The time SUSE, the German Linux company, banned mentioning Jewish holidays | Hacker News Reader

The time SUSE, the German Linux company, banned mentioning Jewish holidays

lunduke.substack.com

132 pointsairhangerf1574 comments

Too bad the dude is the epitome of an unreliable narrator. Last year's discussion got some interesting links...

Most notable: https://old.reddit.com/r/suse/comments/umfyku/the_time_suse_...

I don't know anything about him. Why do you say that he's an unreliable narrator? The story was emotive, but no more emotive than I'd expect for someone in his position.

Edit: This guy has some pretty toxic politics, and I wouldn't want him in my workplace.

That being said, it looks like Reddit might be confused about Jewish holidays: SUSECON 2017 appears to have run between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, like he said. That is indeed a holy week, and scheduling a conference during it is roughly analogous to scheduling a conference between Christmas and New Years'. But I don't think they did that intentionally; it's just unfortunate timing.

in germany most multi-day grassroots events are scheduled between christmas and newyear, most famously the CCC. because that is the time when people are most likely free even if they have a job, and those days expressly do not have any religious significance. but any weekend that is extended with a mostly religious holiday is used as opportunity for many groups.

As an outsider, I wouldn't have considered SUSECon to be a "grassroots event." It seems like a corporate conference to me, and it's historically been hosted outside of Germany (including in places like the US).

(This doesn't mean I buy this guy's story; I don't.)

i didn't mean to include SUSEs choice here, just for comparison, that in germany the days been christmans and newyear are generally not respected, but also that they need not be because they are not religious holidays, in contrast to the jewish holidays which are.

more on reddit:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31348567

Inlucind a link to this collection of screenshots of his posts on Twitter: https://twitter.com/LundukeFacts

Most of the posts seem to be confusing 'conservative' or 'concerned about vaccines' with 'unreliable narrator'.

Well he definitely misrepresented the conference taking place during Kippur.

No, this isn't a clear misrepresentation.

Like all Jewish holidays, Yom Kippur begins in the evening. In 2017, it began the evening of September 29. Information that I can find on SUSECON 2017 lists it as being September 25-29.

Granted, the last day of a conference almost always ends prior to the evening. However, it is completely unreasonable to require a religious Jewish person to be traveling after a conference on Erev Yom Kippur.

Imagine your employer holding a mandatory conference, in a foreign country, concluding on the afternoon of December 24... and then arguing that it doesn't overlap with Christmas.

> I am not a litigious man. I operate under the simple notion that sunlight is the best disinfectant.

Bryan, you should have sued them when this was made obvious. The law is on your side. Sunlight is good and all, but for many businesses, a lawsuit is the only thing that will get them to change their minds.

>you should have sued them

IANL, but suing for this kind of discrimination doesn't get you very far in Germany. It's not like in the US, or the UK, where at the slightest whiff of discrimination you take your employer to court and become a milionare. German law doesn't entitle you to big money for your emotional suffering, at most the company would have gotten a fine for antisemitism.

You need to bring proof of actual monetary damage you suffered for it to be a case in Germany for you get any compensation, otherwise the judge is just gonna throw the case out of the court.

The German legal system is very different that in the US, and often not in a good way.

Also, building a strong case again Suse with hard evidence, would been tough for him I imagine, getting witnesses willing to speak up, etc., and also, the courts move slow in Germany and the legal fees of playing a long game against such a large company can easily bankrupt an individual, that it becomes a no-go from the start.

I've seen it often in Germany where big companies just get away with bullying small companies or individuals despite being in the wrong, simply because they have deep pockets for lengthy court battles and you don't.

So yes, like you say, technically the law is on your side, but like in many cases, you can end up dying on a hill penniless, with the law on your side.

Edit: I don't want to jump to his defense or on the Suse hate bandwagon since we only heard his side of the story, and so far, there seem to be some evidence to suggest the plaintiff is a bit of whacko, and if he brought his toxic views at the workplace I can see why he got pushed out.

