Expanding on one of the comments that might clear up what we're actually talking about (which wasn't made especially clear otherwise):
>> "The Gorean philosophy promoted by Larry is based on the principle that women are evolutionarily predisposed to serve men and that the natural order is for men to dominate and lead."
Even assuming this is Larry's philosophy, it is pretty much the same philosophy shared by many women & men in various conservative religious faiths, including branches of Christianity, Judaism, & Islam—only they add in the idea that it is divinely ordered. Are we now going to expel all who hold such religious beliefs? <<
I agree this philosophy is hard to swallow, but the commenter's point about religious belief is well made. Apart from the issue that this is in fact a widely-held belief I would suggest communities allow their members to hold any belief in private, as long as that belief is not in some way construed as a community value, and as long as that person does not act based on that belief during community interactions.
It's one of the simple facts of life that you pretty have to work with people who believe all kinds of things, and they have to work with you. Furthermore, we seem to have forgotten that it's even feasible to have good relationships and friendships with people we fundamentally disagree with.
In this context, if you're running an open source project, it's expected that people hold an even more varied spectrum of beliefs than would be the case in a traditional company. As long as members can professionally conduct themselves in that environment, firing them is not a productive solution. Presumably the person in question has pledged to uphold Drupal's community values and at first glance it looks like that pledge has not been broken.
> ...as long as that belief is not in some way construed as a community value...
I honestly don't care about that even, as long as people can discuss their ideas and leave the group if they're done tolerating each other.
> It's one of the simple facts of life that you pretty have to work with people who believe all kinds of things...
In popular usage, "tolerance" is slowly becoming synonymous with "acceptance" or "celebration". But in reality, you just described real tolerance right here. It's a good balance because we can absolutely agree to disagree and be part of a healthy community anyway. Keeping "tolerance" as tolerance is the best recipe for actual diversity of identity and thought in my opinion.
> In popular usage, "tolerance" is slowly becoming synonymous with "acceptance" or "celebration". But in reality, you just described real tolerance right here. It's a good balance because we can absolutely agree to disagree and be part of a healthy community anyway. Keeping "tolerance" as tolerance is the best recipe for actual diversity of identity and thought in my opinion.
It feels like this new "tolerance" somehow connotates "without bias" instead of "despite bias", which opens an avenue for persecuting perceived or potential bias (by some reasoning from base moral values) as a thought crime. This makes anything less than complete moral alignment a cause for bias and therefore "intolerance".
> I honestly don't care about that even, as long as people can discuss their ideas and leave the group if they're done tolerating each other.
Personally I'd agree with that, but analogous to being the employee of a company, it becomes a problem if off-topic distractions seep into the daily business, especially if these conflicts have a potential to escalate into the public view, and especially if the convictions in question are unethical.
This is where professionalism is important. Firmly separating your personal life and your professional life.
That said, there's a huge gap between a religion a person is imparted with as a child, and philosophy they chose as an adult and have jumped into with both feet.
Many people come from backgrounds with bigoted ideas like that, but they don't colour their daily lives with it because they're not actively married to the idea - it's just part of the box of stuff they grew up believing passively.
This, on the other hand, is an active choice. An active decision that women are our lessers. That's far more serious. I have a lot more trouble with the idea of politely ignoring somebody who actively evangelizes this kind of idea rather than being simply passively being raised with it.
Where do you draw the line? How far do you go in ignoring the fact that key people in your community are, to be blunt: hateful?
Marvel Comics recently fired an illustrator for hiding Islamist, anti-Semitic and anti-Christian references in his art. His ideas were "normal" in his country - should that have been ignored? Reprimanded as long as he kept his politics out of his art?
It doesn't matter what some guy posts on some message board (unless it's a threat, an incitement of violence, or something along those lines). It doesn't matter if he says he believes in "Gorean philosophy," whatever the hell that is.
What matters are his actions. If he's treating women disrespectfully then, by all means, throw him out. But he's allowed to believe whatever the hell he wants, and the idea that he should face repercussions for his beliefs is wrong, whatever age he was when he came to those beliefs.
