Insider manipulation of DC13 site selection, and apparent coverup
For a period during the deliberations for DC13 site selection some anonymous donors were offering money to Debconf on condition that Vaumarcus was selected. This offer (actually a loan) was withdrawn when the donors got cold feet. These anonymous donors were in fact not third parties at all. They were persons in positions of responsibility helping to organise Debconf 13. At least one the Debconf chairs knew this; furthermore this information was not disclosed to at least one other Debconf chair, who therefore remained ignorant of the true circumstances and was dependent on rumour and hearsay. Worse, the only public statement on this the matter by members of the Debconf organisation wrongly claims that the donors were not in positions of authority or governance in relation to Debconf. I'm told that the DC13 contract with the venue has already been signed, although this information is not public as far as I can tell. If it had not then I would have asked for: - Withdrawal of the anonymous donors from Debconf organisation - Reconsideration of the choice of Switzerland as host country - Reconsideration of the site selection by a committee not tainted by this manipulation As it is it is difficult to see the best way forward. If it is possible to hold a Debconf without the participation of the anonymous donors in positions of responsibility, they should be asked to step aside. I have also heard that - perhaps in response to agitation from people like myself - the DC13 fundraising group have further extended the culture of secrecy (as my source puts it) by moving to a newly-restricted repository. As far as I can tell (murk still abounds) these problems arise from the attitudes of the DC13 local team. Switzerland is known abroad for many things. One of them is its culture of banking secrecy. I would like it to be completely clear to everyone that within Debconf a culture of banking secrecy, or of secrecy in general, is wholly unacceptable. Now we are unfortunately stuck with the situation. In some sense the local team have the entire project over a barrel because they can threaten to walk away and leave us with a large bill. So perhaps I am doing harm by posting this message. However, I really felt I couldn't sit on this information any longer. At the very least we should make sure that nothing like this can ever happen again. Ian. Timeline as far as I know: On the 30th of November an informant emailed me with various allegations which now seem to have been substantially true. As a result I asked, in public, amongst other things: 6. Were the proposed donors in positions of authority or governance in relation to Debconf ? Examples of people in positions of authority or governance in relation to Debconf include the DPL, the DPL helpers tasked with Debconf-related tasks, people involved with Debconf accounting on behalf of SPI or FFIS, and of course members of the Debconf global or local teams. On the 4th of December one of the Debconf chairs, Holger, responded in public: 6. Were the proposed donors in positions of authority or governance in relation to Debconf ? no My informant had told me the alleged names of the anonymous donors and that did not accord with the answer I was given. So I immediately wrote to another of the Debconf chairs, who had already emailed me to tell me they didn't know the details either, to put these names to Holger and ask Holger to consider whether his answer needed to be corrected. On the 6th of December a member of one of the DC13 teams responded to me in private email with the contradictory answer: 6. Were the proposed donors in positions of authority or governance in relation to Debconf ? Examples of people in positions of authority or governance in relation to Debconf include the DPL, the DPL helpers tasked with Debconf-related tasks, people involved with Debconf accounting on behalf of SPI or FFIS, and of course members of the Debconf global or local teams. According to your examples, yes. I chased the other Debconf chair again and they chased Holger, but without success. I asked the DC13 team member's permission to forward their email to -discuss. They consented but said they thought it wouldn't help improve the situation. I didn't want to drop them in it. However, that DC13 team member did tell me that the DPL was fully informed, with all the details, before the DPL approved the DC13 budget. I also asked a senior and respected project member for advice about how to proceed, as I felt I needed a second opinion. Unfortunately they weren't able to recommend more besides perhaps starting further private discussions. Today, having slept on it I think I can sit on this no longer. -- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive:
Re: Insider manipulation of DC13 site selection, and apparent coverup
Ian Jackson writes (Insider manipulation of DC13 site selection, and apparent coverup): Switzerland is known abroad for many things. [etc] It's been pointed out to me that that paragraph (which I have cut out most of to avoid repeating it) unfairly tars the whole of Switzerland with the same brush. It's not proper to suggest that Swiss people in general are secretive. So I apologise for that, and retract those comments. Ian. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20680.31085.836687.731...@chiark.greenend.org.uk
Re: [Debconf-discuss] Insider manipulation of DC13 site selection, and apparent coverup
