Turmoil for Drupal
The Drupal content management system (CMS) has been an open-source tool of choice for many web site owners for well over a decade now. Over that time, it has been overseen by its original developer, Dries Buytaert, who is often referred to as the benevolent dictator for life (BDFL) for the project. Some recent events have led a sizable contingent in the Drupal community to question his leadership, however. A request that a prominent developer leave the Drupal community, apparently over elements of his private life rather than any Drupal-related misstep, has led to something of an outcry in that community—it may well lead to a change in the governance of the project.
Too much information
Publicly, at least, the incident began with a post from Drupal developer Larry Garfield on March 22. It was titled "TMI about me" and largely lives up to the "too much information" (TMI) billing. It is, he said, a "self-outing" that describes his personal life and, in particular, his involvement in the Gorean subculture [possibly NSFW] of the BDSM community (which is an umbrella term for bondage, discipline, dominance, submission, sadism, and masochism generally associated with sexual activity).
Garfield said that he felt he had to "out" himself due to a smear campaign
against him that started in October 2016 and culminated in Buytaert calling
him on February 24; Buytaert asked
Garfield to "step down from Drupal
" because it is "in
the best interest of the project
". That was followed up by an email
from Drupal Association
executive director Megan Sanicki on February 27; based on his conversation with
Buytaert, she was "informing me
that I'd been summarily dismissed from my position as track chair and as a
speaker at DrupalCon
", Garfield said.
Notably lacking from any of these communications was any indication that he
had violated the code of conduct,
he said. Garfield summarized the situation as follows:
Now take that paragraph, replace the word "Gor" with "being gay", and go back in time 15 years. Maybe even 10. Imagine being told that you need to leave Drupal before people find out that you're gay and it [embarrasses] the project.
Now try replacing "Gor" with "Muslims", and think about it today.
A different view
As might be guessed, Buytaert sees things differently. On March 23,
he posted about the
situation since Garfield had gone public; that post has been updated
multiple times since. There is, Buytaert said, confidential
information that Garfield had omitted from his post; while Buytaert does
not "judge the choices anyone makes in their private life or what
beliefs they subscribe to
", he does find the Gorean philosophy
espoused by Garfield to be misaligned with Drupal's fundamental values.
Buytaert said that he has to look at the effect on the project as a whole:
However, when a highly-visible community member's private views become public, controversial, and disruptive for the project, I must consider the impact that his words and actions have on others and the project itself. In this case, Larry has entwined his private and professional online identities in such a way that it blurs the lines with the Drupal project. Ultimately, I can't get past the fundamental misalignment of values.
On the same day, Sanicki also posted
about Garfield's removal as a DrupalCon track chair and canceling his talks
at the conference. The "decision was based on
confidential information conveyed in private by many sources
", she
said, but
was "not because of his private life or personal beliefs
".
Confidential information
The responses to Buytaert and Sanicki's posts mostly focused on the "confidential information" that they referred to. Since there was no specific mention of violations of the code of conduct, though that would seemingly be the only grounds for the actions taken against Garfield, many were puzzled—or outraged. To some, it smacked of a secret court convicting someone of secret offenses using secret evidence. References to 1984 were made in the comment threads.
According to Garfield, who followed up his
"TMI" post on March 27, some folks had been digging up his postings
on various Gor and BDSM forums, as well as, eventually, information from a
dating profile he posted. These are decidedly non-Drupal forums and
collecting and sharing information from them is a violation of the terms of
service of the sites, he said. Much of that information had been turned
over to the Drupal Community
Working Group (CWG), which "initially found that there were no
Code of Conduct violations by Larry
" the group said in a
statement.
The CWG tried to mediate between the parties (Garfield and Klaus Purer, evidently,
though only Garfield names Purer), which failed. At that point, the CWG
escalated the matter to Buytaert.
There are various interpretations of the actions of the CWG, Buytaert, and
Sanicki floating around, but the crux of the issue for many seems to be a
lack of any concrete statement that Garfield's actions within the
Drupal community were somehow problematic. The closest seems to come from
a March 31 joint
statement by Buytaert and Sanicki that outlines the information used in
the decision-making process. That includes "some of Larry's online
interactions, both on and off Drupal.org
", though no details are
provided even though any postings to drupal.org are seemingly already public. There is also mention of information gathered from members-only
sites; they do not condone that and the activity has been referred to the
CWG for possible action.