Sure, there's going to be some correlation between holding misogynistic beliefs and inappropriate behavior toward women, but we don't punish the beliefs, we just punish the behavior. That's what makes this a free society.
> That said, there's a huge gap between a religion a person is imparted with as a child, and philosophy they chose as an adult and have jumped into with both feet.
Searching out which people have chosen a philosophy as an adult is how witch hunts start and are justified. I've heard complaints about McCarthyism and the Red Scare over the years, and I thought the moral was "witch hunts are bad." However, it looks clear to me that other people think the main problem was that McCarthy picked the wrong targets. If he hadn't chased leftist beliefs, then perhaps he never would have been vilified.
Marvel Comics recently fired an illustrator for hiding Islamist,
anti-Semitic and anti-Christian references in his art.
It wasn't exactly his art in which the references were hidden - it was Marvel's art. He hid the references in comic panels, commissioned by Marvel and designed specifically for publication in a Marvel comic.
> That said, there's a huge gap between a religion a person is imparted with as a child, and philosophy they chose as an adult and have jumped into with both feet.
That seems like a distinction without a difference. If someone converted to a religion as an adult, would you feel justified in using their religious beliefs to eject them from an open source project?
> Marvel Comics recently fired an illustrator for hiding Islamist, anti-Semitic and anti-Christian references in his art. His ideas were "normal" in his country - should that have been ignored? Reprimanded as long as he kept his politics out of his art?
Indonesian here, I'm not sure to what you attribute it to a normal view by Indonesians?
>This, on the other hand, is an active choice. An active decision that women are our lessers. That's far more serious.
As long as holding that belief doesn't affect in any way his behaviour towards women as a contributor of that project, then his beliefs are none of the project's business.
Nothing surprising to see here. This is why I seldom bother getting involved in open source projects and NEVER use my real name. Large, interesting projects are too much like this and groups quickly form using the same BS as in high school only now "wrong brand of shoes" gets replaced with "incorrect values". Whatever that heck that means.
I'm still not clear why anyone would care how he gets off on his own time, in the privacy of his home. If this is really a thing then other "identifiable" groups might want to prepare for when the pendulum swing back and then they themselves are holding "incorrect values".
> > So if and only if Larry did not violate the Code of Conduct, then apologize to Larry and rescind your request to remove himself from the community (if there was a violation, provide the details to Larry and confirm to the public)
TL;DR : Please continue iff there was a violation we don't know about
> We want to be clear that the decision to remove Larry's DrupalCon session and track chair role was not because of his private life or personal beliefs. The Drupal Association stands by our values of inclusivity. Our decision was based on confidential information conveyed in private by many sources. Due to the confidential nature of the situation we cannot and will not disclose any information that may harm any members of our community, including Larry
> This decision followed our established process. As the Executive Director, charged with safekeeping the goodwill of the organization, I made this decision after considering input from various sources including the Community Working Group (CWG) and Drupal Project Lead, Dries Buytaert. Upon Larry’s request for an appeal, the full board reviewed the situation, all the evidence, and statements provided by Larry. After reviewing the entirety of the information available (including information not in the public view) the decision was upheld.
> In order to protect everyone involved we cannot comment more, and trust that the community will be understanding
TL;DR : We're continuing, there was a violation you don't know about
TL;DR : The Drupal leadership hasn't accused Larry of a code of conduct violation publicly or privately but they're happy to imply that a secret violation exists so they can cover up the fact that they ousted him because his lifestyle is icky and bad for PR.
Still, that's a bit ambiguous. They should clarify that the initial evidence of his beliefs was not what got him in trouble, but the evidence that they're keeping confidential. Otherwise, it just seems like Garfield is being ousted for his for all we know harmless lifestyle choices.
I'm actually impressed, from the first few lines I was expecting another social justice fueled witch hunt, but instead we have the exact opposite here.
For the record, a large chunk of the social justice community are kinky (and, separately, a large chunk of the kink community agrees broadly with modern feminist views). Nobody I've spoken to within my subset of the social justice community wants somebody to be removed from the Drupal community based on how they go about their personal relationships and sexuality.
