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https://www.garfieldtech.com/blog/tmi-part-5

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:

At this point, I cannot in good conscience continue to be an advocate for Drupal in the broader tech community. Though it pains me to say it after 12 years with this project, to be stabbed in the back by so many, even if they're a minority, is unbearable. Doubly so when it's by the project lead, a man whom I had considered a friend.

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:

...I don't know what "authorities" Megan refers to, but two autism specialists, a social worker, and three police officers all agreed that nothing illicit, immoral, or illegal was happening, and everything was entirely fine and consensual. I would consider them reasonable "authorities".

Note that therapists and social workers are "mandatory reporters", and would have been legally required to report to the police if they felt the situation was abusive.

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

Responding to cyberstalking, prejudice, and blackmail with... cyberstalking, threats, and blackmail? No. NO! Even if you're trying to support me, NO! I do not want any such support.

(bolding and italics in the original)

https://www.garfieldtech.com/blog/tmi-part-5

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:

At this point, I cannot in good conscience continue to be an advocate for Drupal in the broader tech community. Though it pains me to say it after 12 years with this project, to be stabbed in the back by so many, even if they're a minority, is unbearable. Doubly so when it's by the project lead, a man whom I had considered a friend.

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:

...I don't know what "authorities" Megan refers to, but two autism specialists, a social worker, and three police officers all agreed that nothing illicit, immoral, or illegal was happening, and everything was entirely fine and consensual. I would consider them reasonable "authorities".

Note that therapists and social workers are "mandatory reporters", and would have been legally required to report to the police if they felt the situation was abusive.

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

Responding to cyberstalking, prejudice, and blackmail with... cyberstalking, threats, and blackmail? No. NO! Even if you're trying to support me, NO! I do not want any such support.

(bolding and italics in the original)

https://www.garfieldtech.com/b...

Larry, do you really think women are inferior to men?

No, I do not.

Larry, do you really think all women are supposed to serve men as slaves?

No, I do not.

Do you believe it's wrong for a woman to have authority over a man?

No, I do not. You're quoting the Christian Bible, not me.

I voted for women for President, Senate, Congress, and State House in the last US election, and not for the first time.

I've spent a majority of my career working for women, directly or indirectly. Many projects I've been involved with had women as tech leads. I had no issue.

But don't the Gor books say lots of anti-women things?

Yes, the do. They're argument by hyperbole, not to be taken literally. Even the author says as much.

The Torah, Bible, and Quran say lots of anti-women things, too. Most followers of those books don’t take them literally either. There are religious people who are misogynist pigs. Yet it wouldn't even occur to us to exclude someone who says "I'm a Christian", unless they personally took actions that were abusive or derogatory.

But, you said slave!

Yes, I did. Consensual power exchange communities, at least in the US, have been using the terms “Master” and “slave” for more than twice as long as I've been alive. I didn't pick it.

No, there is not even a little bit of similarity between consensual power exchange relationships and the horrific abuse that unfortunately still happens in too much of the world today.

"Slavery", as the word is used by Goreans and others in M/s relationships is, from a legal perspective, a consensual simulation at best. It's a cultural affectation. There is no actual coercion or force involved. In the ideal case it is a deeply loving, symbiotic relationship, not an exploitive one.

So wait, what do you believe?

I believe there are no significant differences between populations or genders relating to aptitude. I put no stock whatsoever in "girls can't do X" type statements, especially in tech. I have worked with far too many damned good women software developers and managers to believe otherwise.

I believe everyone deserves equal treatment under the law, and from their employers and co-workers. And that treatment had damned well better be respectful and supportive.

I believe that no statement about human nature is universal. Humans are just too complicated a species.

I believe that diverse collaborative groups are better than monocultural ones. That is, diverse along many axes: sex, race, age, educational background, religious background (or lack thereof), sexual orientation, family status, relationship status... anything that affects a person's experiences and/or thought processes.

I believe that as long as a relationship is entered into, and maintained, with informed consent from all parties to all activities in the relationship, it is by default morally acceptable. I may not be interested in it, I may be made uncomfortable by it, I may not like it, but it's not my place to call it "wrong". Nor is it yours.

I believe that a relationship that lacks the informed consent from all parties is by default morally unacceptable.