Garfield, for his part, has tried to stay reasonably positive, while steadfastly—stridently—defending his reputation and disputing some parts of the public statements made about him and the situation. Apparently, someone had been threatening to go public with the information about Garfield's private life (which is part of why he outed himself); Garfield clearly sees that "blackmail" as part of why Buytaert acted how and when he did:
But that, like much of the information on the alleged offenses, is Garfield's interpretation. That he has to interpret it at all is, of course, one of the complaints he and others have about the process and the current state of affairs. He said that he doesn't want to see this affect the project and has made a proposal to Buytaert to try to get things back on course:
[...]
There has been wild talk of a Drupal fork, of reorganizing the Drupal Association, of people resigning, and so forth. I have no interest in such discussion, nor interest in a Drupal fork. My goal is not to split or harm Drupal, nor anyone in it. My goal is entirely defending my reputation and putting a stop to blackmail and libel.
Garfield also strongly condemned some who were trying to defend him using the same tactics that were used by his accusers. In no uncertain terms he made it clear that he wanted that to stop:
He did point to the Drupal Confessions site that is gathering support for an open letter to Buytaert. That letter has been "taken off the site for the duration of DrupalCon", according to an email from the site's contact address; the Twitter account for the site has some additional information. DrupalCon Baltimore runs from April 24-28.
The letter takes a strong stance against the actions taken by the project toward Garfield and asks Buytaert to apologize to Garfield and to take some active steps to ensure this kind of thing cannot happen again. It ends with a warning that some of the 150+ signatories, some of them high-profile members of the community, will cease participating in Drupal if Buytaert does not act to restore faith in the professionalism and governance of the community.
Moving forward
Buytaert apologized to the community on April 9 and posted some thoughts on project governance the next day. The overarching goal of the governance change is to remove Buytaert as the sole arbiter of community and governance problems that are not resolved in the CWG or elsewhere:
He would also like to review the code of conduct to clarify its intent and scope. The plan is to start some of that work at DrupalCon Baltimore and to hopefully complete it (factoring in comments from the community and taking input from both insiders and outsiders with experience in governance, diversity, inclusion, and so on) by DrupalCon Vienna in late September.
In his final
post before DrupalCon, Buytaert noted that he and Garfield were talking
and that Garfield would be attending the conference as a member of the
community. Though both have said
that Garfield was asked to leave the community, Buytaert pointed to a CWG
message
from April 16 that unequivocally stated Garfield remained a member of
the community. That message also noted that the CWG members
"strongly reject any suggestion or assertion that Larry was asked to
leave solely on the basis of his personal beliefs or what he does in his
private life
"; if that had been the case, all would have resigned
the CWG. There is also mention of the community member who threatened
Garfield (presumably with exposure, though it is not said); "they
have agreed to step down from all positions of responsibility and
leadership within the community and make personal apologies to those
directly impacted by their actions.
"
Messy
Any way you slice it, this is a messy situation. There is a lot of murkiness and confidentiality that make it difficult to understand what actually went on. Most of the Drupal community is in the dark and it would seem that the project leadership would have much preferred to sweep this all under the rug.
It is a bit hard to reconcile Buytaert's recent statements with the earliest one; is adherence to a Gorean lifestyle incompatible with being a Drupal member or not? If it is, as the first post from Buytaert said, then it is hard to see how Garfield was not shown the door for his beliefs, which is something Buytaert and others have more recently strongly denied.
There are multiple lessons here for Drupal and other communities. If you are attempting to eject a member for some transgression, it would probably be prudent to have a high-level, non-confidential reason for doing so that you can share with the person and the greater community. There may well be good reasons for ending Garfield's relationship with the project, but none have been forthcoming—except for the confidential information that is apparently not a legal matter nor a code of conduct violation. "Trust us" can only go so far for an open source community.
The role of the code of conduct and its bearing on what behavior is considered to be acceptable is obviously important as well. There is more to a code of conduct than just having one. It's a bit hard to see how there could be an action that is legal and does not cross the line of a reasonably written code of conduct that is also so egregious it requires removing someone from a project.
In this Drupal controversy, some may see echoes of Brendan Eich being forced out as Mozilla's CEO due to his financial support for an anti-gay-marriage law in California. There are some parallels, in that there were no indications that Eich's views spilled over into the workplace, but that his adherence to those views was considered enough by some to refuse to work with him—and by extension Mozilla. There are reasonable arguments on both sides of the Eich situation, but there is a difference between being a high-profile project member, even in a leadership role, and being the CEO of a company. For good or ill, a project's code of conduct does not directly govern the executives (or other employees) of a company sponsoring a project.