The social justice community has also pretty much always had completely different standards for members of the ingroup and outgroup. (To be honest, most communities probably do.) I mean, one of the really prominent (now ex-)members of the social justice gamedev community wrote a heartwrenching piece about what a terrible, abusive place it and its "compulsory BDSM sexuality" was for her, people handwrung over it a little, and a year later nothing had changed and everyone was gushing about how the latest game out the community showed that actually, non-BDSM relationships were the abusive, manipulative ones. They literally learned nothing, and no-one saw anything wrong with this. Meanwhile, every failure within the mainstream BDSM community is seen as an indictment of its evil misogynistic heterosexist buzzword bingo.
> For the record, a large chunk of the social justice community are ki
Gonna stop you right there - there exists no "record" this needs to be on.
Or rather, were there a need for it to be "on a record", such a community would already be failing their supposed 'without the community needing to know or care' ideal.
Without getting into controversial labels, it's not clear to me who did what to whom and what the people are petitioning for.
I seemed to me that (all allegedly) someone was outed as into BDSM and was somehow treated unfairly. I think that certainly falls into the domain of liberal sexual identity politics.
Goreans are people that agree with philosophy of professor John Lange, that writes his philosophy in porn books with pen name John Norman
What got Larry kicked out is that similarly to Abrahamic religions, Goreans believe there is an inherent hierarchy between men and women. Or at least it is what Dries (Drupal leader) wrote as explanation for the incident.
So Larry is being punished literally for "wrong-think", having beliefs that are shared with billions of Abrahamic religion followers around the world. But Goreanism is not a religion, so probably doesn't count as religious discrimination.
Also according to a blog lost by Larry, the "proof" used against him was a transcription of a discourse he made in a private wedding.
In the same line, Brendan Eich. I completely disagree with his views on marriage of homosexuals, but disagree that it led him to have to quit his position at Mozilla Foundation.
Eich was CEO, though. It's a special position in any organization. The board can ask you to leave at any time if you seem to be a liability, and the mere optics of a PR issue can be enough.
That's why CEOs often have such generous compensation packages in the event of involuntary termination.
> The board can ask you to leave at any time if you seem to be a liability...
It's worth noting that many of the objections are about private information being misused. Eich was actually outed from a donor list that was leaked. There's a lot of parallels here if the concern is about "doxxing" activities.
I also have a really hard time with the "but CEOs are different argument". So could being a Democrat in a red state be a liability? Republican in a blue state? Evangelical in a secular area? Atheist in a religious one? Scientologists? Mormons?
In other words, are we saying that only certain kinds of people can be CEOs?
Not: code of thought, beliefs, sexuality, politics, religion....
All the discussions of philosophy and belief systems in this thread are missing the point. It DOES NOT MATTER how you feel about someone else's beliefs. It is not relevant. How they CONDUCT themselves in the community is the only thing that matters.
If that were the case it would be called a "Code of Conduct In the [Drupal] Community". Many people assume they should consider any conduct that they don't like in applying a "Code of Conduct".
There is an important point that is being missed in this conversation. There are facts that are undisputed by both sides of the argument:
- Should a person have a right to privacy? Yes
- Should a person be discriminated based on their beliefs? No
- Should a person in leadership be forced to expose their private life? No
There are two questions, however, that is causing everyone to trip over themselves and table-flip:
- Does a person's private life affect their public views?
- If a person in leadership has their private life exposed (fairly or unfairly), does that affect their leadership role?
If you quickly come to a 'Yes' or 'No' in the last two questions, then that is why we don't have constructive dialogue between people with opposing views. Again, we're not talking about blatant discrimination. We're talking about a position of leadership and influence.
For example, if a person has religious views that women should not work, should they be part of the open source community? Of course. Should they be a leader of the community and have prominent speaking roles?
It's no different than the 1st amendment. No laws can be made to punish you for speaking, but you can't just say whatever you want without consequence.
I'd hope that people would take a breath and really think about that. Is it discrimination if you ask that person to relinquish their leadership role? Who is excluded because of that person being in leadership? Who has been silenced out of fear that the power of leadership trumps their voice?