Vocal political and social activism of any kind isn't tolerated at the workplace in Germany, so if you start bringing that shit at work (regardless if it's right or left wing), you will be pushed out, and for good reason.

SUSE has an American presence last I checked; would that not subject them to American discrimination laws?

Depends if your employment contract is with the German or American entity.

My German brain immediately went to "surely this is because Christmas and Easter are widely treated as cultural rather than religious holidays" but if this was in the SUSE offices, it was in Bavaria and Bavaria is one of the more religiously conservative parts of Germany (e.g. a few decades ago there was a landmark case asserting the right of schools to have a crucifix in the classroom).

That said, that still doesn't explain if this is specifically bigotry against Jews or non-Christian religions in general. Something tells me they'd have been no less (if not more so) disrespectful towards Muslim holidays and sensibilities. The article doesn't call them antisemitic (though it could certainly be read to be implying that) but there's definitely religious bigotry at play and antisemitism might be a contributing factor.

Nothing more fanatic than splinter sects of the same religion.

That's a bit of a non-sequitur and not entirely correct because those splinter sects sorted out their major differences in literal wars hundreds of years ago, which makes their modern disputes more superficial than meaningful.

It's not really a case of fanatism but favoritism. My point about Bavaria was more that this rules out the justification that they likely didn't think of the Christian holidays as being related to the Christian religion the same way Hanukkah is to the Jewish religion: Bavaria doesn't exactly have a record of being overly secular, quite the opposite.

For context, this is the kind of reasoning I mean when I say "not specifically antisemitic": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31342308

Many Germans equate "German-ness" with being white and ("culturally") Christian. Jewish holidays would then not only be seen as foreign (in the sense of "Why should a German company celebrate a foreign holiday?") but also religious (unlike Christmas or Easter, which are "just special dates" like Fastnacht or New Year's, as long as you don't emphasize the religious aspects of them).

Is this bigoted by defining "German" in an inherently racial, religious and exclusionary way? Yes, definitely. But it's not specifically antisemitic, regardless of whether antisemitism plays an additional part in this instance. And it's very hard to prove as discrimination in a courtroom, especially if you can't demonstrate the specifically antisemitic aspect.

> if this was in the SUSE offices, it was in Bavaria

SUSE has offices in Washington, Utah, Texas, and Massachussetts AFAICT.

I got a bunch of down votes on comments mentioning this elsewhere.

A lot of people seam to thing this is BS because he didn't file a complaint with the government.

There are a lot of people who may want to cut ties with an employee and not trouble themselves with filing complaints.

If it was BS, I would expect Suse to deny, and blame it on a disgruntled ex employee.

These are all just assumptions.

> If it was BS, I would expect Suse to deny, and blame it on a disgruntled ex employee.

Denying bullshit gives it more coverage. Sometimes it's smarter to just wait it out, and have whatever bullshit comes next (targetted at somebody else) take over the news frenzy.

Discussed last year under https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31319307

Now that we're a year removed, what was the outcome?

Doing the leg work: For SuSECON 2017 the dates all line up, and also it looks like they usually run the convention in November.

... Looks pretty suspicious overall to me on SuSE's part.

Also understand: The Jewish high holidays run from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur, inclusive.

It looks like the first SUSECon was in 2012 and was around the same time in September[1]. So there's some precedent for it, albeit with a few years of November (sometimes the first week of November) in between.

[1]: https://www.suse.com/c/112-2/

Certainly, it looks like they have the option to avoid it... and chose not to.

So are companies required to check all religious holidays from all people that could reasonably attend and schedule major company events around them? I've heard pastafarians have a lot of special days.

Personally I find that insane.

I don't think anybody has suggested this; the only relevant consideration here is whether the scheduling served as retaliation (which, it seems, it didn't).

Yom Kippur is literally the most important holiday / holiest day for the Jewish religion. Equating it with "pastafarian special days" is at best extremely insensitive, and frankly seems rather ignorant.

Are you saying that pastafarian is not equal to another religion? You're absolutely heinous. I'm reporting you for discrimination.