There will always be people who think differently on any project; there are no end of opinions on hot-button topics that one side or the other will find to be detestable and unfit for anyone to hold. We need to learn to live with that diversity as well; people should be judged on their actions while engaged in community activities. The lines can be somewhat blurry, granted, but policing opinions and consensual actions that happen completely outside of the "community space" is tantamount to the dreaded thought police. If those actions do blur or spill into the space, the code of conduct should be there to help. Projects would do well to consider that in light of the Drupal situation.
With luck, as
these words are being typed, progress is being made toward resolving the
situation and on
considering steps to head off other similar situations in the future. This
kind of controversy has the potential to
fragment the community—we have already seen signs of that. But putting
things back on an even keel, while looking to learn and evolve from a mess
of this sort, can also help bring the community together again.
Posted Apr 25, 2017 18:57 UTC (Tue)
by flussence (guest, #85566)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Apr 25, 2017 22:47 UTC (Tue)
by ntnn (guest, #109693)
[Link]
Quite honestly, this is a bloody shitshow. The 'Gor' is a fetish like any other, if we were to remove all people in some sort of position of power based on how weird we think their fetish is, we'd run out of capable people really quickly.
And especially for Garfield it is purely a fetish - nothing he'd subscribe to as a belief. If the drupal community actually stands on Buytaerts side on this one - who is the actual malefactor imo - that would throw up some questions on the community itself rather than Garfield.
Posted Apr 25, 2017 22:56 UTC (Tue)
by ntnn (guest, #109693)
[Link] (1 responses)
There may be some similarities, however the major point making the
Posted Apr 26, 2017 11:12 UTC (Wed)
by dunlapg (guest, #57764)
[Link]
If that's the case, then yes, Garfield is basically entirely in the right. On the other hand, two independent sets of people -- Buytaert and the committee at the Drupal conference -- independently looked into the matter, including "confidential information" not available to the public, and decided to ask Garfield to step down from some activity as a result.
Confidentiality is a tricky business. There are good reasons that the US Constitution forbids making accusations in secret without allowing you access to the evidence. On the other hand, there are real costs to raising issues publicly, and confidentiality makes it possible for people to report problems that they otherwise may not have reported.
Posted Apr 25, 2017 23:09 UTC (Tue)
by xnox (guest, #63320)
[Link]
What is the point of this article? To circulate and populise the propagandas further? The article is well written as usual, but the editorial quality does not justify the consequences of attracting even more people into this.
Posted Apr 26, 2017 0:29 UTC (Wed)
by KaiRo (subscriber, #1987)
[Link] (62 responses)
It would do good to Drupal and any other projects to not let things come that far. Let's not heat up discussions by making absolute statements on anyone (even calling out discrepancies in what one person said) and judge involvement of people in projects by how they behave in the actual project.
Posted Apr 26, 2017 0:58 UTC (Wed)
by pizza (subscriber, #46)
[Link] (61 responses)
When said person made those statements when acting/speaking in an official capacity on behalf of said project, what they say and how they behave are one and the same.
Posted Apr 26, 2017 13:22 UTC (Wed)
by drag (guest, #31333)
[Link] (60 responses)
Part of professionalism isn't just disciplining yourself to adhering to a very safe way of behaving for the sake of your business or project (or whatever). It's also having the ability and judgment to look past the failings and mistakes of others and deal with the reality that humans are messy and full of failings in a productive manner. You make allowances, give people benefit of the doubt, look past embarrassments etc.
Typically the correct response to this sort of situation is to eliminate the people from a project that are the instigators for this sort of political nonsense. They are destructive and otherwise they will just continue to create drama and cause issues for everybody else regardless of outcome. Trying to destroy a person's living because you disagree with some private (and legal/consensual) part of it is just vile behavior and runs counter to the best interests of everybody else involved. If they get their way they will just become worse.
Posted Apr 26, 2017 15:13 UTC (Wed)
by jospoortvliet (guest, #33164)
[Link] (59 responses)
Of course we vote similar people into political office all the time but I get that people get uneasy about it and act on it.
Posted Apr 26, 2017 17:51 UTC (Wed)
by dskoll (subscriber, #1630)
[Link]
The thing is, a belief in the stork theory of children is in direct conflict with modern medical science. It's not clear to me how a private sexual fetish is in direct conflict with Drupal development or indeed, with programming in general.