I personally do not know the answers to the two questions, but I'm open to hearing both sides. I also understand how difficult it is to have an answer when you're responsibility is to put people in leadership. With open source, it's even more complicated because you could 'become a leader' simply by being great at contributing!
This is a truly personal matter that, in my opinion, bears no relevance to his public-facing leadership role and responsibilities. He's into BDSM, so what? If your PornHub/xHamster/whatever search history was exposed, how catastrophic would it be to your career? Would people that you respect immediately feign disgust, knowing very well that they have similar search histories? It's easy to point the finger when it's someone else taking the heat, but I guarantee that everyone who claims to be a member of the opposition would sing a different tune if it was their private life that was investigated and exposed. Pure hypocrisy.
It's GamerGate type shit all over again, chock full of faux outrage and manufactured drama. I think that sensational journalism has rubbed off on society. People are used to having their emotions exploited and being force fed specific facts sans context to steer their opinion and, at large, public consensus.
Instead of it being CNN steering the public opinion of Trump, it's a group of misdirected, misguided, uneducated, incompatible, unaccepting, pig-headed SJW-type individuals steering the dialogue regarding Drupal.
The three articles (the open letter, Dries' blog post and Larry's blog post) are unfortunately a little unclear on this unless you read them in their entirety, so it's worth clarifying: though it's discussed a lot, this is not at all about BDSM.
This is about Larry's belief in Gorean philosophy (which Larry chooses to conflate with his involvement in BDSM, in my view doing a massive disservice to the elsewise extremely benign BDSM community).
This isn't new behavior. There's a reason that phrases like "mob mentality" exist. There is a human tendency to join in with a swell of anger and bring it down upon some person for violating laws or beliefs.
The nice thing about the relatively recent past was the presence of tightly controlled mass media which didn't give reactionary, witch-hunt types a voice. The internet has democratized the sharing of knowledge to a degree never before experienced by humanity, but it has also given those who appeal to our baser, exclusionary instincts a powerful platform. Pleas for thoughtful dialogue and careful deliberation don't fill people with the addictive cocktail of hormones that the calls for beheading do.
> People are used to having their emotions exploited and being force fed specific facts sans context to steer their opinion and, at large, public consensus.
It's worse than that. Many actually like it. Outrage is click bait because people like clicking on it. If you're reading it, it's for you.
People like a good two minute hate. It creates all sorts of interesting sensations.
> It's GamerGate type shit all over again [...] it's a group of misdirected, misguided, uneducated, incompatible, unaccepting, pig-headed SJW-type individuals steering the dialogue regarding Drupal
remember when it just used to be about the software, guys...
"hey, look at this cool thing I built!" "oh nice, you should try X!" "ah yeah, that might work!" Anyone? No? Alright. :|
> For example, if a person has religious views that women should not work, should they be part of the open source community? Of course. Should they be a leader of the community and have prominent speaking roles?
Doesn't this just kick the can down the street a few feet? It seems, and I may have interpreted it incorrectly, that the leader or leaders of a community must not personally hold any controversial views at all according to this. Speaking bluntly, I think that is impossible.
If a person in leadership has their private life exposed (fairly or unfairly), does that affect their leadership role?
This has not been a controversial question in the modern nation state for nearing about 200 years now in "the West" until several small but very vocal groups have implicitly been taking a pick-axe to what I see as a pretty basic truth: the difference between corrective action in the public vs. the private sphere is a restriction on the public side to objectively measured action. Private thought in general doesn't hold water until violation of actual behavior can first be proven, and only then is intent needed.
You phrased your last two questions entirely differently from the first three. The first ones are global moral questions, for which answers can exist in the sense of personal opinions, groip consensus, etc. Meanwhile the latter ones are questions about individual behavior based on belonging to a group; there are no global answers. So the answer to both that I would suggest is:
Maybe, it depends on the individual. However, it is immoral to discriminate based on categories rather then individual characteristics, so their private life should not affect our actions towards them.
> Larry Garfield, a long-time, veteran contributor to Drupal was ejected from the community, allegedly not for breaking the Code of Conduct, but, to quote your own post on the matter, because “he holds views that are in opposition with the values of the Drupal project."
