A Statement from the Executive Director

Drupal Association is totally untrustworthy. It's very obvious; either Dries called Megan and told her what to do. And she said "Yes, sir". Or, she wanted to kiss Dries's ass and did this even before she has been asked to do it. Either way, she needs to go.

Here's the thing, not only is it the community who do not know any facts from DA, but also the general public and news agencies.

i have just lost a £4000 minimum contract, because the client keeps up with tech industry news and was disgusted at the way in which this issue has been managed and the way in which Larry has been treated. This meant that my ultimatum was to not use Drupal or not get the contract.

im going to be honest here, it took me 2 days to ultimately decide I would be willing to custom code the project, however this was 2 days too late and the client responded that the offer was no longer on the table and they would be recommending that people do not use my services, because of my support for Drupal and the association.

I love Drupal and the community, however I can't help but feel a little upset that it has come down to people losing out because of the association.

This news is now way beyond just the Drupal community and I'm in the mindset now of wondering what the heck the future holds for me if I continue to use Drupal. I also believe that the damage has now been done to me and I have already lost future projects.

It's not to late for the association to do the right thing and reverse the decision, before other members of the community lose out due to the decision of others and the lack of evidence. We are all supposed to look after each other to a certain degree, however it doesn't seem like other community members best interests are what is in the decision making process involved here.

Update: 

After speaking to the client, they sent me this link > https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/26/sex-and-gor-and-open-source/. Things are escalating quickly on this matter and if something isn't done about this, either decision reversal or greater transparency with the facts and process, then I personally feel this is going to be the downfall (read END) of Drupal as we all know it.

I was surprised when a friend sent me a link to a story about this whole fiasco. I had no idea it had reached outside the community.

Reading the post just now by djalxs I am becoming worried. I have never seen anything like this before. Should my employer come asking me about all of this I have no idea what to say.

Go to Google News and type in, "Drupal." Headlines about this community in bondage, Silicon Valley sex life tested... This is awful.

All of these thoughtful and (mostly) eloquent comments, yet no replies or explanations from the "decision makers." Now we hear what some of us have been dreading - one in the community has now lost serious business ($$) because of this fiasco. From what little I have read, this member had nothing to do with any of these events.

These statements are now wrong:

"...that may harm any members of our community ..."  Well, ya did.
"...in order to protect everyone involved ..."  Well, the not-involved aren't protected.
"We are listening."  Well, I'm not feeling it here.

Decision-makers: please reply. Don't create more victims with silence. It's not working. If it's gone legal, then say so. We'll get it. What you are now demonstrating is a lack of empathy.

Anybody. Out. There?

To clarify, it definitely was not Larry or his beliefs, it was the way he was dealt with/discriminated against, for said beliefs.

Now, I'm not into Gor or BDSM, however there are a lot more people into this lifestyle than many could even comprehend, many of them respectable business owners, civil servants, etc.

There is nothing illegal about it whatsoever, but, there is certain legal issues to consider when discriminating against somebody because of there beliefs.

There is a good percentage of the worlds population who are not only against discrimination due to gender, race or sexual orientation, but against any form of discrimination.

For any of us to support an organisation that SEEMS to have discriminated against somebody because of their beliefs, is going to be extremely detrimental to ourselves and our careers, as has now been proven.

We all need the full facts so as when presented with a case like this, we can be ready with a reply of "He was removed for reasons x, y & z" rather than "Erm...., I don't know but I still stand by Drupal and the organisations decision."

People don't want themselves or their business being harmed by a simple "Do you know their website is built on Drupal?", "Is it, I won't be using that company or website again."

It's that easy to get caught in the fallout so more and more people will start trying to distance themselves. This may not both DA, but there are agencies that have thousands of sites built with Drupal who would build thousands more with Drupal, but if an event like what has happened to me happens to them, they WILL stop using Drupal, stop contributing code to the project and many staff within said organisations will also cease to contribute to the project and the community. Ultimately, what we'll be left with, is a handful of people left working on Drupal which in turn will make the project go downhill very, very quickly.

I just searched news headline for Drupal and it didn't look good :(. I recommend everyone to read this one, it seems Dries already modified his blog post after receiving so many negative comments.

As some fellow Drupalers mentioned it is now way out side the community and had already made an impact on members, lack of any response for the decision makers is not acceptable, but since this is a complicated issue, understandably they may need more time to prepare proper response.

But if they decided to just ignore the whole thing or came up with even worse response, even-though non of us are decision makers or in charge of the Drupal community, there are still few things we can do to recover at least part of the damage inflicted to drupal community's reputation.

