Matthias Kirschner, Jonas Oberg & FSFE: Paternity, Maternity, Sick leave hypocrisy

Today the Fellowship is proud to leak to more messages from the FSFE proving the hypocrisy of Matthias Kirschner.

To recap the sequence of events:

1. A fellow left a EUR 150,000 bequest to the FSFE.
2. There was fighting about the money and Matthias Kirschner, President, fell out with Jonas Oberg, Executive Director
3. To avoid being sacked, Oberg took paternity leave while looking for another job.
4. Kirschner had a huge fit. He wanted to fire Oberg but he couldn't. So Kirschner took paternity leave too, his message announcing paternity leave is leaked below
5. When Kirschner came back, he was still pissed off so he decided to remove the elections from the constitution.
6. The representative elected by the community resigned in disgust
7. Kirschner was angry that all the serious people quit and he had nobody to blame. So he spread rumours that the community representative, who had already resigned, is a spammer and pedophile
8. When the two female employees, Susanne Eiswirt and Galia Mancheva, spoke about wage equality, Kirschner sacked them. Finally, he got to fire somebody. Women. In particular, he sacked Galia while she was on sick leave, he didn't give her the same support that people gave Kirschner during his paternity leave episode.

To summarize: the only people Kirschner actually sacked or expelled were women. All the serious people resigned in disgust before Kirschner could get out his knife.

Leak 1: Matthias Kirschner paternity leave

Subject: [GA] New fork / MK off until 23 April
Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2018 07:33:09 +0200
From: Matthias Kirschner <mk@fsfe.org>
To: FSFE General Assembly <ga@lists.fsfe.org>, FSFE EU core team <team@lists.fsfe.org>

This week my child Paul Benjamin Kirschner was born. We are all fine and enjoy those wonderful and unique moments of our lives. Until 23 April I will be offline to spent time with my family.

I am very happy that the FSFE is in a state which enables me to take this time off, knowing that all day to day operations will be performed reliably by our volunteers and staffers. During that time some topics will be on hold, and I will not follow-up any e-mail discussions. Heiki and Patrick will decide if something is important enough to contact me. In case you have issues to discuss which are not absolutely urgent, I ask you to wait with bringing them up, until I am back again.

Thank you for enabling me to enjoy the birth of my child and fully concentrate on my family for the next weeks. All the best from a tired but exuberantly happy,
Matthias

--
Matthias Kirschner - President - Free Software Foundation Europe
Schönhauser Allee 6/7, 10119 Berlin, Germany | t +49-30-27595290
Registered at Amtsgericht Hamburg, VR 17030 | (fsfe.org/join)
Contact (fsfe.org/about/kirschner) - Weblog (k7r.eu/blog.html)

Galia Mancheva's comments about her medical leave

Does Kirschner's wife, Kristina, know that Kirschner intruded on Galia's home?

An extract from Galia's full report:

I suspected Matthias was preparing to fire me, and indeed I was on a clock. He needed to make sure he was re-elected FSFE president before he could get rid of me. It would have damaged his chances to have fired all the full-time women in the office in the two months leading up to the elections – an unnecessary risk – but once approved he would have another two years' free reign. At this time my friends were starting to worry – the psychological pressure and lack of enough time off caused my condition was decline. I had to take a sick leave. Certain that I was about to get fired, my friends encouraged me to seek legal counsel, if so only to keep myself focussed on constructive tasks. Immediately after my sick leave announcement, Matthias fired me over the phone on a Friday night, and threatened me to immediately go to the office to hand over work-related items. Appearing in the office during a sick leave is illegal in Germany, so I refused. A weekend of non-stop calls followed, including from hidden phone numbers. He even texted telling me I should answer my phone, for my own better. Even after my lawyer warned him to terminate all attempts to communicate with me and send someone else to pick up my work laptop, he came in person to my house, and was very irritated that I was not alone.

Leak 2: Jonas Oberg paternity leave

Subject: Continuation in volunteer roles
Date: Thu, 8 Feb 2018 09:55:47 +0100
From: Jonas Oberg <jonas@fsfe.org>
To: team@lists.fsfe.org

Hi everyone,

I just reviewed the mailing lists where I was subscribed for the FSFE, and wanted to give you a heads up about what you can expect from me in the coming months (and years!).

From the 14th of February, I will be largely disconnected from the day-to-day operations of the FSFE, owing to my parental leave. I'm still a member of the association, and I still have an interest in many of our activities, so I will continue my work in some areas as a volunteer.

Specifically, I will, as a member, remain subscribed and part of the ga@ and team@ lists, but I will read team@ less seldom and focus my attention to the much needed work in the GA.

I will also remain as a volunteer for the following activities:

- Our Legal team
- The FSFE Nordic local group
- REUSE

In addition, I plan to volunteer time to oversee some of the work with the AMS implementation and system administration. It's not conceivable we will manage a proper handover of all tasks in the time remaining, and I have a personal interest in making sure this is properly done.

This all being said, you can of course always rely on my help or guidance if you need it for any other activity too. Just make sure that you ask me specifically (direct mail) about it, and understand that from the 14th, my ability to respond will be much lower during the days and I'll catch up more infrequently, often in the evenings.

In the coming months, I will also have two weeks when I'll work full time for the FSFE; for the REUSE activities we will have at the Open Source Leadership Summit, and for the LLW in Barcelona. So you can expect more mails from me those weeks (w10 and 16) :-)

Best,

--
Jonas Öberg
Executive Director

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