At some point, some open source communities will need to decide whether they work on open technologies or they are political activists with a political mission that serves the interests of a specific political side, or political doctrine[1] If I'm into, I don't know, some niche Porn that isn't illegal, can it be considered "offensive to women" and should I be ejected as a contributor because of my personal sexual tastes in order to satisfy those that might be offended by this, even if I never bring up that matter in public? Now, if I'm part of an atheist association, and I publicly question the reality of a mainstream religion, can it be considered offensive to Muslims and should I be ejected of a totally unrelated community because some of its members that are not even of the religion think that what I said is offensive toward Muslims?
1 : one can argue "free software" is political. It is, but it has to do with the protection of users and their right to access and modify source code. It has nothing to do with women's rights or making blasphemy socially unacceptable, especially when positions are taken outside the context of the project community.
Plenty of open source communities are political beyond user rights. If you believe NSA should be able to watch everybody all the time, Tor people will kick you out.
------------
Gor is not just a flavor of porn, it is full philosophy of gender relationships. E.g. it does not just says "this gets me off", it says "this is nature of men/women, modern society is suppressing that nature and that is wrong". Some are in it for sex, but quite clearly others are in it because they believe in philosophy and attempt to live by it as much as possible/legal.
Is it possible to simultaneously believe that women are naturally submissive and happiest when they serve and simultaneously see leadership potential in women who is working under you? I dont know and I am glad that the question is not directly relevant to me.
However, if my boss would believe something like that, I guess I would have to either leave the company or accept I will be less likely to be promoted then male college of similar skills.
I have no idea whether Garfield is into Gor for kink or for gender philosophy nor whether that philosophy affected his leadership style. I dont care about whether he comes back or not. But, the more I looked into Gor the more it looked like way more then just another flavor of bdsm.
>Gor is not just a flavor of porn, it is full philosophy of gender relationships. E.g. it does not just says "this gets me off", it says "this is nature of men/women, modern society is suppressing that nature and that is wrong". Some are in it for sex, but quite clearly others are in it because they believe in philosophy and attempt to live by it as much as possible/legal.
It's a series of fantasy f*#%ing novels, ofcourse it's role-play. Serious role play maybe, and definitively weird, but the author is _still alive_ and his name is not L. Ron Hubbard. Is he participating in political activism with mysogynistic undertones? Is he otherwise projecting gor-related gender views onto non-consenting parties? No. He just wants to do weird stuff together with other people who want to do weird stuff, socially and sexually. To assume that he holds these views to be morally absolute for everyone is a gross misrepresentation and unfortunately typical of persecution of weird people.
It seems to me that the two things are not mutually exclusive, and more that every community is inherently political - if it isn't really aware of it, it's never been shook hard enough.
The political actions of communities come out of political consensus, which is exactly what's happening with this letter: people are trying to agree on political action. A "politics-free" community is just one where everyone already agrees, or nothing has ever come up for people to disagree over.
Community leaders are "political activists" because they exclude members that don't hold their values? Don't most membership organizations (not to mention for-profit companies) work that way?
Readit News
>> "The Gorean philosophy promoted by Larry is based on the principle that women are evolutionarily predisposed to serve men and that the natural order is for men to dominate and lead."
Even assuming this is Larry's philosophy, it is pretty much the same philosophy shared by many women & men in various conservative religious faiths, including branches of Christianity, Judaism, & Islam—only they add in the idea that it is divinely ordered. Are we now going to expel all who hold such religious beliefs? <<
I agree this philosophy is hard to swallow, but the commenter's point about religious belief is well made. Apart from the issue that this is in fact a widely-held belief I would suggest communities allow their members to hold any belief in private, as long as that belief is not in some way construed as a community value, and as long as that person does not act based on that belief during community interactions.
It's one of the simple facts of life that you pretty have to work with people who believe all kinds of things, and they have to work with you. Furthermore, we seem to have forgotten that it's even feasible to have good relationships and friendships with people we fundamentally disagree with.
