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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.

> 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.

> People like a good two minute hate. It creates all sorts of interesting sensations.

- Humanrebar, 2017

> 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. :|

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.

> 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.

My question is:

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.

The person in charge

"Well who gets to decide who's in charge"

Whoever takes charge.

It's like they're missing the point of OSS. If you don't like who's in charge, remix and make your own. Whoever is the more capable leader will have a successful project. "Beliefs" and all that other crap get left at the door, the race is for the medal - in this case whoever has the best project wins.

Though I suppose trying to achieve that with ideological witchhunts (and what, forming a 'cult of coding'? haha) is a viable strat too. LG was dominated by Kimura Kei for a while

By applying your explanation it could be that this whole situation is a power grab from people who want to take over the project. Does that make sense?

So? If the software they develop is superior, use it. If not, don't.

If you're so concerned about "who has power", either do a better job or learn to live with the tools they give you.

That's a good point but it also shows how easy it would be to discredit a whole project or maintainer.

> Who gets to define whats controversial?

I didn't make it very clear, that was exactly my point. Any view will be controversial to _someone_ regardless of the view. Which is why I posit that it is impossible to have a community leader posses non-controversial views. Unless of course the community is an echo-chamber, rejecting all who do not assimilate.

Thats true. You cant please everybody. Who ever made the info public did so with the purpose of discrediting the victim.

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.