I'm also joking. But to treat one above another on the basis of religion is literally the definition of discrimination. The exact same discrimination the original article was about.

The extremely obvious major difference here is that the company isn't based in a country with a dark past history of institutional prejudice against Pastafarians, let alone one which eventually led to genocide.

Edit to add: you also have a major false equivalence in your initial premise re: "required to check all religious holidays from all people that could reasonably attend".

SUSECon is a public conference attended by customers/users/community, but specifically in this case they chose a date incompatible with the religious beliefs of an extremely high-profile SUSE employee, whose job responsibilities would require them to be highly visibly working at the conference. This is absolutely not the same thing as failing to schedule the conference dates in a way that is sensitive to all possible attendees.

This situation also should be considered in the context of all the other things discussed in the article (prior to the section on SUSECon), not in isolation.

In general, you should look out for major religious holidays when planning things. That is what is called "Good planning."

Yes, it may be cheap to run a big conference over Christmas... But will you get the attendance you want?

If you want Jews to attend your conference. (Probably not unreasonable in the tech sector.) Not putting your event over the high holidays is smart, same as not putting it over the Easter holidays is smart if your want Christians to show up.

As someone who has gotten this wrong, by planning over EASTER. Yeah, I did replan. And if I was told I'd planned over the high holidays, I'd re-plan, especially if there were 2 other valid dates I could use, which the article says.

As far as pastafarians, I honestly don't know, but when you work with India, with many major holidays, you HAVE to be on top of this stuff, for their holidays.

If I was planning a conference with a large number of pastafarians attending, you know what... I would take their needs into account! It isn't insane. It is good business.

I believe him. And this is terrible.

Enough to recommend taking Suse off our procurement allow list.

Was there any response from SUSE in the ~year since this was posted?

WOW this is so bad. The title made me think the story had a happy ending, it does not. I'm proud the author had the courage to speak up.

This sounds incredibly bad. But - it sounds too bad. Two managers fired and none sued? He did not sue? All in a potential company destroying matter? The german courts would reign destruction upon this company if it happened there, and discrimination laws in the US are even harsher.

Remember that Germany is a country where you can't even criticize the right-wing politics of Israel without being branded as an anti-semite. Discrimination against Jews does exist of course, but this brazenly?

From how he describes it, it's not clear that this was descrimination against Jews specifically rather than other religions in general. Christianity gets a lot of special treatment in Germany despite the law ostensibly favoring no one religion over another. If the "seasons greetings" did not include specifically Christian messages ("Christmas" in German doesn't have "Christ" in it and Christmas Day and Easter Monday are bank holidays) I could imagine a discrimination case being hard to win, especially in the absence of unions or at the very least a works council.

I'd argue it does demonstrate a very clear bias and may even be motivated by antisemitism (latent if not deliberate) but there's a difference between what's right and what's legal. Not to mention that precisely due to the influence of pro-Israel groups (and the latent antisemitism too) you probably don't want to be branded as "the Jew who cries antisemite" as that might interfere with your employability.

A blanket ban for mentioning religious holidays outside of christian holidays would fit to bavaria and would even be defendable there (there is the famous case of the crucifix being allowed in school rooms there, but no other religious symbols). It would be seen as a way to limit the attack surface when mentioning one holiday but not the other, apart from the ones which are state-wide. But that's an explainable policy then. It's the firings of the managers that don't match with that, plus the silence.

Christianity has Germany in its pocket. The state even collects the tithe! Separation of state and church... come again?

Germany does not have a separation of state and church. That's not something that exists in the constitution. We have a right to freedom of religion (with a bunch of caveats) and we don't have a national religion. But that's pretty much it.

Heck, the Federal Republic of Germany upon its foundation decided to uphold its end on contracts with the Catholic church dating back to the German Empire and even before that by arguing itself to be the "legal successor" of those entities. This results in a bunch of oddities like Germany literally paying money to parts of the Catholic church (for leases, debts and such), churches (and formally church-run organizations even if they're 100% state-funded) being exempt from most labor laws and yes, the tithe being collected by the German tax agency.

