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Sex and Gor and open source

techcrunch.com

11–20 of 44 posts

Re: Sex and Gor and open source

#11
post #5

This article is written from one side of a complicated conflict. It's the perspective of the ousted Drupal member that his beliefs are entirely packaged up in the BDSM subculture that he takes part in, and that to have a problem with his beliefs is to persecute his BDSM subculture. It's the perspective of the other Drupal members who ousted him that his beliefs are not in fact cabined in that subculture, but in fact…

Community governance in a world where open source is increasing and privacy decreasing will necessarily require drama as long as emotions are involved.

The article raises questions in the controversy worth exploring in countless open source projects.

I didn't encounter evidence cited by the ousting members in the article. Can you link to your sources?

Re: Sex and Gor and open source

#12
I spent a good portion of my early career working with Drupal on large-scale media sites and got to know some folks central to the movement. I liked almost everyone I met, including Dries, but after starting my own agency, left the platform and the community. Not because of individual conflicts, but because I concluded that I did not want my agency to orbit Acquia. This is what happens in commercially mature open source communities, and a huge source of mundane conflict. The founder and BDFL of the movement becomes the founder and BDFL of a venture funded, IPO-bound startup, and incentives start to become crossed. Or in the case this case, incentives become entirely perverted.

So I have a darker take on this: Dries banned Crell as a face-value reason to strip a competitor of a seat at the core contributor table. Crell works for Platform.sh, a challenger to Acquia's main hosting platform product. Drupal has lots of very senior architectural voices already, so losing Crell isn't going to jeopardize the platform, and it's more convenient for Acquia for them to work in the same place.

According to Crell's post about this [https://www.garfieldtech.com/blog/tmi-outing], the Drupal Association apparently attempted to apply their code of conduct and found repeatedly that Crell had done nothing wrong. But then Dries decided to ban Crell with little fanfare. Hard to believe that Dries cares that much about Crell's sex life. Easy to believe that he's become a cutthroat opportunist who would use the Code of Conduct to optimize Acquia's outcomes. What would have happened if Crell had worked for Acquia?

That's the thing about a BDFL. Give him enough VC money and ultimately all that's left is a giant D.

Re: Sex and Gor and open source

#13
post #5

This article is written from one side of a complicated conflict. It's the perspective of the ousted Drupal member that his beliefs are entirely packaged up in the BDSM subculture that he takes part in, and that to have a problem with his beliefs is to persecute his BDSM subculture. It's the perspective of the other Drupal members who ousted him that his beliefs are not in fact cabined in that subculture, but in fact…

Community governance in a world where open source is increasing and privacy decreasing will necessarily require drama as long as emotions are involved. The article raises questions in the controversy worth exploring in countless open source projects. I didn't encounter evidence cited by the ousting members in the article. Can you link to your sources?

You didn't encounter pretty much any of the other side in that article, which is not an accurate summary of the controversy. I'm not sure this article makes a good starting point for discussing this issue, and I'm not sure the issue itself is really worth mining to find a good starting point.

Re: Sex and Gor and open source

#14
post #9
post #6

Sad. I definitely agree with the article's "yes (no), hell no, hell no" answers. But I wonder how many people would answer the same here as with Brendan Eich being forced to resign or Curtis Yarvin being dis-invited from LambdaConf. Edit to be more clear: I can understand either position as long as it applies consistently. I also think I may have pattern matched this incorrectly as "person unfairly ostracized for his…

Yarvin was not disinvited from LambdaConf. LambdaConf was boycotted because Yarvin presented there. (To your edit: so far as I know, the issue with Yarvin has more to do with outspoken racism than with gender equity).

Disinvited from strangeloop I think? It's hard to keep track of it all.

Re: Sex and Gor and open source

#15
post #7

At first I thought this article would be linkbaity-gossip about a tech individual's private matters. However I think it raises a good point: Generally our attitude toward different sexual preferences (previously labeled 'deviant') is that it is illegal and wrong to use them to hold back somebody's career. However fetishism thus far hasn't been approached the same way as homosexuality, nor has the debate even begun in…

Disclaimer : i am a dom/top/whatever you want to call it in my private life. Even more interestingly, the majority of the fetish/BDSM community is heavily feminist and open minded. (There are always grey nuance and complex case but still) It is a community that is deeply rooted into consent and people that submit making a conscious and informed decision. You tend to meet people that accept someone else opinion or lif…

