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Debian Turns 29 Amid Campaign of Censorship/Coverup (UPDATED)

Posted by Roy Schestowitz on Aug 16, 2022,

updated Aug 16, 2022

Debian turns 29!

> Today is Debian's 29th anniversary. We recently wrote about some ideas to celebrate the DebianDay, and several events have been planned in more than 14 locations. You can join the party or organise something yourselves too!

> Today is also an opportunity for you to start or resume your contributions to Debian. For example, you can have a look at our list of Debian Teams, install the how-can-i-help package and see if there is a bug in any of the software that you use that you can help to fix, start designing your artwork candidate for the next release, contribute small tips on how to install Debian on your machines to our wiki pages https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/, or put a Debian live image in an USB memory and give it to some person near you, who still didn't discover Debian.

Volunteers were punished for Debian Day suicide disclosures

↺ Volunteers were punished for Debian Day suicide disclosures

> In 2016, when people attacked Dr Appelbaum with a gossip campaign, the Debian leader had few reservations making a public statement against Dr Appelbaum's human rights.

> The allegations against Dr Appelbaum were nothing more than a social media mob. The suicide of Frans Pop was very real, with a body and a note to prove it. The Debian Social Contract tells us we will not hide problems. Therefore, why was this body hidden for twelve years?

> Suicides are a matter of public record. A coroner conducts an inquest in open court. The suicide was closely intertwined with Debian culture. Hiding the suicide was closely intertwined with hiding Debian's real face. Yet doing that is a slap in the face of the social contract.

> If Frans Pop had only become engaged with Debian a few weeks before his death and if he had some previous health issues then it would be correct to avoid public comment on that. But as he was working on a core part of the operating system, the Debian installer, he had been actively engaged with Debian for many years, he aligned the suicide with Debian Day and he communicated with us immediately before his death, it is unambiguous that Debian was a factor. It raises concern for the wellbeing of all volunteers. In a voluntary organization committed to transparency, this is exactly the type of risk that belongs in public.

> Here is the email where German developer Joerg Jaspert takes his stick to the volunteers who expressed concern about the suicide in public. Joerg's assertion that discussion is "missing every kind of common sense and decency" is nonsense. Common sense means different things for different people. For most volunteers, common sense would suggest doing all that is possible to avoid another suicide. For people in positions of authority over other volunteers, common sense means covering it up.

UDPATE

Bobby Borisov has more.

Debian GNU/Linux Turned 29, Happy Birthday!

↺ Debian GNU/Linux Turned 29, Happy Birthday!

> On this day, 29 years ago, Debian GNU/Linux, one of today’s oldest and most popular Linux distributions, began its journey to become a legend.

> The Linux world is diverse. So, of course, each of the hundreds of Linux distributions has its birthday. However, a few deserve to be recognized above all others, and Debian is one of them.

> On August 16th, 1993, the Debian Project was officially founded by Ian Murdock (then an undergraduate at Purdue University). At that time, the concept of a “Linux distribution” was new. So Ian intended Debian to be a distribution that would be made openly, in the spirit of Linux and GNU.

> Debian was the only distribution open for every developer and user to contribute their work when it began. Furthermore, the creation of Debian was sponsored by the FSF’s GNU project for one year (November 1994 to November 1995).

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