Unless Garfield acted badly to other people in real life, I really think what he does in his private life is nobody's business.
Posted Apr 26, 2017 20:03 UTC (Wed)
by drag (guest, #31333)
[Link] (57 responses)
I believe strongly in freedom of association so if you don't want to be given a physical by a guy that dresses up in a rubber suit in the evening and uses safe words with a partner... then that is your own choice and I believe you have the right to take your business elsewhere.
But trying to form a thought police swat team that will either secretly work to undermine or openly deny a person their living because they have unfashionable sexuality is not acceptable. The guy's public statement was just a response to what seems from here people attempting to do a sort of blackmail campaign him into stepping down. Publicly airing your dirty laundry is really one of the few ways you can put this sort of damaging behavior in it's place, unfortunately.
Maybe there is something big and terrible he did that I am missing here?
I really didn't like the moralizing and thought police-style behavior that swept through the USA during the heyday of the 'Moral Majority'/Reagan-era and I think it's really sad that this sort of stuff is starting to happen in open source communities.
Posted Apr 26, 2017 21:39 UTC (Wed)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link] (56 responses)
The article says that the Drupal Executive Director has stated that the decision was made in response to confidential information provided to the board, and not because of his sexuality.
Posted Apr 26, 2017 22:28 UTC (Wed)
by jkingweb (subscriber, #113039)
[Link] (49 responses)
Posted Apr 26, 2017 23:13 UTC (Wed)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link] (48 responses)
The reason we don't trust secret trials in general is that the people making the decisions are unaccountable - their positions are supported by the power of the state and its attendant forces. Individuals can't, for the most part, opt out of their jurisdiction and either choose another or build their own.
In this case the separation between the people that made the decision and normal members of the community is much smaller. The community as a whole can't be threatened - if they are they'll just leave and form a new community, as we've seen several times in the past when communities have lost trust in their leadership. The continued existence of the current Drupal community depends on the people who made this decision convincing people that they socialise with as basically equals that they take their responsibilities seriously and acted appropriately. They have nothing to gain from abusing that.
Posted Apr 27, 2017 8:39 UTC (Thu)
by aggelos (subscriber, #41752)
[Link]
For one thing, "basically equal" does not really describe most communities. That much should be uncontroversial. People who have been part of a project for years have bonds with other long-term members of the community. People who regularly contribute more code changes have status. People who code typically have higher status than other contributors. Companies and their representatives carry different weight. Etc.
For another, "The people who made this decision have nothing to gain from abusing that ['that' being authority I guess]" could be used to present any abusive decision whatsoever as necessarily OK (otherwise, there would have been a fork, QED). I think this fails to account for a number of factors that make it both hard and undesirable to fork a community. Leaving behind the abusive 'leadership' is never easy and is pretty much impossible unless you can form a large enough group of experienced developers. What happens if you're a single person and others won't stand up for you? What if the leadership, i.e. the people who took this hypothetical abusive decision, are (as is common) some of the most experienced developers in the project? What if your financial well-being is closely connected to the success and vitality of the project? What happens when you need to leave people you consider friends behind?
There is more to be said for the inadequacy of secret trials, such as the one described, in terms of being able to form a defense (secret evidence and secret accusations?). I agree that this is a different matter to an actual secret court. Yet these considerations are not irrelevant to an opt-in community (which your comment seems to me to suggest).
Posted Apr 27, 2017 10:52 UTC (Thu)
by branden (guest, #7029)
[Link] (46 responses)
What's the point of being a BDFL, especially a SABDFL, if this is not the case?
Posted Apr 27, 2017 12:34 UTC (Thu)
by epa (subscriber, #39769)
[Link] (45 responses)
Posted Apr 28, 2017 22:32 UTC (Fri)
by rahvin (guest, #16953)
[Link] (44 responses)
Posted Apr 28, 2017 22:40 UTC (Fri)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link] (43 responses)
Posted Apr 29, 2017 0:30 UTC (Sat)
by pizza (subscriber, #46)
[Link] (42 responses)
Remember who started this -- Drupal's CWG, acting through Buytaert, attempted to perform a career-wrecking excommunication. They have to justify that *somehow*, and I'm sorry, but "trust us, it's sooper seekrit national security reasons" doesn't cut it, even if such an action didn't directly contradict of Drupal's code of conduct [1] and their conflict resolution policy [2].
