Drupal Developers Still Rebelling Against Drupal Leadership 95
New submitter cornholed writes: In an update to previous posts on Slashdot, prominent Drupal and PHP Developer Larry Garfield is still defending his reputation against allegations by Drupal leadership against sexual misconduct. As previously reported by a variety of news organizations, Larry was exiled from the Drupal project for adherence to the Gor sci-fi lifestyle.
In the latest round of allegations, Garfield was reportedly asked to resign because an autistic "woman who attended Drupal community events ... was allowed to contribute by him". While some have accused Dries Buytart and the Drupal Association of "Autism Shaming", the leader of the Drupal project claims "this person could be vulnerable and may have been subject to exploitation", hence raising the risk of legal damage to the Drupal project. Larry refutes these allegations, saying these claims are post-hoc and has shared police reports purporting his innocence.
There is still much debate in the Drupal community around why Larry was ejected from his leadership positions. While there's much speculation over Larry's ouster, there is one thing for certain: become a leader in the OSS community and a dossier on your public statements just might be made about you.
In the latest round of allegations, Garfield was reportedly asked to resign because an autistic "woman who attended Drupal community events ... was allowed to contribute by him". While some have accused Dries Buytart and the Drupal Association of "Autism Shaming", the leader of the Drupal project claims "this person could be vulnerable and may have been subject to exploitation", hence raising the risk of legal damage to the Drupal project. Larry refutes these allegations, saying these claims are post-hoc and has shared police reports purporting his innocence.
There is still much debate in the Drupal community around why Larry was ejected from his leadership positions. While there's much speculation over Larry's ouster, there is one thing for certain: become a leader in the OSS community and a dossier on your public statements just might be made about you.
Nice objective submission (Score:3)
It's nice to see a story submission which isn't trying to drive a slanted narrative for once!
Re:Nice objective submission (Score:5, Insightful)
I, for one, love that our personal sex lives are now subject to political correctness and mob rule, and that we should only partake of activities people who don't even know you decide are morally acceptable.
This is the same kind of reasoning that got people fired for being gay or having AIDS in the 70's, 80's, and 90's. But THIS TIME, it's for a Good Cause (TM), right? ... right?
Re:Nice objective submission (Score:5, Insightful)
I have to say it's rather amusing seeing this kind of blatant Puritanical moral self-righteousness coming from (nominally) social liberals. Not surprising, mind you: creating a tight-knit society that requires its members to adhere to strict, often arbitrary, moral and ethical guidelines is "How to Control Others" 101. The trick is, of course, ostracizing anyone who doesn't fall in line so that everyone whose still in the group sees the consequences of disobedience. Most people, after that, will never dare go against the authority for fear of losing friends/family/job, and even better, they'll watch for "deviant" behavior in their "friends" so they can turn on them and show what good, upstanding people they are. It's not new or clever (see: nearly every society in human history), but it works really, really well. Of course, when there isn't a central authority, the moral code usually becomes stricter and stricter as everyone seeks to show how pure and righteous they are until you end up with a moral code that's literally impossible to follow. Depending on your goal, that may actually be desirable: once everyone is a sinner, it becomes possible to wipe out any adversary no matter how pure they may actually be, but it's playing with fire, as you yourself can also become viewed as a sinner, if you're not careful (witness how in modern feminism white women are starting to become viewed as privileged, and you have to be a disabled trans black immigrant bald non-gender-conforming obese femtosexual to actually be considered oppressed, and therefore unable to be an evil privileged eraser of minorities).
Re: (Score:2)
This is the same kind of reasoning that got people fired for being gay or having AIDS in the 70's, 80's, and 90's. But THIS TIME, it's for a Good Cause (TM), right? ... right?
It was always for Good Cause (TM).
Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)
I think it's impossible to judge in this case, because we don't have the full facts.
What is hinges on is if the woman in question fully consented and how Garfield treated her. It's entirely possible that it's all perfectly innocent and the use of the world "allowed" by someone who likes to roleplay an extreme male dom/female sub lifestyle is just a poor choice of words.
But on the other hand, if there is any issue there than Drupal could have legal problems. If he used allowing her to contribute to the proje
Re: Nice objective submission (Score:1)
The police and the woman's two therapists mentioned in the OP show that it is unreasonable to assume abuse. Combine that with no evidence of abuse, and the oddly disjointed witchhunt against him, and their claims of abuse are fatuous wank.
