify past misbehaviours on the basis of being old, but I suggest that seeking to corner future lies may well expose systemic misbehaviours, and exposing those systemic misbehaviours has perhaps greater potential to warrant further investigation into older disputes in ways that are more likely to verify them than insufficiently-evidenced rumouring. I'm not a detective. Their are practical limits to my ability to verify, and so I have to try to find a strategy that is immune to lies from any party in a dispute. Kind of like how you don't need to know every detail to solve ‘knights & knaves’ puzzles, but rather construct your solution to be immune to the inevitable presence of lying somewhere in the problem. Best regards, James. -- Wealth doesn't bring happiness, but poverty brings sadness. https://wiki.FSFE.org/Fellows/JRHaigh Sent from Debian with Claws Mail, using email subaddressing as an alternative to error-prone heuristical spam filtering.
This list is for organising FOSDEM 2021. While I sympathise with some of the ideas and sentiments, I don't think it should be discussed on this mailing list. Maybe the organizers can set up a FOSDEM policy mailing list for this type of discussion, people take it there, and we stop the thread where it is now on this list? Thanks.
On 11/01/2021 18:59, pjotr.public445@thebird.nl wrote:
This list is for organising FOSDEM 2021. While I sympathise with some of the ideas and sentiments, I don't think it should be discussed on this mailing list. Maybe the organizers can set up a FOSDEM policy mailing list for this type of discussion, people take it there, and we stop the thread where it is now on this list?
In recent times, there has been a lot of talk about people who were enablers for Jeffrey Epstein, Donald Trump and other undesirables. FOSDEM can't be an enabler for Google and their sock puppets any more. Google is to the CIA what Blackwater are to the police. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=blackwater+pardon&t=ffab&ia=web FSFE now gets 20% of their budget from Google. This means that several booths at FOSDEM, including the FSFE booth, are part of a giant Google echo chamber. That is a massive fraud and deception upon the FOSDEM audience. This behavior is as much a risk to our community as the Solarwinds attack is a risk to US Government IT systems. Google is a zero day in broad daylight. Moving it to a side channel is covering it up. Look at the way Google kicked out Timnit Gebru before Christmas. Truly evil. Copy that move from the Google playbook: Kick Google and their sock puppets out of FOSDEM. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timnit_Gebru
Hi Daniel, [disclaimer: although I'm using my @fosdem.org email address, please note that the below is my personal opinion and I'm not speaking for any part of FOSDEM in an official capacity] On Mon, Jan 11, 2021 at 07:32:58PM +0100, Daniel Pocock wrote:
On 11/01/2021 18:59, pjotr.public445@thebird.nl wrote:
This list is for organising FOSDEM 2021. While I sympathise with some of the ideas and sentiments, I don't think it should be discussed on this mailing list. Maybe the organizers can set up a FOSDEM policy mailing list for this type of discussion, people take it there, and we stop the thread where it is now on this list?
In recent times, there has been a lot of talk about people who were enablers for Jeffrey Epstein, Donald Trump and other undesirables.
FOSDEM can't be an enabler for Google and their sock puppets any more.
FOSDEM isn't an enabler of anyone. Our sponsorship policy is very clear on what FOSDEM sponsorship does for a sponsor: - We accept your money - In return, we mention the name and/or logo of your company in a few places (where exactly depends on how much money you give us) - You have no other influence over us. Specifically, sponsors have no influence over the schedule (the content team is wholly separate from and independent of the sponsorship team) or over who does or does not get a stand (the decision which stands to accept is wholly based on merits and on whether it is about free software, not whether someone is a sponsor). To suggest otherwise is not based in facts and has no place on this mailinglist. A few years ago, someone put up banners at FOSDEM that decried the behavior of several companies, including Google and other companies that are also FOSDEM sponsors. FOSDEM staff did not take those banners away; the suggestion of doing so did not even come up. I believe that this example shows clearly that sponsorhip has no influence over FOSDEM.
Google is to the CIA what Blackwater are to the police. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=blackwater+pardon&t=ffab&ia=web
FOSDEM is neither police nor CIA, so I fail to see how this is relevant.
FSFE now gets 20% of their budget from Google. This means that several booths at FOSDEM, including the FSFE booth, are part of a giant Google echo chamber. That is a massive fraud and deception upon the FOSDEM audience.
FOSDEM is not the FSFE. As for the FSFE's booth, where people get their sponsorship from does not influence our decision on whether or not to decide they get a stand. [...]
Look at the way Google kicked out Timnit Gebru before Christmas. Truly evil. Copy that move from the Google playbook: Kick Google and their sock puppets out of FOSDEM.