By everyone's admission, Garfield did not violate the Drupal code of conduct in any way, in person or otherwise. In his shoes, you or I would be screaming bloody murder too!
[1] https://www.drupal.org/dcoc
Posted Apr 29, 2017 0:44 UTC (Sat)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link] (41 responses)
1) The information made available to the people involved justifies the decision
Whether the information is public or not doesn't change whether it's (1) or (2). What it changes is whether you're inclined to believe that it's (1) or (2). So, the question remains - why, in this specific case, do you believe (2) (ie, several people are jointly lying about something) rather than (1)?
Posted Apr 29, 2017 1:41 UTC (Sat)
by sfeam (subscriber, #2841)
[Link] (36 responses)
Posted Apr 29, 2017 3:24 UTC (Sat)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link] (35 responses)
Why? If someone brings them some verifiable information on condition of confidentiality, and if that information demonstrates that someone violated community boundaries, why should they not act?
Posted Apr 29, 2017 4:13 UTC (Sat)
by sfeam (subscriber, #2841)
[Link] (32 responses)
Posted Apr 29, 2017 4:29 UTC (Sat)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link] (31 responses)
Why?
> In this case that appears to mean obtaining permission from the complainant[s] to make public the basis for any action taken.
And if that permission is not forthcoming, you have to choose between allowing someone you know to have violated community norms to remain within the community or potentially losing the trust of your community. As you say, neither option is attractive. But there's no reason to assert that the former is clearly superior.
Posted May 1, 2017 15:03 UTC (Mon)
by rahvin (guest, #16953)
[Link] (30 responses)
I take this a bit personally because I'm afflicted by a similar kink and BDSM is very tricky to deal with in the real world where 80% of the population likes to judge mercilessly the people involved. You don't get to choose the kinks that get you going and to punish him for this is IMO akin to punishing someone for being gay.
Posted May 1, 2017 15:59 UTC (Mon)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link] (29 responses)
No.
> Because unless there are some other facts present here other than what's been revealed and frankly I don't trust a "trust us" statement they took action against him for things he does in his personal time.
They've explicitly said that there are facts present here other than what's been revealed.
Posted May 1, 2017 16:56 UTC (Mon)
by ms-tg (subscriber, #89231)
[Link] (28 responses)
Are there particular facts and/or statements that are leading you to think that this is believable and not simply a justification which can't be checked?
Posted May 1, 2017 17:06 UTC (Mon)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link] (27 responses)
The people making the claims are people I have reason to trust.
Posted May 1, 2017 20:11 UTC (Mon)
by rahvin (guest, #16953)
[Link] (26 responses)
Posted May 1, 2017 21:18 UTC (Mon)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link] (25 responses)
Is there a specific reason you don't trust these people, or is it just that you assume anyone in their position would behave the same way?
> What he does in his free time with consenting adults is no one's damn business
I agree.
Posted May 2, 2017 17:29 UTC (Tue)
by Jandar (subscriber, #85683)
[Link] (23 responses)
He already answered the question in his comment:
Posted May 2, 2017 17:52 UTC (Tue)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link] (22 responses)
That suggests that they assume anyone in that position would behave the same way, but it's possible that there's something specific about this situation that biases the position.
Posted May 2, 2017 20:18 UTC (Tue)
by Jandar (subscriber, #85683)
[Link] (21 responses)
> I've seen completely rational normally non-judgemental people become radically judgemental of anyone that participates in it.
In my view it's clear that he doesn't trust anyone per se to be rational especially about this topic.
This position I find very sensible because this is my observation too.
It's your observation that most people are rational and non-judgemental about fringe sexual fetishes? If yes, you must be living in a very enlightened community.
Posted May 2, 2017 20:31 UTC (Tue)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link] (20 responses)
The problem with this is that it presents no way for handling cases where someone who's a member of the BDSM community *does* behave inappropriately.
> It's your observation that most people are rational and non-judgemental about fringe sexual fetishes? If yes, you must be living in a very enlightened community.
I'm in the San Francisco bay area, so probably? A pretty high percentage of my friends are involved in at least one fringe sexual fetish.
Posted May 2, 2017 21:51 UTC (Tue)
by pizza (subscriber, #46)
[Link] (18 responses)
Sure there is: Drupal already spells out, in their Code of Conduct, what they consider "inappropriate", and their dispute resolution process document shows how they adjudicate things. If those documents are somehow deficient and there are further classes of "inappropriateness" left out (or they use a different process than published), then those documents should be updated to whatever is the actual standard.