However formally this is not specifically tied to Christianity. It's just defined in such a way making it extremely difficult for any other religious group to qualify in the same way after the fact.

France has very strong separation of Church and State, but not in Alsace-Lorraine, a historical quirk of its annexation by Germany 1870-1918.

That puts it too strongly. Yes, that the german state is collecting the money for the church is strange. The biggest political party calls itself christian. Then there is the habit of having religious institutions organize public daycare (kindergarten). Even worse is the Tanzverbot, forbidding public parties around easter, as that evokes fundamentally religious countries governed by church leaders, as in Iran.

But exactly that is not the case in Germany. There is no visible or noticeable influence of religious leaders, of church positions being unmoveable pillars of german politics. Many examples, divorce, abortion, same-sex marriage. With the paragraph above it is obvious that there is some influence, but it paints the wrong picture when looking at society and politics as a whole. The influence of christian fundamentalism on US politics for example is way bigger.

All of this is the effect of having done the separation of church and state over a hundred years ago, 1803 and earlier, but then stopping there. Afterwards there was a coexistence, varyingly strong, but nothing more.

Germans today simply aren't very religious, churches are mostly only visited on Christmas, and even then only by a small minority.

> The state even collects the tithe! Separation of state and church...

It's a collection service to simplify processes that costs the religious or philosophical organizations who participate (not all do) about 3% of their revenue.

Also, a couple of Jewish organizations participate (full list at https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirchensteuer_(Deutschland)#Ki...)

It increases that revenue by a very much larger percentage because (1) it is automatic every month and (2) it is opt-out because when you register in a German town for residence your religious affiliation determines who by default will get your money.

Many expats aren't even aware of this and react very surprised when I tell them about this, then they go check their docs and sure enough the church has been siphoning off their money and they are making their own private donations.

And as a final insult to injury: opting out costs money! Not a lot, but still.

(Sounds like you know that, for the others). You can't opt out of this, for regular income. You can only leave the church. And that can cost a bit (seems like up to 60€?), depending on where you are in Germany.

Right, exactly. So if you don't want to leave the church you're stuck with a fixed portion of your income taken away whether you can afford it or not. It's - from my Dutch POV - complete madness. Not that there isn't plenty of things wrong here but this particular thing about Germany really irks me.

The GEZ is worse ;)

We used to have that here too... as well as TV inspectors, seriously.

I see in the Netherlands church is financed by donors, which sounds better. But here in Poland we have an even worse variant than in Germany: the Church receives money from the government every year. The quantity doesn’t depend on the number of members. In fact, even though there was a huge wave of apostasies, the amount of money grows asymptotically year after year. So everyone, regardless of membership (no opt-out), has their money given to the church and the amount seems to be going in the opposite direction than membership. That’s strictly worse than in Germany.

Yes, that's definitely worse.

That's something the church decided to set up. Being a member of an organization means following their rules, and yes, that can become complex when you're in an organization with many chapters (e.g. international) where each chapter has its own quirks.

As for the fee: it's bureaucracy, and as such, it costs a processing fee. When you join, the church pays for you, when you leave, they don't.

Both of these are decisions made by the church, not the state. Bring it up with them.

The tax office is just the collection agent. That arrangement made more sense when wages were paid in cash, but the employer already diverted your income tax (+ "church tax") for you (and then the tax office routed the church tax portion of that to your registered church, in a time when practically everybody was member of _some_ such organization).

Maybe it should be revised or dropped, but from the government's point of view, that's a loss in income (approximately 0.08 × 0.03 ~ 0.25% of church members' income tax revenue: 400M€ in 2022 less for the tax collectors) for a service that's practically free to implement.

(full disclosure: I'm a member of an organization that chose not to use the church tax scheme for its members.)

With more than a year passed since this was published, I was expecting to find some information about what happed after that. A quick search on google returned ... nothing directly related to it.

Will have to try a more indirect approach and check impact on stock price, replacements of persons on the supervisory board, ...

