Drupal Developers Still Rebelling Against Drupal Leadership

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.

Comments

Nice objective submission

[93 Escort Wagon]

It's nice to see a story submission which isn't trying to drive a slanted narrative for once!

Re:Nice objective submission

[Anonymous Coward]

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

[Baloroth]

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:Nice objective submission

[Anonymous Coward]

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.)

Re:Nice objective submission

[thesandtiger]

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 guy with claims that his private behavior would harm their organization despite having zero evidence that he had behaved unprofessionally at any time, because they got squeamish about his kinks. They then tried to litigate this in the court of public opinion, and started making vague statements that maybe he was abusive based on their biased thinking that individuals with autism can't possibly provide full consent in a relationship. On top of that, they're opening themselves and their organization up to massive legal repercussions since they are making these claims in their capacity as leaders of the organization. And finally and worst, they muddied the waters sufficiently that it's going to be even harder to get any justice (if any is needed) for the individual they are claiming to want to protect.

The fact that they weren't able to respond with anything remotely approaching emotional maturity to this situation says to me that they are wholly unqualified to be in any position of responsibility until they grow up. They will be lucky to come out of this without their careers being turned into smoldering craters. and their abysmal handling of this has almost certainly caused far more harm to the organization than Garfield's private life would have.

I'm as socially liberal as they come, and I'm a huge fan of codes of conduct for projects in an industry where it's very clear that codes of conduct are needed. That said, I am able to understand when someone's private behavior is irrelevant to their professional behavior. In this case the situation was caused by, I'm sure, well meaning idiots who have demonstrated they don't have the emotional maturity to be in leadership positions in an organization, and just keep on proving that over and over as this thing goes on. From what I've read, other than some kind of hand gesture thing, there was zero public behavior on Garfield's part in any context related to Drupal that was also related to his private life.

For several years I was a mandated reporter and will always err on the side of reporting signs or claims of abuse so that they can be investigated. If they believed that there was abuse and they didn't go to police, then they are proving that they don't give a fuck about the person they are claiming to want to protect, and only trying (badly) to cover their asses. I don't personally care for Garfield's kinks, but that's none of my business unless and until he makes it my business, which, as far as I can tell, he hasn't.

So the ...

[thadtheman]

weirdos are turning on each other?

I am shocked!

[jtara]

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-apart the lives of people involved in some bizarre and complicated (and sounds time-consuming) sexual cult rather than focusing on their own bizarre software cult of meh-ness?

So, here is my history with PHP. Some time mid-90s (I thought it was 95 or 96, but I just checked facts and I guess PHP never existed before 97) I worked on a project to make one of the first online shopping carts. (The end-customer was Tesco, FWIW). I wrote the shopping cart code in C, for NSAPI.

But we needed more than just a shopping cart. And I'd heard about this PHP thing, I emailed the author, and he sent me the script. (That's the way it worked at the time.) I think it was helpful in fleshing out the rest of the site. I guess some kind of food catalog. (The company was in the catalog-making business. They were making catalogs on CDROMs (remember those?) and print, and the big deal was they could push a button and publish to BOTH woohoo!. I'd suggested it wouldn't be much of a stretch to also publish to HTML and so I was allowed to noodle with the idea, and somehow it was convenient at the time to incorporate PHP.

It actually wasn't awful at the time. It was just a little script that some guy made to help him make his personal website. And it worked well enough for our purposes, at the time. I guess.

That was the last time I ever used PHP. I didn't ride the thing into it's awfulness and "redemption". It was a cute hack, especially for somebody with no formal computer science training.

But it's led to - even today! - "developers" getting their peanut butter mixed with... er, I mean writing code in HTML pages. And not understanding why the browser is not executing their PHP code or isn't able to stuff PHP variables from Javascript without employing powdered cleanser. Or why websites can't violate the laws of physics and reach into the past and change variable values is code that already ran and went.

Really, there are far more perverted things going on here than some amusing sexual proclivities that I really do not want to know about.

Do these people find any time to code?

More importantly, how sick are these people who still feel the need to abuse one individual, when they are already abusing millions or billions?

P.S. I really want to cash in my 0.001 shares of Adobe that I got out of this. I can't find the damn Macromedia stock certificate.

Jacked Up = Better Drupal Developer, Right?

[brian.stinar]

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...?

Larry Garfield's side of the story

[steveha]

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)

Re:Larry Garfield's side of the story

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should we value your opinion more than that of three autism specialists, a social worker, and three police officers? -PCP

Re:Larry Garfield's side of the story

[Hognoxious]

Clearly it's a conspiracy and they're in on it.

I mean, do you have a better explanation?

Re:Larry Garfield's side of the story

[Anonymous Coward]

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: Larry Garfield's side of the story

[Anonymous Coward]

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, or yours.