On Wed, Dec 12, 2012 at 11:54:05AM +, Ian Jackson wrote: However, that DC13 team member did tell me that the DPL was fully informed, with all the details, before the DPL approved the DC13 budget. Please name names or facts to support this or, alternatively, drop it. - My budget approval mail (subject to conditions) [1] is dated November 26th. Before that, I've tried to stay as far away as possible from DebConf13 organization, pretty much as I've done in the past 3 years as DPL for previous DebConf. Not because I'm mean, but simply because I've no spare energies to devote to DebConf organization and I've always trusted the DebConf Team to do a good job at that. My activities in DebConf organization has basically remained at the level of answering, as DPL, to the question I got asked from the team, on mostly budget-related manners. My main involvement in DebConf organization ever has mostly been at a process level, to strengthen the formal relationship between DebConf organization and Debian as a Project (see the DebConf11 BoF, the chairs delegations, and my various 'bits from the DPL' entries on this matter over the years). - As I recall, the first time I've heard about this anonymous donation is from your mail to -project [2], that is dated November 30th, 4 days later than [1]. - Later on, on December 2nd according to my IRC logs, a DebConf team member insisted, on the basis of I think you should know it, to give me some background about that anonymous donation --- that is 6 days later than [1]. So, I do *now* know more about this matter, but I didn't at the time of the budget approval. Now, even if I've never considered long term memory to be one of my strong suites, I do suspect your source is wrong --- at least on this point. [1]: http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.debian.conference.team/8996 [2]: https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2012/11/msg00027.html I think the above clarification was in order, because you were asserting (based on sources that are unknown to me) something about myself which AFAICT is not true. On the more general matter, that you are clearly still very much interested in, you probably have noticed that I didn't change my mind (i.e. un-approve the budget) based on what I've been told on December 2nd. This is because I'm in stark agreement with the position that Russ expressed on -project [3]. I agree with you that a donation coming from a DebConf team member with strings attached to a venue would have been unappropriate. And that is the conclusion that has been reached by the team (quotes because it's not clear to me how the sponsorship sub-team is structured or works). That was indeed the expected outcome, I'm happy it's been achieved --- well in advance wrt budget approval and before my knowledge about all this issue --- and I found no further reasons to complain. [3]: https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2012/12/msg00034.html Cheers. -- Stefano Zacchiroli . . . . . . . z...@upsilon.cc . . . . o . . . o . o Maître de conférences . . . . . http://upsilon.cc/zack . . . o . . . o o Debian Project Leader . . . . . . @zack on identi.ca . . o o o . . . o . « the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club » signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: [Debconf-discuss] Insider manipulation of DC13 site selection, and apparent coverup
Stefano Zacchiroli writes (Re: [Debconf-discuss] Insider manipulation of DC13 site selection, and apparent coverup): On Wed, Dec 12, 2012 at 11:54:05AM +, Ian Jackson wrote: However, that DC13 team member did tell me that the DPL was fully informed, with all the details, before the DPL approved the DC13 budget. Please name names or facts to support this or, alternatively, drop it. As you will see, I have sent you a mail, CC the DC13 team member in question, and quoting what they said to me in email. Hopefully they will respond. - Later on, on December 2nd according to my IRC logs, a DebConf team member insisted, on the basis of I think you should know it, to give me some background about that anonymous donation --- that is 6 days later than [1]. So, I do *now* know more about this matter, but I didn't at the time of the budget approval. Thanks for the clear explanation of the timeline from your point of view. I think perhaps the DC13 team member is confused about when the approval happened. Ian. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20680.34015.538.913...@chiark.greenend.org.uk
Re: [Debconf-discuss] Insider manipulation of DC13 site selection, and apparent coverup
Stefano Zacchiroli writes (Re: [Debconf-discuss] Insider manipulation of DC13 site selection, and apparent coverup): On the more general matter, that you are clearly still very much interested in, you probably have noticed that I didn't change my mind (i.e. un-approve the budget) based on what I've been told on December 2nd. This is because I'm in stark agreement with the position that Russ expressed on -project [3]. I agree with you that a donation coming from a DebConf team member with strings attached to a venue would have been unappropriate. And that is the conclusion that has been reached by the team (quotes because it's not clear to me how the sponsorship sub-team is structured or works). That was indeed the expected outcome, I'm happy it's been achieved --- well in advance wrt budget approval and before my knowledge about all this issue --- and I found no further reasons to complain. [3]: https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2012/12/msg00034.html I should say, thanks for clarifying your position on this. Ian. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20680.34793.937095.604...@chiark.greenend.org.uk
A Broken Linux Link on Your Site - Follow-up
Hi Michele, I wanted to follow up with you and make sure you had received my email I sent a little bit ago regarding the broken link on your site debui.vlsm.org/releases/slink/alpha/ch-Systemvoraussetzungen.de.html which links to http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/kharker/linux-laptop/. If you are still updating your website, I have a similar resource that you can replace the broken link with if you are interested. Let me know! Link Replacement: http://www.learnstuff.com/running-linux-on-your-computer/ Best regards, Erin Williams -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/g8rq2u3e-rbbb-jydl-1peb-rzg4ctewv...@gmail.com
