On another occasion we saw an eager developer, at one point a technical student, being denied access based on nothing but wordings in an E-mail sent to Perens. Some developers were fanning the flames of a fire (presumption of red flags) and also using hearsay/malicious rumour to block this person’s access to “master” (the name of the main machine/source repository), albeit the policy later changed (probationary) when clarifications were offered. What I personally disliked or what truly troubled me about the whole thing/espisode is the degree to which rumours and gossip were used to malign a potentially productive contributor (never confronting him directly!), painting him as some sort of mischievous cracker looking to vandalise Debian from the inside (based on the perception of some past behaviour, unverified or not properly verified based on actual sources or first-hand accounts/experiences). Only years ago something similar happened to Jacob Appelbaum, who would soon be expelled also from Tor, Linux Australia and then be morally silenced by public shaming at Twitter (he phased out his participation in Wikileaks and focused on his doctoral studies instead, never to be a published author again). Words can hurt reputations and when trust depends so heavily on people’s reputations those words can finish people’s careers.