Bonum Certa Men Certa

Matthias Kirschner & FSFE People Trafficking, coercion of volunteers

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Apr 15, 2024

Reprinted with permission from the Free Software Fellowship.

Bounties have recently been offered for evidence of defamation and other malicious actions from the management of free software communities. This incredible picture comes from Albania.

Matthias Kirschner, FSFE President took controversial paternity leave in March and April 2018 while volunteers were doing most of the work without pay. These are facts.

Upon his return, he immediately left his wife Kristina to change the nappies and went back out to another OSCAL conference in Tirana, Albania during May 2018. He had attended OSCAL more than once.

This picture captures the happy daddy with a bunch of women at least ten years younger. Readers may recognize some of the women. All these young women appear far more dignified than the President of the FSFE. Some of them are developers, the President of the FSFE never wrote any code. The local drink is called Raki.

There have been serious concerns expressed about trafficking of women and volunteers in Albania's Open Labs group. The photo is from the Pazari i Ri fish market.

FSFE's REUSE campaign promotes Modern Day Slavery

FSFE, a registered charity in Germany, has now created a dedicated micro-site for their REUSE campaign.

What is this campaign about? Well, FSFE is asking unpaid volunteers to spend extra time adding more license text to our work. Their campaign asks us to do that for free, to spend time working on license text and spend more time running a tool to check the license text. Why should unpaid volunteers spend time and effort doing this? Why don't we just spend more time writing code? Well, the answer is buried in the front page of the micro-site:

Kirschner: A REUSE-compliant project makes the jobs of legal experts and compliance officers much easier.

Kirschner is talking about the legal experts and compliance officers in very large companies like Google, Amazon and IBM, his sponsors.

Is it really appropriate for a taxpayer-subsidized charity to be bullying unpaid volunteers to do this extra task for free and helping those big greedy companies? This doesn't sound like a real charity. It has just been revealed that Microsoft paid $0 in tax on the $314 billion surplus from transactions through Ireland in 2020. Here is that definition of People Trafficking from the US State Department:

Human trafficking can include, but does not require, movement. People may be considered trafficking victims regardless of whether they were born into a state of servitude, were exploited in their home town, were transported to the exploitative situation, previously consented to work for a trafficker, or participated in a crime as a direct result of being trafficked. At the heart of this phenomenon is the traffickers’ aim to exploit and enslave their victims and the myriad coercive and deceptive practices they use to do so.

People tricked into running the FSFE REUSE tool may be victims of trafficking within this definition. Remember, when women in FSFE's office asked to be paid for all the hours they work, Kirschner sacked them all.

Matthias Kirschner, Tirana, Albania, women, girls, Outreachy

People trafficking is a real problem

Undercover police in London released this photo of a woman being trafficked by an Albanian man in Oxford Street, London.

Matthias Kirschner, Chris Lamb, Oxford Street, London, Albanian women, people trafficking, modern slavery

Matthias Kirschner, Tirana, Albania, women, girls, Outreachy

Other Recent Techrights' Posts

GNU/Linux Reaches 6.5% in Canada (Including ChromeOS), Based on statCounter
Not many news sites are left to cover this, let alone advocate for GNU/Linux
The Only Thing the So-called 'Hey Hi Revolution' Gave Microsoft is More Debt
Microsoft bailouts
FUD Alert: 2024 is Not 2011 and Ebury is Not "Linux"
We've seen Microsofers (actual Microsoft employees) putting in a lot of effort to shift the heat to Linux
 