(Furthermore, for particularly egregious inappropriateness, a call can be made to the local constabulary.)
Posted May 2, 2017 22:12 UTC (Tue)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link] (17 responses)
Posted May 2, 2017 22:46 UTC (Tue)
by sfeam (subscriber, #2841)
[Link] (16 responses)
Transparency and appeals
IMHO you are way out into a gray area at best when "omit details" is interpreted to include "we won't tell you the reason at all".
Posted May 2, 2017 22:53 UTC (Tue)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link] (15 responses)
Posted May 2, 2017 23:04 UTC (Tue)
by sfeam (subscriber, #2841)
[Link] (14 responses)
Posted May 2, 2017 23:18 UTC (Tue)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link] (13 responses)
Posted May 3, 2017 18:06 UTC (Wed)
by rahvin (guest, #16953)
[Link] (12 responses)
This fringe sexual activity is hated by significant numbers of people and without full disclosure it paints a pictures of bias. Particularly as I've seen no evidence they provided this information to the accused as they should.
Posted May 3, 2017 18:16 UTC (Wed)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link] (11 responses)
Posted May 5, 2017 0:09 UTC (Fri)
by rahvin (guest, #16953)
[Link] (10 responses)
It's really quite sad because the lack of information leaves two major possibilities, that they reacted to his private sexual life or that the he did something terrible that was not covered by the code of conduct but which should be. People like me are going to believe number 1 but more people are going to believe number 2 (like you) and honestly that's more damaging to his career than just stating what the reason was because it leaves innuendo and imagination to come up with an explanation for what he did. Every HR person from now till eternity is going to fill in behavior X to explain it where X is whatever they want it to be.
Posted May 5, 2017 0:19 UTC (Fri)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link] (9 responses)
Posted May 6, 2017 0:19 UTC (Sat)
by dlang (guest, #313)
[Link] (7 responses)
I also seriously question if activity that takes place outside the community should be grounds for ejecting someone from the community. Taking that approach leads to big brother type investigations of people you don't like to find an excuse for ejecting them.
If the person is well behaved and contributes usefully within the community, why should it matter what they have done elsewhere?
Our communities are supposed to be based on ability and contributions, now who the person is outside the community.
Posted May 6, 2017 0:26 UTC (Sat)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link] (6 responses)
Because that argument says that if Hitler turns up to a Jewish community meeting and asks to be let in, you have to tolerate him up until the point where he murders everyone.
Posted May 6, 2017 0:38 UTC (Sat)
by dlang (guest, #313)
[Link] (5 responses)
Especially with an online community, if a person's words within the community are respectful, there's no reason to care what their beliefs, physical appearance, personal hygiene, etc are.
Posted May 6, 2017 1:06 UTC (Sat)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link] (4 responses)
Posted May 6, 2017 6:40 UTC (Sat)
by dlang (guest, #313)
[Link] (3 responses)
As to your question of a Jewish community refusing to allow Hitler to join. Prior to 1920 or so, they would have no more reason to prevent him from joining than they would have had to refuse any Gentile. By 1945, he had shown his bad behavior to that community directly, so it's not a case of ignoring outside behavior and only taking into account the actions within that community.
Posted May 6, 2017 7:52 UTC (Sat)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link] (2 responses)
The question that you raised was whether a community should reject someone based on their behaviour outside the community This hypothetical is absolutely related to that question.
> By 1945, he had shown his bad behavior to that community directly,
So it's reasonable to exclude someone who treats, say, women badly from a community that either includes or aspires to include women?
Posted May 7, 2017 16:15 UTC (Sun)
by pizza (subscriber, #46)
[Link]
Meanwhile, we're all still waiting for even a modicum of evidence to back up that claim. Heck, even the "accused" here is publicly asking for said evidence -- or even a specific allegation of bad behaviour.
Posted Jul 15, 2017 17:47 UTC (Sat)
by paulj (subscriber, #341)
[Link]
Transparency is critical here.
Posted Jul 15, 2017 17:45 UTC (Sat)
by paulj (subscriber, #341)
[Link]
Down that path lies excommunicating people from a range of communities that have backwards attitudes to women, or certain minorities, or certain nationals. A number of religious communities particularly. Is that correct?
