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Drupal founder Dries Buytaert expelled Larry "Crell" Garfield from the Drupal community (archive) for his involvement in the BDSM community. Garfield claims this was done at the demand of Drupal Security team member Klaus "klausi" Purer and unknown others secretly pressuring Drupal leadership to have him removed for his private sex life.
takyon: From Larry's response:
I am involved in two such communities, specifically the BDSM community and the Gorean (Gor) community. The former is by far the larger of the two and more varied, although I spend more of my time and activity in the Gorean community. It's a small community, and sadly much of what is found online about it is utter crap, just as most in the BDSM community find the "50 Shades" representation of BDSM to be harmfully misleading. The Gorean subculture is inspired by a science-fiction book series written from the 1960s onward to today, and predicated on a strong sense of personal honor, integrity, and community. It also practices consensual Master/slave relationships, and has a strong gender bias toward male-Dom/female-sub relationships, but that is not the cornerstone of Gorean culture. There are other groups that are biased the other way, or have no gender bias. There are even groups in Chicago (where I live) that have regular "fem-dom" parties. To each their own.
It's the same Gor that was adapted into two films, one of which appeared on an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Monday March 27 2017, @07:06PM (5 children)
If you are talking about the garfieldtech.com link in the summary, he had already been exiled before he "outed" himself, and had already been outed internally (leaked info from a private site).
(emphasis mine)
His post was on March 22nd, Buytaert's anemic response was the next day. But he was done for before March 22nd. Sure, he outed the gory details of his
sexualrelationship preferences... which were actually pretty tame and should not lead to dismissal at all.Get how you're wrong, eh?
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(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Monday March 27 2017, @07:33PM (4 children)
I get that I'm an outside observer, getting slanted dribs and drabs of an incomplete version of the whole story.
I did garner a bit about wearing leather to work. I perceived a willingness, even eagerness to discuss the whole thing in the writing that I read. It could be that he was absolutely silent and 100% discrete about it at work and this only came out after a third party brought it into the workplace (which, in itself, could still be his fault in some circumstances), or it could be that he bent anyone and everyone's ear about it at every opportunity - I'm sure it was somewhere in-between.
Where on that spectrum his actual behavior fell vs. the expectations of the workplace culture would determine how just/un-just this firing was. Do something like this at an indie-startup operating in the San Francisco tenderloin district - I think you'd have to take this pretty far for it to be a justified firing. Do something like this at a conservative accounting firm in the Midwest, the slightest hint of "kinky" might be adequate grounds for dismissal.
I also do not intimately know the internal culture at Drupal, which has a big bearing on how outraged one should or shouldn't be at this... and, in the end, we're talking about what's "fair," and grown adults with any experience in the real world should know by now: there is no such thing as "fair" in life.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday March 27 2017, @08:16PM (3 children)
I wasn't sure what @bradley13 mentioned existed, but I found it. Here is the kinky BDSM wear [ohthehugemanatee.org] in question (found on Google images at various angles [ytimg.com]). If you look closely, you can probably see nipple clamps.
He has also worn a fedora [museumsandtheweb.com], a symbol of extreme hatred towards women and the concept of God.
Aside from the leather signalling, he had a geeky obscure goodbye that apparently nobody connected to Gor for years.
Larry might have been hurt by this, but it looks like Drupal will hurt more by losing at least one major contributor and driving people off (you can see some of them in the comments on both articles). Balance wins in the end. At least Larry has exited the toxic environment of Drupal.
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(Score: 3, Funny) by JoeMerchant on Monday March 27 2017, @08:45PM (1 child)
Having said there is no such thing as "fair," let me follow up with: there is such a thing as "karma." Karma doesn't work reliably, or always visibly, or fairly, but it does tend to move people from where they are, closer to where they probably deserve to be. As you said, exiting Drupal is probably more blessing than curse, even if it isn't what he wanted.
What I wonder is: why, in the age of "employment at will" clauses, did Drupal give any reason for dismissal? The top two explanations I can think of are: A) they're seeking attention from the ensuing outrage, and B) they're idiots. Note, these are not mutually exclusive options.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday March 27 2017, @09:04PM
What I wonder is: why, in the age of "employment at will" clauses, did Drupal give any reason for dismissal? The top two explanations I can think of are: A) they're seeking attention from the ensuing outrage, and B) they're idiots. Note, these are not mutually exclusive options.
Because externally imposed rules aren't the only constraints. For example, consider the case of Stalin's reign over the USSR. He was sufficiently in control that he could have offed people without explanation. But by going through show-trials and similar theater, his regime gave ideological cover to its supporters and increased the level of control over society. Mikhail wasn't a hapless chump who got executed by random lot to scare the rest of us. He was a counterrevolutionary with sympathies to various western bad guys. With that trivial amount of spin, everything is made right for the true believer.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday March 27 2017, @08:57PM