Nut launches death threats at Debian women

[newbie2]

Women working on Debian have been getting death threats from a nut job who believes they're killing free software. A poll by new project leader Steve McIntyre into whether people are happy on Debian revealed one female coder had been getting the threats as thanks for her hard work. Further daggering soon revealed she was not alone. McIntyre told The Reg: "I have since discovered that several of our female developers and documenters were threatened. It was some kook in the US who made quite a name from himself harassing women for supposedly destroying the free software movement."
http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/104738/index.html
:roll:

[walkerk]

Thats odd.

[adewale]

Most likely the guy has a brain disorder or an inferiority complex. For heavens sake its easier for kids to use free software when they see mummy using it. On a more serious note that guy should be jailed, tried and imprisoned.

[FutanariKitty]

Wow. Just...wow.

Wait 'til he starts blaming the trannies next. Better get my life insurance in order.

*mutter*

[elizabeth]

http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/104738/index.html

This actually started a couple years ago, when Debian Women (http://women.debian.org) was a fairly new project. At the time I was involved with the group and received one of the death threat emails. It was disturbing at the time, and while I don't think it put off any women to the project, it did make us realize there was work to be done, and by making ourselves so visible we were opening ourselves up to such things.

After two years of silence this nut came back with an extremely hateful blogger blog (which was reported to google and taken down), and t-shirts on cafepress that advocated killing women (again, reported to cafepress and shut down). This time around the Debian Women weren't as intimidated, which is how we were able to fight back and get the attention of the Debian Project Leader.

I think the silver lining to all this is the change that has occurred in the Debian community over the past few years. When Debian Women was created, the environment was quite hostile to any new contributors (regardless of gender). Whether helped by Debian Women or not, the atmosphere has changed a great deal, even if Ubuntu still is friendlier as a whole, Debian is a fun project to work with these days, no matter what your gender is :)

[elizabeth]

On a more serious note that guy should be jailed, tried and imprisoned.

During the latest round of threats, he was tracked down (he regularly used proxies, but some determined folks were able to find him) and was reported to his local and national authorities in several countries. As with internet things he probably is just a nut with too much spare time and this will probably do no good, but if something ever were to happen there is an international legal paper trail.