In this context, if you're running an open source project, it's expected that people hold an even more varied spectrum of beliefs than would be the case in a traditional company. As long as members can professionally conduct themselves in that environment, firing them is not a productive solution. Presumably the person in question has pledged to uphold Drupal's community values and at first glance it looks like that pledge has not been broken.
I honestly don't care about that even, as long as people can discuss their ideas and leave the group if they're done tolerating each other.
> It's one of the simple facts of life that you pretty have to work with people who believe all kinds of things...
In popular usage, "tolerance" is slowly becoming synonymous with "acceptance" or "celebration". But in reality, you just described real tolerance right here. It's a good balance because we can absolutely agree to disagree and be part of a healthy community anyway. Keeping "tolerance" as tolerance is the best recipe for actual diversity of identity and thought in my opinion.
EDIT: Clarified my phrasing a bit.
http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything...
Tolerance and persecution together in harmony.
Personally I'd agree with that, but analogous to being the employee of a company, it becomes a problem if off-topic distractions seep into the daily business, especially if these conflicts have a potential to escalate into the public view, and especially if the convictions in question are unethical.
Deleted Comment
That said, there's a huge gap between a religion a person is imparted with as a child, and philosophy they chose as an adult and have jumped into with both feet.
Many people come from backgrounds with bigoted ideas like that, but they don't colour their daily lives with it because they're not actively married to the idea - it's just part of the box of stuff they grew up believing passively.
This, on the other hand, is an active choice. An active decision that women are our lessers. That's far more serious. I have a lot more trouble with the idea of politely ignoring somebody who actively evangelizes this kind of idea rather than being simply passively being raised with it.
Where do you draw the line? How far do you go in ignoring the fact that key people in your community are, to be blunt: hateful?
Marvel Comics recently fired an illustrator for hiding Islamist, anti-Semitic and anti-Christian references in his art. His ideas were "normal" in his country - should that have been ignored? Reprimanded as long as he kept his politics out of his art?
It doesn't matter what some guy posts on some message board (unless it's a threat, an incitement of violence, or something along those lines). It doesn't matter if he says he believes in "Gorean philosophy," whatever the hell that is.
What matters are his actions. If he's treating women disrespectfully then, by all means, throw him out. But he's allowed to believe whatever the hell he wants, and the idea that he should face repercussions for his beliefs is wrong, whatever age he was when he came to those beliefs.
Sure, there's going to be some correlation between holding misogynistic beliefs and inappropriate behavior toward women, but we don't punish the beliefs, we just punish the behavior. That's what makes this a free society.
Searching out which people have chosen a philosophy as an adult is how witch hunts start and are justified. I've heard complaints about McCarthyism and the Red Scare over the years, and I thought the moral was "witch hunts are bad." However, it looks clear to me that other people think the main problem was that McCarthy picked the wrong targets. If he hadn't chased leftist beliefs, then perhaps he never would have been vilified.
That seems like a distinction without a difference. If someone converted to a religion as an adult, would you feel justified in using their religious beliefs to eject them from an open source project?
Indonesian here, I'm not sure to what you attribute it to a normal view by Indonesians?
As long as holding that belief doesn't affect in any way his behaviour towards women as a contributor of that project, then his beliefs are none of the project's business.
I'm still not clear why anyone would care how he gets off on his own time, in the privacy of his home. If this is really a thing then other "identifiable" groups might want to prepare for when the pendulum swing back and then they themselves are holding "incorrect values".
edit: removed not
Garfield's statement:
https://www.garfieldtech.com/blog/tmi-outing
Executive Director's statement:
https://www.drupal.org/association/blog/a-statement-from-the...
TL;DR : Please continue iff there was a violation we don't know about
> We want to be clear that the decision to remove Larry's DrupalCon session and track chair role was not because of his private life or personal beliefs. The Drupal Association stands by our values of inclusivity. Our decision was based on confidential information conveyed in private by many sources. Due to the confidential nature of the situation we cannot and will not disclose any information that may harm any members of our community, including Larry
> This decision followed our established process. As the Executive Director, charged with safekeeping the goodwill of the organization, I made this decision after considering input from various sources including the Community Working Group (CWG) and Drupal Project Lead, Dries Buytaert. Upon Larry’s request for an appeal, the full board reviewed the situation, all the evidence, and statements provided by Larry. After reviewing the entirety of the information available (including information not in the public view) the decision was upheld.
