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Sex and Gor and open source

techcrunch.com

21–30 of 44 posts

Re: Sex and Gor and open source

#21
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…

I have exactly the same feeling about the resignation of Brendan Eich. Mozilla has been a mindless for-profit business as long as I remember, and I likely older than the median here.

Re: Sex and Gor and open source

#22
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The fact you didn't reply but chose to divert the conversation indicates to me you're either on the board of the DA or an Acquia employee, or (knowing the tight relationship between the two) more likely both.

I have read every piece of information available to the public and there has been no evidence of any wrongdoing. What you're doing here is wrong. I hope someday you see that.

Re: Sex and Gor and open source

#23
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…

The difference is that many of us in the Drupal community have known Crell for years and not only has he done a stellar job of keeping these things separate, but also that he is very much a model for an ideal member of the community. He is always welcoming to others and of all the drama I have seen in the community, he is never part of it. He just seems like an honestly good person that I've known for over 6 years and seen regularly. Acquia should be giving him a medal for making "their" product with probably none of their venture capital money.

Re: Sex and Gor and open source

#24
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…

> 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 bleed out of it into his interactions with the broader world. They cite evidence.

I didn't see any evidence cited in Dries Buytaert's blog [1] that the ousted member's BDSM stuff affected how he interacted or behaved within the Drupal community. In particular, I didn't see anything cited that indicated they had any problem at all with him until they found out that he was a member of that BDSM community. Did I overlook some evidence?

[1] http://buytaert.net/living-our-values

Re: Sex and Gor and open source

#25
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Right, disinvited from strangeloop. When he was invited to speak at LambdaConf, pressure was brought to bear to get him disinvited. When that didn't work, people instead brought pressure against LambdaConf's sponsors, speakers, and attendees, in an effort to get LambdaConf cancelled.

Re: Sex and Gor and open source

#26
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.

It wasn't an issue in Dries' article, either.

Re: Sex and Gor and open source

#27
I'm not at all surprised by this. I'm not a BDSM enthusiast, but in my personal life I wear clothes and have body mods that while legal and socially acceptable in my country, many Westerners find outrageous and deeply offensive. I have always complied with the standards and dress code of any business event I attend. It's simply what I wear in my personal time.

It's been a huge obstacle to getting recognition when dealing with Western tech media. Even when I don't appear at all with the project, simply the off-camera creator's appearance being offensive has been sufficient excuse for exclusion. I have no doubt that BDSM enthusiasts, or Furries, or many others face similar issues even when they check all aspects of their lifestyle at the door and it has no bearing on their projects.

As part of a knee-jerk reaction to community problems with sexism, parts of tech are now deeply, deeply conservative and judgmental about anything even vaguely sexual.

You can very easily have permanent damage done to your career prospects by appearing or acting in some way different from what they feel is the norm. Once that's done, there's no appeasement or washing away the stain- you might as well embrace your eccentricity and resign yourself to whatever fringe niche will have you.

Re: Sex and Gor and open source

#28

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…

There's an appearance of conflict of interest, and you are not the only one to make this accusation. But this is a red herring.

It was also brought up on the related Reddit thread. Someone surmised this might be "motivated by the direct competition."

To which rszrama (Ryan Szarma) said "As a co-founder of Platform.sh, I know with absolute certainty this is not the case."

Assuming Ryan knows more than both of us, and he would be in a position to gain from making such a claim -- it's important to note he emphatically said NO.

https://www.reddit.com/r/drupal/comments/60y9mq/larry_garfie...

Re: Sex and Gor and open source

#29
> More generally, is it OK for an open-source community to ban/ostracize a member purely because their “belief system” — perhaps better described as a complicated fantasy milieu in which they happen to spend their personal time — was doxxed? [hell no]

It's interesting to compare this with the TechCrunch article written after Brendan Eich was ousted for his “belief system”: https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/03/brendan-eich-resigns-as-mo...

Re: Sex and Gor and open source

#30
post #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…

> Nothing about sexuality, nothing about feminism, or equality, [...]

From the DCOC: "The Drupal community and its members treat one another with respect."

> When it comes to Drupal, the only gender problem it has is the people who keep manufacturing major incidents out of minor slights [...]

I don't know for Drupal, but gender is an issue in most computer-science related fields, I doubt that Drupal is immune to this. Free Software has a lower % of women involved than computer science in general. In any case, until there is near parity, there is a gender problem.

I agree that 'we' are pretty bad at handling incidents. Damned if we do, damned if we don't. There's been an evolution in the last 10 years, but clearly more work to be done.

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