There are people I've worked with whose political views I find highly regressive, and I'm sure many others would too. Should technical communities exclude people with certain views? I actually feel like I /would/ to sometimes, when those political views are so disgusting, and I have an emotional reaction. Then I think about it more rationally and wonder if that kind of divisiveness would help in the longer run, how objective it could be, where this kind of approach would end up, etc.
Posted May 2, 2017 22:02 UTC (Tue)
by madscientist (subscriber, #16861)
[Link]
Then it's up to the accused as to whether or not they want to make the allegations public.
Posted Jul 15, 2017 17:37 UTC (Sat)
by paulj (subscriber, #341)
[Link]
Posted Apr 29, 2017 4:17 UTC (Sat)
by pizza (subscriber, #46)
[Link] (1 responses)
By "acting" do you include punishing the accused while making public statements saying that "no community boundaries were violated but we're punishing them for other, unspecified reasons?"
Come on... I get the point you're making, but it doesn't seem particularly relevant given the public record in this case.
Posted Apr 29, 2017 4:29 UTC (Sat)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link]
Which specific statement are you referring to?
Posted Apr 29, 2017 4:08 UTC (Sat)
by pizza (subscriber, #46)
[Link] (2 responses)
I'm not accusing Drupal of actually lying here -- Indeed, I'm taking them at their word that Garfield did nothing illegal nor anything that violated the Drupal Code of Conduct. The problem is (as mentioned in TFA), if one assumes good faith and that this was entirely justified, what does that actually leave that would be grounds of excommunication? Perhaps I (and many others) lack sufficient imagination here, but I'm left scratching my head.
Meanwhile, back to the smell test, while I may be biased towards (2) due to personal experience, that doesn't necessarily mean that the CWG and BFD lied or acted in bad faith. Indeed, based on the outcome described in TFA, this appears to have been what happened, with the actual bad actor stepping down and apologizing (having violated the Drupal CoC and arguably commiting an actual crime or two along the way), along with governance changes that should hopefully prevent things from escalating to this point in the future. Not that it mitigates the damage already done -- to both Garfield and trust in Drupal's governance.
Posted Apr 29, 2017 4:23 UTC (Sat)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Apr 29, 2017 4:39 UTC (Sat)
by pizza (subscriber, #46)
[Link]
Fair enough.
It appears that a sizeable portion of said community/constituency pitched quite a fit over the way this was initially handled, which led the CWG to backtrack and revisit it, followed by a promise to make some specific changes to the project governance. Time will tell if that's sufficient.
Posted Jul 15, 2017 17:35 UTC (Sat)
by paulj (subscriber, #341)
[Link]
That's a terrible process. It's extremely subvertible, without detection. Good people therefore wouldn't ask others to have to trust in such a process, for such a momentous decision (and to the person excommunicated, this was momentous).
Also, even good people can have biases that lead them astray. Firstly, the bias may lead them into making some poor decision. Second, self-justification biases may then lead them to defend a bad decision no matter what, because of the implications to themselves and their standing if they were to concede it was a bad decision.
I still have no idea whether it's option 1 or 2, but - for sure - it's a dreadful process that's been followed. Which doesn't completely help the casual observer have faith that it's option 1.
Posted Apr 27, 2017 8:51 UTC (Thu)
by epa (subscriber, #39769)
[Link] (5 responses)
Posted Apr 27, 2017 17:50 UTC (Thu)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link] (2 responses)
Why?
Posted Apr 28, 2017 12:23 UTC (Fri)
by epa (subscriber, #39769)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Apr 28, 2017 21:05 UTC (Fri)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link]
In this case the people making the decision were aware of the evidence and so could take it into account.
> These are basic steps necessary for people to have confidence in the institutions, and to avoid both corruption ("sunlight is the best disinfectant") and just plain stupidity.
That was my point. In a legal setting we need transparency because there is no other reason to have confidence in the decision making process. In this setting we have that confidence because the people making the decisions are people that we have other social connections with and other mechanisms by which to judge whether they're corrupt or prone to act maliciously.
> These rules don't apply as strongly to organizations that exist for their own benefit or that of a particular group of shareholders, so for-profit company boards don't have the same need for openness
Why should shareholders have confidence that their board (a set of people with an incentive to act in their own interests) is acting in their interests but the Drupal community not have confidence that their board (a set of people with significantly less incentive to act in their own interests) is acting in their interests? This seems like an odd distinction to draw.
Posted Apr 27, 2017 19:07 UTC (Thu)
by seyman (subscriber, #1172)
[Link] (1 responses)
Out of curiosity, if the board does not act and a crime is later committed (which they could have prevented had they taken action), is the board liable?
