Slashdot Mirror
Drupal Developers Threaten To Quit Drupal Unless Larry Garfield Is Reinstated (drupalconfessions.org)
An anonymous reader writes: Slashdot previously covered the story of Larry Garfield, a Drupal developer who was allegedly banned from the community for his BDSM/Gorean lifestyle, after he was outed by a colleague with a grudge. Now, dozens of core Drupal developers, committers, and funders have banded together in an open letter to Dries Buytaert, the CTO of Acquia, Drupal trademark owner, and Benevolent Dictator for Life (BDFL) of the Drupal project. Among other things, they demand that Larry Garfield be reinstated, threatening to abandon the project if their demands are not met. Here's an excerpt from the letter: "If you will not fight for us and restore our faith in the professionalism of the Drupal community, then a number of us will be permanently leaving the Drupal community, ceasing all contributions to the official, Drupal-branded branch of the codebase, and ceasing participation in all Drupal communities. This is not our first choice, but we cannot and will not participate in a community that encourages abusers to totally destroy people's careers for personal or ideological reasons."
It would be a boring world if people could not enjoy some socially-unaccepted hobbies in private without fearing for their employment.
Would it be okay to launch an Internet-wide Two Minutes' Hate against them to put pressure on their employer? (Assume, perhaps, that they're in some leadership position â" like, say, CTO.)
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
If it doesn't affect their work, counter examples being excessive drinking or drug taking. I dislike cats (they shit in my garden and eat garden birds) but will work with people that own them.
The key words here are mutual consent and boundaries. He was not asking or coercing any of his coworkers to join him. So, I'm with the letter writers.
On y va, qui mal y pense!
Once you sack a person, you cannot re-instate them. They hold grudges for being sacked, they act like they're bigger than their boss and many other personality traits make it impossible.
So he cannot re-instate this developer, right or wrong. All Dries can do is sack others who outed the developer for their political attacks on the private lives of their fellow Drupal developers.
That would be the maximum, he'll probably just say some calming words and move on with it.
False. Larry does not follow any such creed. He plays at it. Play, fantasy.
He does say that it is his contention that some women enjoy this some of the time. He would appear to be correct as he has a number of active feminist ex-lovers supporting him. Reports of his general behaviour with and to women have been described by women and men (how would they know!) as exemplary.
There are also Gorean groups where gender is reversed. So what?
There is a difference between fantasy and real life. Accept that.
If he treated people as you claim you would have a point but he does not do so and you do not have a point.
So ... Stephen King should be arrested? I mean, read his books, that's sick shit this guy is into!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
he kept a sex slave for several years.
That's outrageous! What does he think he is, a Saudi royal?
Has this alleged "slave" filed charges against him?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
As I said on the previous post about this situation, who cares? His code still works, and there are no allegations that he's trying to fuck the other contributors or for that matter, practicing his kinks with anyone who's not consenting to how he gets his rocks off.
However repugnant "goreanism" might be, I'm rather more repulsed by someone like you demanding that hackers pass some kind of political purity test. Go fuck yourself.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
You don't understand. Social Justice is all about power: the power to tell others how to live their lives, how to act, how to speak. It's certainly not about making the world a better place. And conformance won't mean you will be left alone or even tolerated, it just means they will find something else to control you with.
So this guy is into an alternative lifestyle. Good for him, I say. Now his fellow developers support him. That makes them good people too, in my book.
What if Larry Garfield was the bottom instead of the dom? Would that be acceptable to you? Or what about if his submissive girlfriend had a job at Drupal and didn't want to stop being submissive? Would you want her fired as well? Do you see what I'm getting at? If they're both consenting adults, why do we need to mess with their sexual identities?
And I do think that the anonymous scared drupalista on Twitter is being unfair to the guy. How would you react if an anonymous heterosexual man said he was afraid of sharing the stage at a drupal conference with a gay man? You'd call that person out. After all, most gay men don't go out raping heterosexual men (either on stage or even in private). And yes, the heterosexual man may be completely disgusted by the gay dude, but he has to get over his disgust of sharing the stage with him and get over his desire to punish/change the gay guy.
Last I remember, Drupal's mission wasn't to change people's perfectly legal sexual identities or fetishes.
If you had that position should that prevent you from being employed?
Politics is like that. My local representative (who I did not vote for, but for other reasons) is a member of a mainstream political party that opposed decriminalising homosexuality twenty years ago (almost to the day in that state, a bit longer ago in my state I think). Some prominent people in that party still want to turn back the clock (eg. Senator Eric Abetz). Locking people up for being gay is a bit worse that proposition 8 isn't it? Some people express truly revolting and reactionary opinions and still call themselves conservative, but it's not a crime. If someone wants to support that bunch they shouldn't be sacked for it IMHO no matter what politics the boss has.
