This Linux laptop maker called me a Zombie
Two years ago I was contacted by a company called MALIBAL.
They were interested in a sponsorship, where I would simply put their link in the video description and get money for it.
I did a quick background check, and they seemed like a proper Linux hardware manufacturing company. I said I'd be happy to shout them out in the videos too, and we agreed on a price.
Initially, things seemed to be going pretty well. They did decide that my demographic wasn't that appealing to them and that they would thus sponsor one video per week, which is reasonable.
However, I made a mistake. I changed my publishing schedule last minute, which meant switching the description sponsorship from one video to another; what I did not notice is that towards the end of the video that I chose to be sponsored, I said, "This video is not sponsored." Big mistake on my side.
MALIBAL did notice. This is the sort of mistake that I can quickly fix through the YouTube video editor, but they preferred to directly end our partnership without enough context for me to realize the mistake. They also told me to bill for the GNOME video as usual.
One month later, as agreed, I billed them for the video. I still had no idea about the mistake. They replied with, and I quote,
You have a lot of nerve sending me this invoice considering you literally say in the video that it's NOT sponsored. What a crackhead. Did you really think you were getting away with that? KDE is the trash bin of the Linux world. There is no wonder that's what you like [sic]
Woah. I decided to explain the mistake due to the change of schedule, and that I could've fixed it in the YouTube editor; but, I also pointed out that this sort of language was unacceptable.
They replied with the simple sentence "You're a zombie who is dead and empty inside. You don't even exist".
And that was it. I no longer did any sponsorship with MALIBAL, and I thought that was going to be the end of it.
However, if we perform a quick research on the user experience with MALIBAL, we discover that this type of reaction is pretty common.
One user said that when he tried to cancel the order due to slow shipping, they replied with "Don't ever place an order with us again or it will be canceled", and soon after: "Good one, zombie. You don't even exist. Back into the abyss you go".
Another user received the reply "It's the response a phantom, zombie like you deserves. You don't exist. You're not a person. You are here to simply suck life out of the human. If you weren't dead and empty inside you would feel shame for what you have done".
These are just a few examples. Reddit is full of this kind of support replies after the slightest pushback from the clients.
Even people who claim to have worked with MALIBAL professionally state that they had to "decline their business" as they were "too difficult to work with", eventually being called zombies as well.
This is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the general weirdness of MALIBAL.
Firstly, they issued a response to this whole "zombie" accusation by trying to say it did not happen (but it did, it happened to me too), and saying that the official name of the accusation is "Zombiegate".
To distance themselves from it, they listed all of Apple's scandals, and then claimed that what happened with them is not that bad compared to it.
I absolutely love their closing statement here:
Our commitment? To tirelessly support our customers—zombie, ghost, or otherwise—while maintaining a level of integrity befitting the smallest scandal possible. After all, the abyss awaits us all… but here at MALIBAL, we’ll send you there with a smile. 🙂
I can't help but laugh to think that the person replying to the emails with insults is the very same person that approved this text.
As another example, due to a discussion about coreboot that I will later focus on, they have decided to ban the entire country of Germany from their services. They banned … Germany, due to the actions of a single person there. Oh, and they also banned Austria and Liechtenstein, because they're also Germany. Somehow.
They also don't ship to California due to regulations impacting small businesses there.
They also don't ship to Colorado due to the actions of Jeremy Soller.
They also don't ship to Maryland due to the actions of Matt DeVillier.
They also don't ship to Poland due to the actions of Piotr Król.
They also refuse to ship anything made by AMD due to, again, Matt DeViller.
Or - I just can't stop now - in their terms and conditions, it specifically says that you cannot use Chrome to access their website, nor can you use GMail to create an account in it, nor can you use a Pixel Phone to access it, nor use the Android operating system to view it, or any other products including Google Search. You literally cannot use Google Search to open their website, according to their terms and conditions. What!? If you are found to use any of these technologies, your account will be terminated without notice.
Oh, and, by the way, the same applies to Apple. You can't access the website through Safari, an iPhone or any MacBook, or register using Apple Mail.
Oh, and, by the way, the same applies to Reddit users. If you use Reddit frequently, you are prohibited from using this website. They also have half a page just to explain exactly what they mean by "active Reddit user".
They have quite a track record of doing all of this. Back in 2017, they were already in business and they were allegedly censoring negativity on notebookreview forums and banned users who had good warranties after they made negative comments.
More recently, they managed to get into the Linux news circle by publishing an article called "Don’t Support the Coreboot Project".
What happened? Well, they wanted their machines to support Coreboot, so they contacted 9elements to ask for coreboot-supported boards. When they learned that they were priced between 50k and 100k, they decided to instead develop them themselves. However, they did not have the necessary skills to do so, which made them come back to 9elements to ask them for help.