On a personal level, I agree with you that some of the more recent actions which Google has been taking (such as firing Timnit) are questionable, at best -- and possibly quite evil at worst. However, at times like these I am reminded of a talk RMS gave at an early FOSDEM, where he pointed out that large corporations are usually many-headed beasts. One business unit of the large corporation may be evil, while at the same time another group within the very same corporation may be cooperating with the Free and Open Source movement as a model citizen. This is true for Google too, who develops a large amount of Free Software themselves (Kubernetes & Chromium are two examples; they also sent a not-insignificant amount of patches to the Linux kernel) As such, I don't think using a number of examples of how a company is a bad citizen while at the same time ignoring all the examples of how that same company is a good citizen, is in any way or shape helpful to the FOSDEM community. Google wishes to help FOSDEM in a financial manner. We should thank them for that, because without our sponsors FOSDEM simply wouldn't exist. And while I will agree with no reservations that there are certain ways in which I'd like Google to change its culture, I don't think discussing that is in any way or shape on topic for this mailinglist. Also, note that in "sponsors" I include all the attendees that buy a T-shirt at the info desk (or online, as the case may be); in fact the sum of attendee donations is probably larger than the money donated by most of our other sponsors. Thanks for your understanding. -- To the thief who stole my anti-depressants: I hope you're happy -- seen somewhere on the Internet on a photo of a billboard
On 12/01/2021 13:53, Wouter Verhelst wrote:
Hi Daniel,
[disclaimer: although I'm using my @fosdem.org email address, please note that the below is my personal opinion and I'm not speaking for any part of FOSDEM in an official capacity]
On Mon, Jan 11, 2021 at 07:32:58PM +0100, Daniel Pocock wrote:
On 11/01/2021 18:59, pjotr.public445@thebird.nl wrote:
This list is for organising FOSDEM 2021. While I sympathise with some of the ideas and sentiments, I don't think it should be discussed on this mailing list. Maybe the organizers can set up a FOSDEM policy mailing list for this type of discussion, people take it there, and we stop the thread where it is now on this list?
In recent times, there has been a lot of talk about people who were enablers for Jeffrey Epstein, Donald Trump and other undesirables.
FOSDEM can't be an enabler for Google and their sock puppets any more.
FOSDEM isn't an enabler of anyone.
Our sponsorship policy is very clear on what FOSDEM sponsorship does for a sponsor:
- We accept your money - In return, we mention the name and/or logo of your company in a few places (where exactly depends on how much money you give us) - You have no other influence over us.
Specifically, sponsors have no influence over the schedule (the content team is wholly separate from and independent of the sponsorship team) or over who does or does not get a stand (the decision which stands to accept is wholly based on merits and on whether it is about free software, not whether someone is a sponsor).
To suggest otherwise is not based in facts and has no place on this mailinglist.
The word "enabler" doesn't imply that Google controls the event. It does not imply that FOSDEM accepts orders from Google. People enable abuse even in cases where they do nothing. For example, in FSFE, there was an instance of harassment at the annual meeting. Two people immediately[1] resigned. Other people saw the harassment but they did not resign. Those people are enablers.
A few years ago, someone put up banners at FOSDEM that decried the behavior of several companies, including Google and other companies that are also FOSDEM sponsors. FOSDEM staff did not take those banners away; the suggestion of doing so did not even come up. I believe that this example shows clearly that sponsorhip has no influence over FOSDEM.
This is a very specific example. The large sums of money from a sponsor have an impact on every other person. Different people react in different ways. For example, in organizations without any money, maybe there are less fights. When organizations have a lot of money, there can be more fights. Another example: - female Google employees ask for equal pay, they are sacked.. - female FSFE employees ask for equal pay, they are sacked. The blog details[2] the similarities to Google culture in great detail. The Google culture is spreading like Covid, the germs transported into non-profit groups on the cash. This can infect any organization but as FOSDEM doesn't have employees, maybe it will not suffer identical symptoms.
Google is to the CIA what Blackwater are to the police. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=blackwater+pardon&t=ffab&ia=web
FOSDEM is neither police nor CIA, so I fail to see how this is relevant.
This is not so much about FOSDEM as it is about Google.
FSFE now gets 20% of their budget from Google. This means that several booths at FOSDEM, including the FSFE booth, are part of a giant Google echo chamber. That is a massive fraud and deception upon the FOSDEM audience.
FOSDEM is not the FSFE. As for the FSFE's booth, where people get their sponsorship from does not influence our decision on whether or not to decide they get a stand.
Maybe it needs to be a factor in future: if 5 groups all receive their money from Google, if the people at some booths are employees of Google, it is just Google hiding behind t-shirts and stickers.