The FSF Ought to Protest Against UEFI 'Secure Boot' (Like It Used To)
libreplanet-discuss stuff
People Who Defend Richard Stallman's Right to Deliver Talks About His Work Are Subjected to Online Abuse and Censorship
Stallman video removed
GNU/Linux Grows in Denmark, But Much of That is ChromeOS, Which Means No Freedom
Google never designs operating systems with freedom in mind
Links 16/05/2024: Vehicles Lasting Fewer Years, Habitat Fragmentation Concerns
Links for the day
Links 16/05/2024: Orangutans as Political Props, VMware Calls Proprietary 'Free'
Links for the day
TechTarget (and Computer Weekly et al): We Target 'Audiences' to Sell Your Products (Using Fake Articles and Surveillance)
It is a deeply rogue industry that's killing legitimate journalism by drowning out the signal (real journalism) with sponsored fodder
Links 15/05/2024: XBox Trouble, Slovakia PM Shot 5 Times
Links for the day
Windows in Times of Conflict
In pictures
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, May 15, 2024
IRC logs for Wednesday, May 15, 2024
Gemini Links 15/05/2024: 50 Years of Text Games
Links for the day
Ebury is Not "Linux", That's Just the Media Shifting Attention (Microsoft in the Hot Seat for Total Breach Right Now)
Seems like it may be a Trojan
Links 15/05/2024: Growing Tensions Between East and West, Anticlimax in Chatbot Space
Links for the day
[Video] 'Late Stage Capitalism': Microsoft as an Elaborate Ponzi Scheme (Faking 'Demand' While Portraying the Fraud as an Act of Generosity and Demanding Bailouts)
Being able to express or explain the facts isn't easy because of the buzzwords
Richard Stallman Talk 'Delayed'
"Repousé à une date ultérieur. Du au congé, il n'était pas possible de l'organiser bien dans le temps disponible."
Links 15/05/2024: Toll on Climate Change, Physical Assaults on Politicians
Links for the day
[Meme] Free Society Requires Free Press
The Assange decision is now less than a week away (after several delays and demand for shallow 'assurances')
CyberShow Goes "Live"
The CyberShow has a similar worldview (on technology and ethics) to ours
Latest Status of Site Archives (Static Pages)
article listings are reaching a near-final form
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, May 14, 2024
IRC logs for Tuesday, May 14, 2024
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
Today's Talk by Richard Stallman Going Ahead as Planned
That talk will be in French
At This Pace (and Rate) It Won't Take Long for Android to Unseat Windows in Russia
Operating System Market Share Russian Federation
[Video] The High Cost of High-Level Tools and High-Level Programming Languages
Windows and Microsoft-style teaching remain a barrier to simple programming
Linux and Linux Foundation Leftovers
Some more Linux news
Africa is Still Android
Operating System Market Share Africa: May 2024
Windows Falls to 10% in Uganda, It Was 94% in 2010
Microsoft fell from market dominance to (soon) single digit (percent-wise).
Grouping Our Archives by Week
No more 'numbers lottery', the clustering is based on dates
[Video] LinuxFest Northwest is Letting GAFAM Take Over (and Why It's Hard to Resist)
Microsoft and LinuxFest Northwest
Links 14/05/2024: Bounties on Terrible Patents, China Censors Dissidents Internationally via Attack Dogs
Links for the day
Gemini Links 14/05/2024: Server Failure Swallows rawtext.club
Links for the day
Links 14/05/2024: SoftBank and ARM Chasing Hype, "Why Are You Working?"
Links for the day
Links 14/05/2024: Microsoft Edelman Works for Climate Change Deniers, NATO Draws a Cyber Red Line in Tensions With Russia
Links for the day
Feasibility of Self-Hosting is About More Than Speeds
Speed helps, but the Internet (Net) is a global, interconnected system that no single person or company or government fully controls
EPO: Language of Conflict
A letter about this has already been sent
IRC Proceedings: Monday, May 13, 2024
IRC logs for Monday, May 13, 2024
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
Watching Our Videos Before We Write Articles for Them
It has long been possible
Microsoft is Measured at Lower Than Apple in Niger (Of Course Android Dominates)
Niger's OS share (as measured by Web sites) is subjected to significant fluctuations because it's not highly connected
Refuting the Ludicrous, Laughable Idea I Don't (or Cannot) Code
I've written code for 30 years
[Meme] "Talk is Cheap. Show Me the Code." - Linus Torvalds
be like Chad
Windows in Chad: Going Extinct
From 100% to 1%?
Doing the Site From Home (What I Always Wanted to Do)
Even some of the hosting was done from home (since 2020)