> In order to protect everyone involved we cannot comment more, and trust that the community will be understanding
TL;DR : We're continuing, there was a violation you don't know about
Sounds like it's done, then
TL;DR : The Drupal leadership hasn't accused Larry of a code of conduct violation publicly or privately but they're happy to imply that a secret violation exists so they can cover up the fact that they ousted him because his lifestyle is icky and bad for PR.
Gonna stop you right there - there exists no "record" this needs to be on.
Or rather, were there a need for it to be "on a record", such a community would already be failing their supposed 'without the community needing to know or care' ideal.
I seemed to me that (all allegedly) someone was outed as into BDSM and was somehow treated unfairly. I think that certainly falls into the domain of liberal sexual identity politics.
As such, he was outed, smeared, and asked to leave the Drupal community.
Goreans are people that agree with philosophy of professor John Lange, that writes his philosophy in porn books with pen name John Norman
What got Larry kicked out is that similarly to Abrahamic religions, Goreans believe there is an inherent hierarchy between men and women. Or at least it is what Dries (Drupal leader) wrote as explanation for the incident.
So Larry is being punished literally for "wrong-think", having beliefs that are shared with billions of Abrahamic religion followers around the world. But Goreanism is not a religion, so probably doesn't count as religious discrimination.
Also according to a blog lost by Larry, the "proof" used against him was a transcription of a discourse he made in a private wedding.
That's why CEOs often have such generous compensation packages in the event of involuntary termination.
It's worth noting that many of the objections are about private information being misused. Eich was actually outed from a donor list that was leaked. There's a lot of parallels here if the concern is about "doxxing" activities.
I also have a really hard time with the "but CEOs are different argument". So could being a Democrat in a red state be a liability? Republican in a blue state? Evangelical in a secular area? Atheist in a religious one? Scientologists? Mormons?
In other words, are we saying that only certain kinds of people can be CEOs?
We've all heard of sore losers but those people were sore winners.
Not: code of thought, beliefs, sexuality, politics, religion....
All the discussions of philosophy and belief systems in this thread are missing the point. It DOES NOT MATTER how you feel about someone else's beliefs. It is not relevant. How they CONDUCT themselves in the community is the only thing that matters.
- Should a person have a right to privacy? Yes
- Should a person be discriminated based on their beliefs? No
- Should a person in leadership be forced to expose their private life? No
There are two questions, however, that is causing everyone to trip over themselves and table-flip:
- Does a person's private life affect their public views?
- If a person in leadership has their private life exposed (fairly or unfairly), does that affect their leadership role?
If you quickly come to a 'Yes' or 'No' in the last two questions, then that is why we don't have constructive dialogue between people with opposing views. Again, we're not talking about blatant discrimination. We're talking about a position of leadership and influence.
For example, if a person has religious views that women should not work, should they be part of the open source community? Of course. Should they be a leader of the community and have prominent speaking roles?
It's no different than the 1st amendment. No laws can be made to punish you for speaking, but you can't just say whatever you want without consequence.
I'd hope that people would take a breath and really think about that. Is it discrimination if you ask that person to relinquish their leadership role? Who is excluded because of that person being in leadership? Who has been silenced out of fear that the power of leadership trumps their voice?
I personally do not know the answers to the two questions, but I'm open to hearing both sides. I also understand how difficult it is to have an answer when you're responsibility is to put people in leadership. With open source, it's even more complicated because you could 'become a leader' simply by being great at contributing!
It's GamerGate type shit all over again, chock full of faux outrage and manufactured drama. I think that sensational journalism has rubbed off on society. People are used to having their emotions exploited and being force fed specific facts sans context to steer their opinion and, at large, public consensus.
Instead of it being CNN steering the public opinion of Trump, it's a group of misdirected, misguided, uneducated, incompatible, unaccepting, pig-headed SJW-type individuals steering the dialogue regarding Drupal.