Posted Apr 28, 2017 12:24 UTC (Fri)
by epa (subscriber, #39769)
[Link]
Posted Apr 26, 2017 14:21 UTC (Wed)
by NAR (subscriber, #1313)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Apr 26, 2017 21:25 UTC (Wed)
by david.a.wheeler (subscriber, #72896)
[Link]
> ... "I informed him how impossible that was, given that Drupal has been the cornerstone of my career for the past nearly 12 years... Simply abandoning Drupal would be direct material harm to me and my career, not to mention Drupal."
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> forced out as Mozilla's CEO due to his financial support for an
> anti-gay-marriage law in California. There are some parallels, in that
> there were no indications that Eich's views spilled over into the
> workplace, but that his adherence to those views was considered enough
> by some to refuse to work with him—and by extension Mozilla. There are
> reasonable arguments on both sides of the Eich situation, but there is
> a difference between being a high-profile project member, even in
> a leadership role, and being the CEO of a company. For good or ill,
> a project's code of conduct does not directly govern the executives (or
> other employees) of a company sponsoring a project.
difference here is that Brendan Eich supported a political view openly
by action - what Garfield did was living out his fetish in his bedroom
with consenting partners.
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...what Garfield did was living out his fetish in his bedroom
with consenting partners.
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[2] https://www.drupal.org/conflict-resolution
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2) The information made available to the people involved does not justify the decision
This is a false dichotomy. If there is an expectation that the actions of a committee are transparent, and I think this should always be the case for a community project, then they should not hide the reasons for their actions. If they cannot make their reasoning public then they should not act. If this information, whatever it is, was brought to them under condition of secrecy then they should throw the decision back to whoever brought it to them - "if you won't allow us to make the information public then we can not act on it; if you want us to act, you must allow us to justify our action and that means we cannot promise secrecy."
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The obligation to act, if there is such an obligation, derives from a broader obligation to act on behalf of the community. But the obligation for transparency is also an obligation to the community. In the case of conflicting obligations they should strive to resolve the conflict before violating either one. In this case that appears to mean obtaining permission from the complainant[s] to make public the basis for any action taken. Ideally that ends up with both obligations being satisfied - a win/win result. As it is they have created a state where the community knows the obligation for transparency has been violated, and cannot verify whether the obligation for responsible action has been honored or not. No wins in sight.
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>The people making the claims are people I have reason to trust.Turmoil for Drupal
I don't. BDSM is a kink that is extremely misunderstood and people are beyond judgemental of. I've seen completely rational normally non-judgemental people become radically judgemental of anyone that participates in it. I completely believe these "external facts" are his participation in these BDSM groups and that the blackmailer threatened to expose his participation and paint the project with it and they caved.
Why do I think this? For one I've seen this happen before where a BDSM lifestyle became knowledgeable to an employer and someone at the top disliked it. For another I know how badly perceived this kink is in the general public (you may not realize how badly maligned it is) and finally the public statements by the project made clear that no project rules were broken and the guy has obviously not been charged with a crime, this leaves IMO only one reason to get rid of him, and that's his extra-curricular activities are publicly "distasteful" and people at the top didn't want them associated with the project even though they were completely unrelated. And I'm fully convinced that the "unreleased facts" are his participation in the Gorean group and that the blackmailer and management have twisted that around to mean he abuses women for fun.
What he does in his free time with consenting adults is no one's damn business, I feel very sorry for him as this is going to probably ruin his career. Because of the public stigma of BDSM this will likely follow him around for the rest of his days. It's damned unfortunate that this happened because of people at the top making blanket decisions for publicity reasons about things completely unrelated to the project. And the worst part is the blackmailer proved it works, they can now find someone else in the project with a kink and publicly out them to get them fired as well.
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>
> Is there a specific reason you don't trust these people, or is it just that you assume anyone in their position would behave the same way?
> Why do I think this? For one I've seen ...
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from the Community Working Group Charter:Turmoil for Drupal
The CWG aims to be as transparent as possible by deliberating and documenting its decisions publicly when able. In sensitive situations, however, the group may omit details out of respect for the privacy of the individuals involved.
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"That's the CWG charter. The decision wasn't made by the CWG."Turmoil for Drupal
In that case the conflict resolution procedure, linked from the Code of Conduct, was not followed. It directs that unresolved conflicts will be escalated to the CWG.
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Blackmail
Blackmail