Expanding on one of the comments that might clear up what we're actually talking about (which wasn't made especially clear otherwise):<p><i>>> "The Gorean philosophy promoted by Larry is based on the principle that women are evolutionarily predisposed to serve men and that the natural order is for men to dominate and lead."<p>Even assuming this is Larry's philosophy, it is pretty much the same philosophy shared by many women & men in various conservative religious faiths, including branches of Christianity, Judaism, & Islam—only they add in the idea that it is divinely ordered. Are we now going to expel all who hold such religious beliefs? <<</i><p>I agree this philosophy is hard to swallow, but the commenter's point about religious belief is well made. Apart from the issue that this is in fact a widely-held belief I would suggest communities allow their members to hold <i>any</i> belief in private, as long as that belief is not in some way construed as a community value, and as long as that person does not <i>act</i> based on that belief during community interactions.<p>It's one of the simple facts of life that you pretty <i>have</i> to work with people who believe all kinds of things, and they have to work with you. Furthermore, we seem to have forgotten that it's even feasible to have good relationships and friendships with people we fundamentally disagree with.<p>In this context, if you're running an open source project, it's expected that people hold an even more varied spectrum of beliefs than would be the case in a traditional company. As long as members can professionally conduct themselves in that environment, firing them is not a productive solution. Presumably the person in question has pledged to uphold Drupal's community values and at first glance it looks like that pledge has not been broken.
Nothing surprising to see here. This is why I seldom bother getting involved in open source projects and NEVER use my real name. Large, interesting projects are too much like this and groups quickly form using the same BS as in high school only now "wrong brand of shoes" gets replaced with "incorrect values". Whatever that heck that means.<p>I'm still not clear why anyone would care how he gets off on his own time, in the privacy of his home. If this is really a thing then other "identifiable" groups might want to prepare for when the pendulum swing back and then they themselves are holding "incorrect values".<p>edit: removed not
I'm actually impressed, from the first few lines I was expecting another social justice fueled witch hunt, but instead we have the exact opposite here.
In the same line, Brendan Eich. I completely disagree with his views on marriage of homosexuals, but disagree that it led him to have to quit his position at Mozilla Foundation.
Code of Conduct. Conduct. CONDUCT!<p>Not: code of thought, beliefs, sexuality, politics, religion....<p>All the discussions of philosophy and belief systems in this thread are missing the point. It DOES NOT MATTER how you feel about someone else's beliefs. It is not relevant. How they CONDUCT themselves in the community is the only thing that matters.
There is an important point that is being missed in this conversation. There are facts that are undisputed by both sides of the argument:<p>- Should a person have a right to privacy? Yes<p>- Should a person be discriminated based on their beliefs? No<p>- Should a person in leadership be forced to expose their private life? No<p>There are two questions, however, that is causing everyone to trip over themselves and table-flip:<p>- Does a person's private life affect their public views?<p>- If a person in leadership has their private life exposed (fairly or unfairly), does that affect their leadership role?<p>If you quickly come to a 'Yes' or 'No' in the last two questions, then that is why we don't have constructive dialogue between people with opposing views. Again, we're not talking about blatant discrimination. We're talking about a position of leadership and influence.<p>For example, if a person has religious views that women should not work, should they be part of the open source community? Of course. Should they be a leader of the community and have prominent speaking roles?<p>It's no different than the 1st amendment. No laws can be made to punish you for speaking, but you can't just say whatever you want without consequence.<p>I'd hope that people would take a breath and really think about that. Is it discrimination if you ask that person to relinquish their leadership role? Who is excluded because of that person being in leadership? Who has been silenced out of fear that the power of leadership trumps their voice?<p>I personally do not know the answers to the two questions, but I'm open to hearing both sides. I also understand how difficult it is to have an answer when you're responsibility is to put people in leadership. With open source, it's even more complicated because you could 'become a leader' simply by being great at contributing!
> Larry Garfield, a long-time, veteran contributor to Drupal was ejected from the community, allegedly not for breaking the Code of Conduct, but, to quote your own post on the matter, because “he holds views that are in opposition with the values of the Drupal project."<p>At some point, some open source communities will need to decide whether they work on open technologies or they are political activists with a political mission that serves the interests of a specific political side, or political doctrine[1] If I'm into, I don't know, some niche Porn that isn't illegal, can it be considered "offensive to women" and should I be ejected as a contributor because of my personal sexual tastes in order to satisfy those that might be offended by this, even if I never bring up that matter in public? Now, if I'm part of an atheist association, and I publicly question the reality of a mainstream religion, can it be considered offensive to Muslims and should I be ejected of a totally unrelated community because some of its members that are not even of the religion think that what I said is offensive toward Muslims?<p>1 : one can argue "free software" is political. It is, but it has to do with the protection of users and their right to access and modify source code. It has nothing to do with women's rights or making blasphemy socially unacceptable, especially when positions are taken outside the context of the project community.
Being unfamiliar with this, from the starting few paragraphs I thought "oh man, they have a white surpremacist developer or something and now there's a scandal, huh". Then I learnt that he was ousted because of his sex life. What the fuck? What does it matter to anyone what he does with other consenting adults in private?
Make no mistake, inclusion and diversity at all costs is the new "religious" standard. Your personal beliefs do not matter. You will conform or you will suffer.<p>(Vote down, that's fine, but it's still true.)