Here is my suggestion:

1. Working together Summarizing the comments and prepare an open letter addressing Dries and DA (including the most practical suggestions) and sign it (via an online petition for example), demanding them to respect the community and take proper action.

2. If that didn't succeed, we can then make a public announcement on behalf of Drupal community and distancing the community from this incident and the way it handled by the decision makers. Making it clear that Drupal community as a whole stands by its code of conduct and inclusivty even if those currently running it, do not.

Note that we can work with CWG toward this as well

Also i understand that some people (specially women) may not feel comfortable around someone with Larry's belief even when those belief do not influence his/her actions (I'm just using Larry as a sample since i don't know for sure what really happend) in community (this maybe one of the reasons Dries and DA made such a drastic decision) we people can easily be influenced by words and interpret each other's actions in a completely different way before and after knowing more about each other. IMHO that is what inclusivity is all about. Knowing that we are all very deeply different, but also knowing that when dealing with each other we follow the same rules. So i think we also need to consider this and mention it in our statement what we are really standing by and not causing any further misunderstanding by some other community members that maybe be worried about what i mentioned.

Just to make sure we can ask other community members to make comment on the open letter or the statement before going public

UPDATE

Two more things i forgot to mention.

Condemning those participated in violating Larry's privacy and (and if possible even responding properly to their action) and comming up with a guide line and an an effective way of reporting violation of code of conduct in order to

Also if DA does not want to be really inclusive they can at least make it clear at the begining for anyone what wants to join them. something like this : YOU HAVE TO HAVE THE RIGHT PRIVATE LIFE TO JOIN US, AND THE RIGHT PRIVATE LIFE MEANS ...

UPDATE March 29

I created a doc to start preparing the open letter. Please join in

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wzQq963HjOLoDd3jzsBAVzu1vqIDEjwjzYIc...

Another thing that seems to not being taken into account, which is a real possibility, is Larry or somebody else forking the Drupal project and building up a community of people that, judging by some of the comments, would not be too hard.

Me personally, I love Drupal and I wouldn't like to see that mess happen anytime soon so I would urge the DA to be completely transparent with this matter or reverse the decision. I'd rather have this community together than see it split in 2 but ultimately, if it did happen, a lot or organisations could follow suit, taking all of their developers and many more developers with them.

I created a doc to start preparing the open letter. Please join in

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wzQq963HjOLoDd3jzsBAVzu1vqIDEjwjzYIc...

The inc article contains 2 paragraphs from an early version of Dries' blog post that were subsequently removed - very illuminating:

Second, I believe someone's belief system inherently influences their actions, in both explicit and subtle ways, and I'm unwilling to take this risk going forward.

Third, Larry's continued representation of the Drupal project could harm the reputation of the project and cause harm to the Drupal ecosystem. Any further participation in a leadership role implies our community is complicit with and/or endorses these views, which we do not.

Please forgive me if I am misunderstanding how a 501c3 works.  But can't I make an open records request to have all of the files and decisions published?  

And as a minority in the tech field, with all the focus on diversity this troubles me deeply and something that I am going to have to think about moving forward. 

In a genuine democratic society properly governed by law and where individuals have basic human rights, you will NEVER EVER see someone accused of an "unknown felony" by "anonymous witnesses", prosecuted and found guilty in secret court proceedings and sentenced to life without appeal. It just doesn't happen, except perhaps in North Korea, we're told...

Dries in his blog is careful to distinguish his request to ask Larry to step down from 'the project' from the DA decision to limit Larry's roles in DrupalCon.

What is unclear to me is whether Dries's request to Larry to step down is one which Larry could in theory ignore (though that might be difficult in practice) unless the DA gives it formal authority? It is also unclear whether ultimately, and in the event of a difference of opinion, it is the DA who control 'the project', among other things meaning control of the right to commit to core, and the choice of committers; or whether it is Dries in his personal capacity who has the final say.

Since Dries himself drew attention to the distinction between his decision concerning Larry, and the separate decision made by the DA, it might be useful to clarify the extent and nature of Dries's control over the project he founded, beyond his role and influence in the DA, and to understand the formal consequences of a request from him to cease participation in the project.

The DA does not control the project, Dries does.

Thanks for the clarification. So in part these points should be addressed to Dries rather than Megan and the DA. Though it is tempting to post here because all posts do appear, whereas on Dries's blog comments appear selectively (though I think the selection is fair). He is carrying a lot on his shoulders for a mere mortal, even for a gifted one!