This is about Larry's belief in Gorean philosophy (which Larry chooses to conflate with his involvement in BDSM, in my view doing a massive disservice to the elsewise extremely benign BDSM community).
The nice thing about the relatively recent past was the presence of tightly controlled mass media which didn't give reactionary, witch-hunt types a voice. The internet has democratized the sharing of knowledge to a degree never before experienced by humanity, but it has also given those who appeal to our baser, exclusionary instincts a powerful platform. Pleas for thoughtful dialogue and careful deliberation don't fill people with the addictive cocktail of hormones that the calls for beheading do.
It's worse than that. Many actually like it. Outrage is click bait because people like clicking on it. If you're reading it, it's for you.
People like a good two minute hate. It creates all sorts of interesting sensations.
remember when it just used to be about the software, guys...
"hey, look at this cool thing I built!" "oh nice, you should try X!" "ah yeah, that might work!" Anyone? No? Alright. :|
Doesn't this just kick the can down the street a few feet? It seems, and I may have interpreted it incorrectly, that the leader or leaders of a community must not personally hold any controversial views at all according to this. Speaking bluntly, I think that is impossible.
Who gets to define whats controversial?
Everyone has an agenda. Seems to be that whoever is best at getting people outraged gets to control them.
This has not been a controversial question in the modern nation state for nearing about 200 years now in "the West" until several small but very vocal groups have implicitly been taking a pick-axe to what I see as a pretty basic truth: the difference between corrective action in the public vs. the private sphere is a restriction on the public side to objectively measured action. Private thought in general doesn't hold water until violation of actual behavior can first be proven, and only then is intent needed.
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Maybe, it depends on the individual. However, it is immoral to discriminate based on categories rather then individual characteristics, so their private life should not affect our actions towards them.
At some point, some open source communities will need to decide whether they work on open technologies or they are political activists with a political mission that serves the interests of a specific political side, or political doctrine[1] If I'm into, I don't know, some niche Porn that isn't illegal, can it be considered "offensive to women" and should I be ejected as a contributor because of my personal sexual tastes in order to satisfy those that might be offended by this, even if I never bring up that matter in public? Now, if I'm part of an atheist association, and I publicly question the reality of a mainstream religion, can it be considered offensive to Muslims and should I be ejected of a totally unrelated community because some of its members that are not even of the religion think that what I said is offensive toward Muslims?
1 : one can argue "free software" is political. It is, but it has to do with the protection of users and their right to access and modify source code. It has nothing to do with women's rights or making blasphemy socially unacceptable, especially when positions are taken outside the context of the project community.
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Gor is not just a flavor of porn, it is full philosophy of gender relationships. E.g. it does not just says "this gets me off", it says "this is nature of men/women, modern society is suppressing that nature and that is wrong". Some are in it for sex, but quite clearly others are in it because they believe in philosophy and attempt to live by it as much as possible/legal.
Is it possible to simultaneously believe that women are naturally submissive and happiest when they serve and simultaneously see leadership potential in women who is working under you? I dont know and I am glad that the question is not directly relevant to me.
However, if my boss would believe something like that, I guess I would have to either leave the company or accept I will be less likely to be promoted then male college of similar skills.
I have no idea whether Garfield is into Gor for kink or for gender philosophy nor whether that philosophy affected his leadership style. I dont care about whether he comes back or not. But, the more I looked into Gor the more it looked like way more then just another flavor of bdsm.
It's a series of fantasy f*#%ing novels, ofcourse it's role-play. Serious role play maybe, and definitively weird, but the author is _still alive_ and his name is not L. Ron Hubbard. Is he participating in political activism with mysogynistic undertones? Is he otherwise projecting gor-related gender views onto non-consenting parties? No. He just wants to do weird stuff together with other people who want to do weird stuff, socially and sexually. To assume that he holds these views to be morally absolute for everyone is a gross misrepresentation and unfortunately typical of persecution of weird people.
The political actions of communities come out of political consensus, which is exactly what's happening with this letter: people are trying to agree on political action. A "politics-free" community is just one where everyone already agrees, or nothing has ever come up for people to disagree over.
Open software is built by groups of people and one part of building a community it deciding what sort of people you want to work with.