Re:Nice objective submission (Score:5, Insightful)
IMHO, I can judge the drupal board without the full facts of the relationship, because I believe it was wrong of them to react in any way to any allegation.
Maybe they have more convincing evidence of something being wrong that they have no published.
It's put up or shut up time. Why have they not done so? And I have a very high bar - because it has to be a genuine threat to the project. (I don't care if someone is a convicted murderer or any other crime; even THAT isn't good enough to kick someone off.)
Also, any evidence of actual harm being suffered by this woman that do have, they should have done the honourable thing and TURNED THAT F**KING OVER TO THE POLICE. Because social workers and police have already looked into this and found NOTHING. (See this commenter.) [slashdot.org]
Re: (Score:2)
You want then to publish evidence relating to what he does in private? Seems like not publishing is the right thing to do here.
Re: (Score:3)
The system absolutely does have ways to deal with it. The "good" solution would have been them either not having a puritanical shit-fit over someone's kinks that they got squeamish about OR, if they had any verifiable evidence or signs of abuse, to take that info to the authorities ASAP, fire Garfield with no explanation - they don't have to give one - and then shut the fuck up in public about it, offering only "no comment" to any questions.
Instead, they did the least helpful possible thing. They fired the
Re: (Score:1)
It's important to distinguish why this situation is bad and others, like the whole Mozilla/Eich thing, are not.
In this case, it appears that the person in question was involved in entirely consensual relationships. I haven't studied it in detail so I may be wrong about this, but my understanding is that it's basically a consensual master/slave relationship that is private and doesn't seem to have affected his public interactions.
In the case of Eich, he was trying to harm other people. He was trying to force
Re: (Score:1)
The problem isn't so much his lifestyle but that he's "a fucking white male". Code of conducts have been a race and gender based weapon by social justice activists from the start. If he had just been more "diverse" this wouldn't have been an issue.
Re: (Score:1)
I've actually been following that case pretty closely. It's interesting because the person that complained (CoralineAda) is also the originator for the code of conduct they eventually merged in (http://contributor-covenant.org/).
To me it very much looks like.
1) start shit over UNRELATED nothing
https://twitter.com/krainboltgreene/status/611569515315507200 [twitter.com]
2) step in with a solution
https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/942#issuecomment-113227261 [github.com]
3
Re: (Score:2)
Here's some work that was written about the issue a long time ago:
http://www.wilhelmreichtrust.o... [wilhelmreichtrust.org]
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
On the other hand, if you don't want to be judged for keeping sex slaves, maybe don't bring them with you to a convention where you're one of the leaders, and if you do, maybe don't parade them around. I could quite easily see where some people having seen him parade his sex slave, and having seen that she has a considerable and obvious mental handicap might jump to the conclusion that he was exploiting her. Sure, he has a police note that says he's not raping her, but obviously this type of misunderstand
Drupal is revolting (Score:1)
I haven't looked into the actual issue in the post, though I did read the Gor books as a teen which, sadly, didn't entice me into a lifetime of kink, so I'll just on topic flame bait. (the flying birds were the coolest thing - even cooler bodice chaining semi-porn)
Drupal is a bad idea that snowballed and now too many depend on it as a skill. I've done a bunch of Drupal jobs and it's convoluted hack on top of convoluted hack. Wordpress is awful but not quite as awful. The Wordpress motto should be "Wordpress
Re: Drupal is revolting (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
How about the Banshee PHP CMF [banshee-php.org]?
Yeah... you may want to start scrolling down the Google images of Banshee and look up CMF [urbandictionary.com] (see definition 2 and my humble apologies in advance) before you recommend this to your boss as a safe substitute for Drupal.
I know some people might argue that this is an unfair generalization from one developer to the whole project; that Drupal insn't entirely about screwing you in gratuitous and unpleasant ways you can't escape from. Oh, who's kidding -- this was their plan all along.
Re: Drupal is revolting (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
A good and very simple but extensible open source CMS would be a good idea. Even in php. Too bad we don't have one yet.
Have you heard of October [octobercms.com]? If so, what is your opinion of it?
Misconduct? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
It's just symantecs.
Why do you ignore your browser when it draws red squiggly lines under things? Just not gonna let no damn computer tell you what to do?
Re: (Score:2)
> symantecs
--Semantics, in context. FYI
So the ... (Score:3, Interesting)
I am shocked! (Score:2, Interesting)
Shocked! Shocked! I say!
