TMI About me [Harassment in the Drupal community] | Hacker News Reader

TMI About me [Harassment in the Drupal community]

garfieldtech.com

46 pointscampuscodi8 comments

Drupal, which started out as community software, has climbed the ladder into enterprise-land and now gets pitched against big ol' commercial CMS systems. It powers the websites of many federal Cabinet agencies and major entertainment properties.

I wouldn't be surprised if concerns about corporate squeamishness drove the rapid and behind-scenes push-out that this post describes (if it is indeed complete and accurate--I have no special insight myself).

But I work in enterprise-land and I've spent a lot of my employer's money on Drupal development over the years. And personally I have to say that I don't give a shit if community developers are into BDSM.

This seems like a brave post to me.

The thought that kept circulating in my mind as I read this was, "If it's safe, sane, and consensual, why is it anyone else's business?"

Useful rule of thumb: If you are an outsider to other peoples' relationships, you probably don't get to judge the fairness of the relationship. Err on the side of respect.

I suspect that the author is off by a few orders of magnitude on scale: they say tens of thousands of people, but that would be one-in-ten-thousand adults. None of us would've heard of it.

I would guess tens of millions have tried BDSM in some form (1-in-10), and millions engage in it regularly (1-in-100) in the US.

Such a pity anyone cares about anyone else's private life, as long as there's no law broken.

I would certainly not put the "as long as no laws are broken" qualifier in there. Governments don't have a great track record of keeping their noses out of consensual relationships.

Dries Buytaert's response, linked from his (at this time) most recent tweet: http://buytaert.net/tag/living-our-values

Living our values!!! JFC...

I don't think he understands the actual implications of the values he claims to be defending.

Dries > "However, when a highly-visible community member's private views become public, controversial, and disruptive for the project, I must consider the impact that his words and actions have on others and the project itself."

I think the key words are controversial and disruptive. This to me seems to confirm that the guiding principle here is "avoid a big fuss" as opposed to some moral or ethical bright line.

There's a lot of words devoted to what "Goreans" believe--which I had never ever heard of before. I've read the Bible though; and I know what the Vatican (for example) says about birth control, abortion, men vs women, etc.

I guess this fits into the old joke that the difference between a cult and religion is how many people are in it.