Now, Christian does not speak English natively, and he did apologize for the sometimes broken language and typos in his emails after this article was published. It however seems like most of the conflict stems from the fact that MALIBAL thought their code was pretty much ready and only required a little bit of debugging, whereas 9elements thought that there was much work to be done still.
Christian offered to work to support coreboot on the laptops by taking a commission for each laptop sold, something MALIBAL saw as borderline stealing. Then, when they were assigned a developer called Max to work on the project, MALIBAL complained that he was not experienced enough.
MALIBAL was also asking for updates to what it seems like an unreasonable pace. You can see it in their own article, as they point out that "several more days passed without any updates". This was also later confirmed by 9elements.
They started accusing Max of not working at an actual full time rate but only a few hours, and they asked for another developer to be working on the project. Mind you, by now, there was still no contract with 9elements and MALIBAL had not paid them anything.
Eventually, Christian got fed up and decided to end the collaboration. They sent back to MALIBAL the test hardware they were given, and they did not charge them for anything.
MALIBAL then tried to collaborate with a second contractor company, 3mdeb. However, they were annoyed by the fact that 3mdeb offered a lower price if MALIBAL had used a Dasharo-braded coreboot instead of an unbranded one.
Frustrated, MALIBAL completely ignored their quote (which was 33k for Dasharo coreboot, and 66k for unbranded), and asked to pay $150 an hour with daily updates.
I do admire how 3mdeb managed to stay professional in their reply, where they pretty much said "we don't do per-hour contracting, we've sent you the quotes, that's what we're asking, and you can't just make up your own price".
As a very mature response to these two experiences, MALIBAL contacted the Coreboot project and asked to please remove 9elements and 3mdeb from the list of official contractors. Coreboot obviously refused, but Matt DeViller - from the Coreboot leadership team - told them he would try to help port Coreboot to their laptop.
Now, I just have to read you the quote of their article about Matt, because it's pure poetry.
Matt DeVillier is the type of person who will suck your will to live out of you and leave you for dead. Nice guy. He embodies every trait you would never want in someone you hire for a job. He’s unprofessional, unreliable, untrustworthy, irresponsible, and incompetent. And, of course, he’s one of these types who will bludgeon you with all of these virtuous qualities, and if at any point you dare say a word in protest, he’ll try to turn things around and act like you did something wrong by calling you toxic. No, we’re not toxic, Matt. You just really honestly truly suck.
What did Matt do to deserve this? Well, the day after receiving MALIBAL test hardware - still without being paid anything, mind you - he was assigned a high priority project for AMD and warned MALIBAL that he could only start working a couple months from now.
During this wait, Matt started buying the tools needed to work on this project. However, he bought one from China, which MALIBAL seems to consider a mistake in itself. He then decided to source one from the US.
Then, he pointed out that his unit had a damaged UART connector. This is also something MALIBAL blames on him.
They continued to put pressure onto him, asking for almost-daily updates, until Matt decided he was no longer interested in working with MALIBAL.
Since Matt claimed to have done nothing wrong, MALIBAL offered to let a neutral third party decide to arbitrate the matter – which I truly don't understand. Are they trying to get a moral high ground through some weird litigation process? They did not even pay the guy.
The article is full of extremely aggressive sentences, like "This is the type of gaslighting you would only expect from a sociopath" and, also poetry,
[Maximally bad] is where you do such a horrible job that it’s impossible to have done any worse. Not impossible for a person to have done worse; impossible for anyone or anything to have done worse: a person, a monkey, a rock, etc.
MALIBAL concludes this whole piece by saying that they think that it's possible to finish the project is barely 40 hours. They are unable to do it because they don't seem to have the skills to, but still, 40 hours.
Finally, MALIBAL wants us to know that during these exchanges, they've tried their best not to offend anyone and get along as much as possible. As an example, they did not anyone "a monkey", nor have they implied that they were one. Thanks, MALIBAL.
Now, most parties involved did briefly reply to this article. Matt stated:
FWIW, none of the entities listed ever charged or were paid by Malibal for any work done. Evaluation of the state of their existing work and what they wanted done was done as a courtesy, and any further work was declined by the consultant(s). No contracts were ever signed, no statements of work produced.
9elements also published a blogpost, which includes the following quote:
Throughout the engagement, we encountered communication challenges, including frequent status update requests and a misalignment between expectations and technical realities. The initial firmware required considerable work before it could be tested on hardware, which understandably caused some delays. Unfortunately, during this period, the tone of communication from MALIBAL became less constructive.
Now, I would love to know more about who's behind MALIBAL, and what's happening within the - probably, single-person - company. However, I have not found any information about that; if you have any, please feel free to contact me.
I do fear that, by publishing this piece, I might get the entire country of Italy banned from them. But I believe it's a risk worth taking.