Look at the way Google kicked out Timnit Gebru before Christmas. Truly evil. Copy that move from the Google playbook: Kick Google and their sock puppets out of FOSDEM.
On a personal level, I agree with you that some of the more recent actions which Google has been taking (such as firing Timnit) are questionable, at best -- and possibly quite evil at worst.
[snip]
Google wishes to help FOSDEM in a financial manner. We should thank them for that, because without our sponsors FOSDEM simply wouldn't exist. And while I will agree with no reservations that there are certain ways in which I'd like Google to change its culture, I don't think discussing that is in any way or shape on topic for this mailinglist. [snip] Many organizations choose to take a stand, for example, there has been a very successful campaign for pension funds to divest their shareholdings in tobacco companies:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=divest+tobacco+shares&t=ffab&ia=web Regards, Daniel 1. https://fsfellowship.eu/fsfe-resignations-and-expulsions/ 2. https://fsfellowship.eu/court-case-fsfe-women-and-volunteers-face-modern-day...
(resending with CC as it didn't appear on the list, please quote in full) On 11/01/2021 18:59, pjotr.public445@thebird.nl wrote:
This list is for organising FOSDEM 2021. While I sympathise with some of the ideas and sentiments, I don't think it should be discussed on this mailing list. Maybe the organizers can set up a FOSDEM policy mailing list for this type of discussion, people take it there, and we stop the thread where it is now on this list?
In recent times, there has been a lot of talk about people who were enablers for Jeffrey Epstein, Donald Trump and other undesirables. FOSDEM can't be an enabler for Google and their sock puppets any more. Google is to the CIA what Blackwater are to the police. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=blackwater+pardon&t=ffab&ia=web FSFE now gets 20% of their budget from Google. This means that several booths at FOSDEM, including the FSFE booth, are part of a giant Google echo chamber. That is a massive fraud and deception upon the FOSDEM audience. This behavior is as much a risk to our community as the Solarwinds attack is a risk to US Government IT systems. Google is a zero day in broad daylight. Moving it to a side channel is covering it up. Look at the way Google kicked out Timnit Gebru before Christmas. Truly evil. Copy that move from the Google playbook: Kick Google and their sock puppets out of FOSDEM. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timnit_Gebru
Hi Pjotr, At 2021-01-11Mon18:59:30+01, pjotr.public445@thebird.nl sent:
This list is for organising FOSDEM 2021. While I sympathise with some of the ideas and sentiments, I don't think it should be discussed on this mailing list.
This feels like a request for censorship to me.
Maybe the organizers can set up a FOSDEM policy mailing list for this type of discussion, people take it there, and we stop the thread where it is now on this list?
Maybe, but that would disrupt the 2 threads of discussion which even combined are already much less prominent than Google's sponsorship. It seems unfair to attenuate the smaller voices in the discussion. That said, I don't have a lot else to say anyway, on either thread, other than that Google's negative impact on my daily live is still ongoing. Best regards, James. -- Wealth doesn't bring happiness, but poverty brings sadness. https://wiki.FSFE.org/Fellows/JRHaigh Sent from Debian with Claws Mail, using email subaddressing as an alternative to error-prone heuristical spam filtering.
Dear all I fully agree with Pjotr. My feeling is also that the difference of culture between US and Europe is interfering. Free software is related to values, while open-source is interested with gains & benefits, for example money. What we see here also is that for people who have not been educated to values (like too many American people who are eg republicans today, but not only) are mixing things up and cannot behave. While we need money, also in the free and open-source world, too often money and property altogether pervert people. Please fellow American people, be moderate and well-behaved, do not believe that it is possible to buy everything and also reject institutions the minutes after. Change your world (and the importance of money, as Lawrence Lessig tried to do), and do not try to impose everywhere your views. Europe will never be the US and we can manage ourselves, we have done for thousands of years. Thanks, Nicolas Le 11/01/21 à 18:59, pjotr.public445@thebird.nl a écrit :
This list is for organising FOSDEM 2021. While I sympathise with some of the ideas and sentiments, I don't think it should be discussed on this mailing list. Maybe the organizers can set up a FOSDEM policy mailing list for this type of discussion, people take it there, and we stop the thread where it is now on this list?
Thanks. _______________________________________________ FOSDEM mailing list FOSDEM@lists.fosdem.org https://lists.fosdem.org/listinfo/fosdem -- *Nicolas Pettiaux*,phd - gsm +32.496.24.55.01 - nicolas@pettiaux.be
participants (7)
-
Daniel Pocock -
J. R. Haigh -
Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton -
Nicolas Pettiaux -
pjotr.public445＠thebird.nl -
stephan -
Wouter Verhelst