I work for a multinational company. I have lost count how many times we have received instructions to move Israel from Europe to Middle East, back and forth, again and again, in the list if countries the company have presence in (it is categorized by different regions). Very sensitive apparently, if a company have business in Arab countries also. Would not surprise me if similar reasons are behind this.

Another similar topic is how to label Taiwan. If you write a heading "Choose country" and then a list that includes both China and Taiwan, you will get a P1 incident on your hands. You need to write something different than country.

I believe many companies solve that by presenting different lists for different users/locales. More engineering effort and hard to get right, if ever, of course.

Is it really contentious that Israel is in the middle east? When the issue of whether Turkey is in Europe or the middle east is contentious enough, I'd think Israel would be a no-brainer "of course it's middle east"

It'd be like debating whether Saudi Arabia is in Africa to me.

I think it is not contentious as a general fact. But I think it had to do with it appearing in a sublist, where all other countries were hostile. I don't recall on which country manager's order the different requirements came either. My impression was that it had less to do with geographical location and more that they could not stand to be listed next to each other.

>I have lost count how many times we have received instructions to move Israel from Europe to Middle East, back and forth

Google maps (and I assume other map providers) does the same thing. When you go view disputed territories, the result you'll be seeing depends on the geopolitical stance of the country you're viewing this from.

> > I have lost count how many times we have received instructions to move Israel from Europe to Middle East, back and forth

> Google maps (and I assume other map providers) does the same thing.

Regardless of politics putting Israel in Europe is objectively incorrect. If Israel isn't in the Middle East then Lebanon and Syria aren't either. Iran isn't Arabic and is considered to be middle east, why not Israel?

I thought Israel is the only democracy in the middle east, the participation in Eurovision Song Contest, European Football Championship etc. is just because of security concerns.

And Taiwan isn't officially a country because they didn't officially declare independence because officially they still claim there is only one China and the true government is in Taiwan.

> And Taiwan isn't officially a country because they didn't officially declare independence because officially they still claim there is only one China and the true government is in Taiwan.

That doesnt make any sense. Then you might as well claim mainland china isnt a country either because they didnt decleare independence from the rest of China (taiwan).

This is literally the position of the Republic of China (Taiwan's leadership), they technically believe themselves to be a "government in exile"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_the_Republic_of_Ch...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_in_exile

It's the position of both governments. The People's Republic of China (the communist-run one) claims territory over both the mainland and the island of Taiwan. The Republic of China (“Taiwan”) is basically the pre-communist government and claims territory over both the mainland and the island of Taiwan.

The presence of the US military on Taiwan has kept the PRC from curb-stomping Taiwan.

The PRC isn’t a real country as the CCP are tyrants, whereas the leaders in Taiwan are democratically elected and thus have a mandate to rule.

The reason it was taken so serious was because the PRC government could revoke your license to have presence in China with a penstroke for this mistake. When these mistakes happened it was as urgent to fix as general downtime, highest business prio.

Wow this is insane. I was expecting some cutesy little story about a manager accidentally being insensitive and upper management scrambling to fix a PR mess, not about anti-semitism so relentless and systematic that profits take a back seat to marginalizing Jews.

I wish the author had taken a fire-and-brimstone approach way earlier and had publicized this widely and sued them (I realize there are clearly several personal reasons this didn't happen, just saying I wish it did). Anyway, from now on, I'm going to treat SUSE the way you'd treat a radioactive leper walking down the street.

To be fair, we only heard his side of the story.

Sorry for off-topic but this site has decent dark patterns.

(2022)

Wow. That is bad. I was ready for "they made a mistake one time"-thing but this certainly feels systemic and very bad.

RHEL dead. SUSE dead.

Long live the one true god: Debian.

TempleOS you mean

While this does look like a biased one sided post, a year passed and I couldn't find any response from SUSE. So I'm guessing that there is a lot of truth behind this. Although I'm not quite convinced that this is antisemitism, but rather anti-non-christian. I suspect that a similar post wishing Muslims a happy Ramadan would be taken down.

!!! wow

Really something to think about

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