Disclaimer : i am a drug user/junkie/whatever you want to call it in my private life. Even more interestingly, the majority of the drug using community is heavily feminist and open minded. (There are always grey nuance and complex case but still) It is a community that is deeply rooted into using drugs and people that use drugs making a conscious and informed decision. You tend to meet people that accept someone else opinion or lifestyle, that are team player and adapt to others, more than proselyts or zealots. Interestingly, the legal implications are complex, and most of the time, in the US, would not support the lifestyle that much. Consensual use or addiction is a strange place legally. But from the public information so far, it seems hard to believe that this was about proselytising or promoting anything. Just a witch hunt. Which, to be honest, do not surprise me. I am semi public about my personal involvement since someone else did drugs on tv/movies, because i accept the problem i could get in exchange of informing people that need it (drugs are hated in a lot of the community for good reasons) It is not easy and you get a lot of anxious/uneasy look.

Re: Sex and Gor and open source

#16
post #15
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer : i am a dom/top/whatever you want to call it in my private life. Even more interestingly, the majority of the fetish/BDSM community is heavily feminist and open minded. (There are always grey nuance and complex case but still) It is a community that is deeply rooted into consent and people that submit making a conscious and informed decision. You tend to meet people that accept someone else opinion or lif…

Disclaimer : i am a drug user/junkie/whatever you want to call it in my private life. Even more interestingly, the majority of the drug using community is heavily feminist and open minded. (There are always grey nuance and complex case but still) It is a community that is deeply rooted into using drugs and people that use drugs making a conscious and informed decision. You tend to meet people that accept someone else…

[deleted]

Re: Sex and Gor and open source

#17
post #8
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer : i am a dom/top/whatever you want to call it in my private life. Even more interestingly, the majority of the fetish/BDSM community is heavily feminist and open minded. (There are always grey nuance and complex case but still) It is a community that is deeply rooted into consent and people that submit making a conscious and informed decision. You tend to meet people that accept someone else opinion or lif…

To be clear: the claim here --- not that you'd know it from the article --- is that proselytizing was in fact an issue.

Well proselytising what ? Because once again, the fact he plays as a Gorean master does not mean he believes women to be subhuman.

This tends to be the problem with most of these things. But in any case we really lack information here.

Re: Sex and Gor and open source

#18

I spent a good portion of my early career working with Drupal on large-scale media sites and got to know some folks central to the movement. I liked almost everyone I met, including Dries, but after starting my own agency, left the platform and the community. Not because of individual conflicts, but because I concluded that I did not want my agency to orbit Acquia. This is what happens in commercially mature open sou…

[deleted]

Re: Sex and Gor and open source

#19
post #10

The Techcrunch article has a broken link to Dries' blog post: http://buytaert.net/living-our-values The Techcrunch article focuses too much on BDSM in general. If I understand correctly, the problem here is on the specific aspect of viewing women as inferior and the fact that this contributor wields significant influence in a community where (like many free software communities) gender is a problem. This isn't very d…

It is both notable and unsurprising that the Drupal code of conduct [1] makes zero mention of any of the topics in this debate. Nothing about sexuality, nothing about feminism, or equality, ... Yet every discussion about this immediately turns to gender politics. I think this shows the duplicitous nature of COCs: no matter what the letter says, the intent, as understood by nearly everyone, is to apply it to filter by reigning morality, under the threat of public punishment.

When it comes to Drupal, the only gender problem it has is the people who keep manufacturing major incidents out of minor slights, even when the people involved don't mind. Case in point, the Drupal Association member who resigned because he called his friend a pussy, who in turn didn't mind it.

It is disingenuous to uphold a code of respect, diversity and inclusion while simultaneously expecting everyone to conform to the wishes of the most easily offended. More so to act like the only way to be respectful to women is to treat them like fragile flowers. Some people prefer traditional gender roles, in or outside the bedroom, and some are women.

The last thing these inclusion activists want is diversity, it would expose them as the sheltered and privileged upper class they are.

[1] https://www.drupal.org/dcoc

Re: Sex and Gor and open source

#20

I spent a good portion of my early career working with Drupal on large-scale media sites and got to know some folks central to the movement. I liked almost everyone I met, including Dries, but after starting my own agency, left the platform and the community. Not because of individual conflicts, but because I concluded that I did not want my agency to orbit Acquia. This is what happens in commercially mature open sou…

Thumbs up. Acquia has too influence on Drupal. This is exactly why I stuck with Drupal 7 for my side projects, without any plans to migrate to Drupal 8.
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