Thank, Megan, for your recent update indicating that you are reading the comments. Unfortunately, that's not enough. The comments you have been getting make it pretty clear that people are unsatisfied with the explanations that you and Dries have given for the actions taken against Larry Garfield. As I (and many others) have stated, we understand that you need to respect privacy and confidentiality. However, there is more that you can be saying and need to be saying by way of explanation.

I am very sympathetic to the fact that community leaders can't say everything they know in situations like this. This situation in fact reminds me of an incident that I reported on back when I was a newspaper reporter many years ago. In the city where I worked, the local school board declined to renew the contract of a junior high school principal, and many parents were up in arms about it. The principal was been pretty successful at getting parents to show up at a special session of the school board where they demanded to know the reasons for the board's decision. Board members responded that they could not answer that question because employee records are private and confidential. They got a lot of flak for not providing more information, and I respected them for sitting there and taking the criticism. However, there were were differences between that situation and the Larry Garfield situation.

(1) In the case of the school board situation that I described, school board members could and did say, "The principal knows the reason for our decision. We have given him our reasons in writing, and he can share that information with you if he so chooses. We are bound by rules of confidentiality, but he is not bound by that restriction. If you want him to share that information with you, he can do so." The principal declined to do so.

(2) In the school board situation that I described, the board's decision was publicly supported by an overwhelming majority of the teachers at the junior high school where the principal worked. They went on record, in fact, with a signed statement affirming their support for the board's decision. That's because the teachers who actually worked with the principal knew the reasons for the decision. In the case of Larry Garfield, however, I don't see an outpouring of support for the Drupal Association's and Dries's action. I see the opposite. The clear majority of sentiment is sympathetic to Larry and critical both of the DA decision and of the contradictory communications around it. This is because people know Larry through his works.

In Dries's blog post, he claims that Larry is omitting information about the reason for his decision to expel Larry from the project. If that is the case, Dries and the Drupal Association need to put the reasons for their decision into writing and share them with Larry. Then you can say, "Larry can share that document with you if he so chooses." Right now Larry is saying that he doesn't know of any reasons for your decision other than the ones he has written about himself, which are all "thought crimes" that in many people's minds do not justify expulsion. If indeed there are other reasons, then put them into writing and put the onus on Larry to share them. If you can't or won't do that, then your silence has nothing to do with protecting anyone's privacy and everything to do with covering your interests at the expense of others.

You have to do something. What you've done up until now is inadequate.

Don't panic! CMS Drupal is an excellent system! The community is large and friendly. We need to find another way to resolve conflicts.

I am a beginner Drupal dev who has gained from involvement in the community. I am also involved in the BDSM community. I hope that the actions of Dries and the Drupal board aren't a sign that I should be switching my career path. I am not comfortable with Gor, but I am also not comfortable with many things that consenting adults should be left alone to do. I can't support a group that punishes people for consensual activities that have nothing to do with their subject matter.

After reading the articles "TMI About me", "Living Our Values - Dries Buytaert", "CWG Public Statement - March 23, 2017" and this Statement, I can only say that there could have been much more constructive and innovative ways on managing this issue in a massively pacifying manner.  Transparency has always been at the cornerstone of every successful democracy.  Larry has chosen to be transparent in the way that he can and I am now led to believe that "Klaus" is indeed a bully.  I only hope that the CWG and the Drupal Association similarly chose a more transparent path in dealing with this issue.

By the way, I also find irony in some of the policy directions at which the Drupal code (version 8) is going.  Some overzealous security "experts" are effectively infusing their biased perspectives on a security design by policy over a policy that promotes a more educational/progressive approach.  I digress; I agree that this is another issue altogether but I can find unsavory parallels in how the Drupal community's leadership is handling such matters.

In any case, I still would like to thank the Association for putting up a tremendous effort on handling this issue and for keeping users like me updated through the newsletter email.  You can't please everyone.  But I still think and maintain that you can do a much better job at conflict resolution.  And I actually trust you to do better.  I am hoping that this colorful story and all its surrounding turn of events have not ended yet.

Let reconciliation reign supreme.  It can sit comfortably well with love, peace, harmony, faith, optimism, positivity, openness and... transparency.

ICYMI, there's a new post as of a few hours ago at https://www.drupal.org/association/blog/working-through-the-concerns-of-...

One common refrain through lots of the comments on this post has been our desire to see good communication. That's two way - we all need to model that ourselves.

May I suggest that we all now stop commenting here, read the latest post and the comments over there, and then (if there's more that still needs to be said) to say it over there.