I believe that human psychology is shaped in part by evolution, and that does impact the sexes. Men and women have, on average, differences in their neurology that can impact personality. (For information on how this affects children, it has been suggested Boys by Daniel J. Hodgins is a good resource.) These are averages, and trends across a population only and say nothing about an individual person. For example, men are, on average, taller than women but there are men and women of almost every conceivable height. Men, on average, have greater upper body strength that women yet there are plenty of women that could easily bench-press me.

I believe if I wish to discuss a fictional book series, philosophy, unconvention

1. The controversy here specifically is about Gorean beliefs/culture, not the BDSM orientation (using some of Larry's terminology here).
2. Larry's articulation of his beliefs/culture are nuanced and a credit to him. They made me take a fresh look.
3. There are some members of the Gorean community who write anti-women screeds. But that's no different then members (sometimes prominent) of major religions. That shouldn't damn the whole sub-culture.

After reading Larry's blog post (and I recommend reading the whole thing) - I've come away realizing Drupal is in the wrong here, and the community is absolutely right to stand up for him. This isn't a man publicly arguing women are less than men. It's a man who is into BDSM and who enjoys a master slave relationship within the context of his romantic/sex life in a way that is wonderfully aware of active consent. That's fine. Some men and women enjoy being dominated, others enjoy dominating. Some like that to mix with how they live life - and that's also fine.

What isn't fine is ignoring the Gorean side of this or failing to see the problems with that culture - just as we need to see the problems with any culture (for example Judeo/Christrian/Muslim culture and how they view apostates, women, and non-believers). I believe we can be critical without blaming everyone in those cultures or destroying those cultures. It's fine to disagree and debate.

Drupal should reinstate this guy (since that seems to be what he wants. Though personally I'd argue he should join a programming community that better respects diversity and values people more.

Lastly I'll add this. It is worth considering that viewing women as less then men can be harmful, even deadly. It leads to treating people as mere objects, restricting their human rights, etc. Look at women in Saudi Arabia for instance. But I'm far more worried about that threat coming from conservative fundamentalist religions than from a sex subculture inspired by novels.

I argued much the same thing in much less space 2 years ago. :-) Most "MVC" web frameworks are anything but, and it is disingenous to claim that they are. It's a marketing gimmick for people that don't actually know what they're talking about.

I have long argued that MVC doesn't even make sense on the web to begin with. MVC is a great architectural model for live interactive systems, but a web site or web app is not a live interactive system. It's an asynchronous challenge/response system.

I blame Sun for completely abusing the term in their Java stacks (I think they called it "model 2"?), and Ruby on Rails for popularizing the wrong impression. MVC by definition requires a direct observer connection from View to Model. All web-MVC frameworks I've seen start with the initial statement that the Controller, not the View, is responsible for handling user interaction and communicating with the Model. Sorry, that's not MVC. It's not a bad model for the web, but it's not MVC. If anything it's closer to PAC.

See the link above for a lengthier analysis and links to Wikipedia. :-)

Really, the whole point of design patterns is to have a common vocabulary. How is that useful if you're going to bastardize your terminology due to stubborn ignorance?

MVC has nothing to do with security and scalability (other than "separation of logic and presentation makes them both easier"). Drupal uses a separation of content and presentation sometimes called PAC.

Scalability has to do with intelligent caching, of which Drupal has plenty. Its pluggable cache system lets you use a database, flat files, or memcache for caching.

Security has to do with how code is written and how many eyes are on it. Code is written according to Drupal's coding standards, and developers learn to write secure code or they are slapped around by Drupal's dedicated security team.

The terminology is not vague. Modules are modular code components. Themes are the way things look. Slashdot itself was the originator of the term "block". And a view is...just what you'd expect.

Open source in general suffers from "good enough for my site". If you want great code you either become a developer and write it or you sponsor a developer. Drupal's community is like any in open source. There are superstars who write awesome code, and people just getting started who are finding their way. A site like drupalmodules.com can help you tell which modules were written by which people.

Drupal's tagging was one of the first to do full taxonomic implementation with multiple controlled vocabularies, not like most CMS's that thought a single "Categories" or "Tags" was enough. The simple "free tagging" option was added later.

Drupal's releases are getting farther apart and with the advent of commercially supported Drupal API stability is growing.

Contradiction complete.

Star Wars uses the force as a large plot device when essentially it's nothing but magic.

Last year, a group of graduate students (myself being one of them) asked that exact question and came up with their (our) suggested answer. Link below. It's under a CC license. It's US-centric, but feel free to forward to any Australian (or anywhere else) leaders you feel it would positively impact. :-)

http://www.garfieldtech.com/copyright/