So, there's some incorporated foundation or what-not (Ah, "Drupal Association") behind the ongoing poisoning of the Interwebs with 20 year old technology (OK, looked it up 16 year old technology) built on top of 30 year old technology, both of which deserved to die an awful death (we are talking about SOFTWARE here) years ago?
And, because there are so many sheeples just making the same mistakes over and over to keep this junk alive, that they have nothing better to do than to pick-ap
Re: (Score:2)
So, here is my history with PHP. Some time mid-90s (I thought it was 95 or 96,
You're not wrong [wikipedia.org].
Wow, Gor still producing drama so many years later (Score:2)
Back in college there was a running battle over whether to keep the Gor books on shelves in the Sci-Fi library. It consumed an inordinate amount of time and bile. Never read them... never was into cheezy fantasy. Steered clear of the whole mess.
Jacked Up = Better Drupal Developer, Right? (Score:5, Funny)
I mean, we are talking about Drupal, right? I'm unconvinced that being a sexual deviant is actually a hinderance when it comes to Drupal development. Based on my work with Drupal, it seems like it would be an advantage...?
Just switch to BackdropCMS (Score:1)
https://backdropcms.org/ [backdropcms.org] A Drupal 7 fork.
Re: (Score:2)
What the Fuck kind of name is Dries anyway?
A Dutch name. Short for Andries.
This is exactly the kind of "leadership" you get when you put a foreigner and woman in charge.
Quick question: do you think Donald Trump is a foreigner?
Re: (Score:1)
Response by Larry Garfield (Score:1)
Needs to be read. You tell me, who appears to be telling the straighter story? https://www.garfieldtech.com/blog/tmi-part-5
Larry Garfield's side of the story (Score:5, Interesting)
https://www.garfieldtech.com/blog/tmi-part-5 [garfieldtech.com]
Briefly: this fiasco went on for weeks without anyone mentioning any concern about the female autistic housemate, so Larry Garfield doesn't believe this current statement. He believes that the actual reason at the core of this is intolerance for his "alternative" lifestyle. And he is severing all ties with Drupal:
It's difficult for me, as a total outsider, to decide whom to believe in this he said/they said situation. But I'm inclined to believe Garfield because of this part of his blog posting:
Given that the police and social workers had already focused their attention on Larry Garfield's personal life and his situation with the autistic female housemate, and nobody threw any red flags that the situation was abusive, it's difficult to believe that the Drupal project's lawyers ordered the Drupal leadership to eject Garfield over suspicions of abuse. It's easier to believe that this is cover for a decision already made for other reasons.
P.S. Garfield racked up some points with me for this blog post: https://www.garfieldtech.com/blog/tmi-dont-go-low [garfieldtech.com]
(bolding and italics in the original)
Re:Larry Garfield's side of the story (Score:4, Insightful)
Why should we value your opinion more than that of three autism specialists, a social worker, and three police officers? -PCP
Re: (Score:3)
Clearly it's a conspiracy and they're in on it.
I mean, do you have a better explanation?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
She's mute by choice. That means she can speak. She just chooses not to. So "she's so autistic she can't speak" is a lie.
The rest is just your perverted puritan fantasy running amok with you. At this juncture I think you're in more dire need of medical attention to help you with your delusions than anyone actually involved in this story.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Cops and social workers in Chicago investigated, and determined there was no abuse, that she was competent to consent and was consenting.
According to Garfield, she is autistic and shy. According to you, she is so mentally handicapped that she cannot consent. So you are the expert here? Are you a trained playlist who has reviewed her case? Or are you just talking out of your ass? Seems like you are autism-shaming.
I don't really understand BSDM but if everything is consensual it's not my damned business,
Re: (Score:1)
Unless you work with them, it's really not your problem.
You seem to be under the impression that what other consenting adults do in their private lives somehow has to be ok with you. Strange perversion you have.
Something that is bothering me. (Score:1)
First. I hate Code of Conducts. For the most part declaring behaviour outside of work is dumb, and at work anything that is unacceptable should not need to be codified. Rules demanding niceness are just agar for Dunning-Krueger. If you can't stand criticism don't program. ( I'm talking to you Poettering. Oh and I don't mean taking a swing at a coworker is permissible, with some extreme exceptions. )
Not using Drupal AFAIU, Drupal is open source. First. I suspect that if a proprietary company did the same
FFS (Score:2)