When your private proclivities don't vibe with the dominant culture (postmodernist/intersectional social justice activism) you can expect to be drummed out of open source communities - we've known this to be true for some time. Very pleased to see the open letter from the community come down firmly against this regressive practice, they are firmly on the right side of history.
It sounds to me like some other asshole discovered that this guy was into some unusual stuff in his personal life, and decided to go out of his way to be offended about it, make a big stink about it and stir the pot.<p>Given the choice, it's the pot-stirrer I would kick out of my community. You know, if I had my own community. With blackjack...
> illegally obtaining information from members-only websites (by violating their terms of use)<p>IANAL, but since when have arbitrary website terms and conditions been automatically enforced by criminal law?
> We know that you have no desire for more press coverage, Dries. The last thing you want is to prolong the media parade that has drawn so much attention to the problems with Drupal governance.<p>That must be why they chose to do this in public rather than in a private letter.<p>As much as I agree with the contents of the letter I reject the way in which it was delivered, it is essentially blackmail. If you don't do 'x' we will leave would have been strong enough without making this yet another public spectacle because it pulls in the world at large to witness whether or not these demands are met.<p>I can't stand Drupal for many reasons (backwards incompatibility by design being the major one) but this is not a nice thing to do.
I think free software is to some extend political. We try to work by a higher "inclusive" standard than what is found in society.<p>The letter to Dries writes:<p>> It is unacceptable to judge people based on unspoken, secret rules that they have no say in and cannot know.<p>Unacceptable? Tell that to the pope (pedo trials) and the US gov't (TPP, Guatanamo). They do this all the time. So again, if we agree this is "unacceptable" we say that many of our governing institutions are unacceptable, and thereby set a higher moral community standard then what we are governed by. I for one believe it is very important to do this.<p>> Ensure people carrying out illegal acts related to the conduct of others are reported to the proper authorities.<p>Here again it shows. "Illegal acts" are here scoped by their "relation to the conduct of others", yet are ultimately are defined by gov't. Possession of pot has been illegal, but hell no I'd turn someone in for that: I do not consider is punishment-worthy.
A lot of people are taking either stance: that a person's beliefs squarely should or should not affect their involvement in the project.<p>However - the third stance is that one needs to assess the <i>material effect</i> their beliefs may have on their day-to-day involvement in that project. In an industry with serious, systemic issues with gender balance, is it not reasonable to suggest a person promoting "Gorean philosophy" might execute poor judgement in the context of work with female collaborators?
From the outside it's been hard to judge who's wrong or right here, the whole thing stinks to high heaven.<p>All I know is I wouldn't want to get involved with a similar big project these days. I guess you could just use a fake name, but that probably wouldn't hold up if you wanted to have any sort of leadership role.
I don't see a positive outcome in this unless Dries steps down. This is vote of no confidence and Dries should really see that. (Note: I don't follow drupal and this is the first I've heard of this, so... this is just from an outsider perspective.)
sorry but how does that work to be for tolerance and anti discrimination in the first place ? anti discrimination means you Do NOT tolerate people who discriminate, so you cant be tolerant at the same time. I always see this kind of contradictions in principles.
While, in reading this thread, I understand how people might take offense to someone being excluded based on a privately-held belief, especially one which has not manifested into an actual issue of conduct.<p>But I'm not sure I mind when different standards are applied to any given community's "leaders" vs. its participants. Leaders ultimately represent what a community believes it should stand for. We have, perhaps unrealistically in some case, but justifiably always prosecuted leaders, in any context, for behavior, beliefs and statements that we would absolutely forgive/ignore for the "public".
If you don't want to work with Drupal, then work with something else instead.<p>Open invitation: If you are looking for something to work on (i.e., the project is still pre-alpha quality), check out my work in progress: <a href="https://github.com/coreyp1/defiant" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/coreyp1/defiant</a> .<p>I'm an 11+ member of the Drupal community, who wanted a fresh take on a framework. As developers, we have newer tools with different strengths than PHP. That is what I'm working on leveraging. Message me if you want more info.
"We believe that tolerance reserved only for people who think and act exactly like we do is no tolerance at all."<p>Oh my god. Then act like it.
Not taking sides, but I found this analysis by an experienced community manager interesting: <a href="https://subfictional.com/thoughts-on-recent-drupal-governance-decisions/" rel="nofollow">https://subfictional.com/thoughts-on-recent-drupal-governanc...</a><p>"it's complicated"
Google cache:<p><a href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Nw6rUDO9M64J:https://www.drupalconfessions.org/" rel="nofollow">https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Nw6rUD...</a>
This is big departure from the blow back after Dries made a comment years ago at Drupalcon about encouraging women to enter the Drupal community as graphic design artists. Good for these women today.
Offtopic... Someone here actually develops software in Drupal? Most people i knew abandoned drupal years ago for Joomla or something in python like Django, its kinda weird/cringeworthy hearing news about Drupal the Community more than the Drupal project.
It convinces me Code Of Conduct are basically sticks that will not harm you when you are on the right side of them.<p>Do communities needs sticks to be driven one sided way like cows?<p>At this point it feels like they kind of defy their reason to be and are pretty misused.
You know how we always complain how the tech community is treated unfairly about women? How they think we politely ignore the gendered problems our industry faces? How we're not all sexist and we're genuinely trying hard to embrace and include female geeks and coders?<p>This thread. This whole thread right here.