Good men oppose actions not thought.
You are arguing something completely unrelated. This is about someone choosing who works for them. If they are making that choice based on what the person does outside the workplace it's unfair and intrusive IMHO.
Someone who's a BDSM "slave" isn't usually a real slave, they're just pretending because they and their partner enjoy it. It's like how someone who dresses up in a nurse uniform to have sex isn't usually a real nurse, they're just pretending because they and their partner enjoy it.
A BDSM "slave" has agreed in advance what they'll do and what their limits are, and has a safeword that would stop everything as soon as they say it. People into BDSM are generally much MORE concerned about consent than the average person - because we push the envelope so much, we have to know that the emergency stop will work. And there's usually a lot of love and caring in the relationship, just like in a "vanilla" (non-BDSM) relationship, although the feelings might be expressed differently.
And are you saying that "vulnerable highly-autistic women" are not allowed to have any kinks? I have no knowledge of the people involved, but it seems plausible to me that she got a man to love and care for her, look after her, help structure her life, and have a fulfilling sexual relationship with, and he got a woman to love and care for him as best she could (those things can be difficult for an autistic person), and an obedient partner in life and in bed - that seems like a relationship which is positive for both the people involved.
As for the "passed her on to a friend of his", well, relationships sometimes end. Sad but true, both for BDSM and "vanilla" (non-BDSM) relationships. If he still cared for her, then helping her find someone else seems like a generous thing to do that would be good for her. Especially if, due to her issues, she would have had problems being on her own and/or finding someone else. And if they're looking for someone for her, then their circle of friends would be the first place to look, because they know and trust those people.
So, from what's publicly known, I don't see anything he's done that's wrong. Unconventional, sure. Against certain people's morals, certainly. But then again, if the standard is "against certain people's morals", then we should be kicking out all women from the project for not wearing a burqa.
It's perfectly possible to say "I disagree with what Larry does in his personal life, but since it doesn't affect the project*, he should be allowed to continue doing what he was doing".
In fact the article says just that: "Our concerns do not make us pro-Larry — we do not endorse his beliefs or his personal life"
(* More precisely, "any effect on the project has happened because Larry's enemies have attacked Larry, including doxxing him, conducting a whisper campaign, and breaking the ToS of a private website for people with likeminded views to get private information about him, and because the project management responded to that attack by kicking Larry out. Larry was the victim of that attack, he was not responsible for it, so shouldn't be punished because of it.")
As long as you're doing that in the privacy of your own property, and not bothering anyone else, why should we care?
Yes. Ask the autist slave how they feel. Lol.
It is ridiculous, right? She clearly has no ability to determine what is best for her, and needs someone to take care of her and tell her what is acceptable.
oh, wait
That's how I know I hit the mark.
Now I'm never going to stop making these points.
Sorry for the bad quote level screwup on the last reply.
While my own tastes are remarkably pedestrian - most would say normal, coward has a good point.
This is workplace interference in a person's sexual behavior.
If he was performing his weird shit - and make no mistake, this is plain weird - on a woman who did not give consent, it would be a no brainer, that's sexual assault.
But now we have to ask ourselves, should his lady friend be sought out and fired from wherever it is that she works? Two willing and consensual participants in any other "crime" are treated as co-criminals.
And I'll re-iterate, if the roles were reversed, should the woman be fired, and the submissive man be viewed as her victim?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
If this guy had been dumped because he voted for Prop 8 in CA or contributed to Trump, these pansy developers would throw him under the bus without reservation.
I guess some personal or ideological reasons are more equal than others.
That position is exactly as valid as saying that the opposition to "Social Justice" is merely a bunch of amoral recalcitrants.
But really you're just using "Social Justice" to mean "people I don't like". Because to the degree that that has anything to do with this subject, basically the strongest argument that can be brought to bear would be that the "slave" women have internalized the Patriarchy to the point of self-degradation. But if you're wont to hold that opinion, there are quite a few things higher on the list than private sex games.
What you're doing is virtue signaling. It's not very intelligent and rather boring.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
While this is actually an interesting point, I see one difference: Voting for Prop8 would actually lead to people suffering. It's something that objectively makes life harder for some people. Roleplaying some fantasy BDSM in your bedroom (or wherevere you want) with other consenting adults WITHOUT ever treating someone outside differently for it does not make life harder for anyone and does not lead to someone suffering (at least not someone who doesn't want that). So, since there was no accusation of him actually treating women worse or forcing himself onto them because of his sexual preferences, the comparison to Prop8 voters is (imho) not quite correct: Nobody was ever harmed by his private bedroom games.
Yes. Ask the autist slave how they feel. Lol.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
C.S. Lewis