This blog includes two statements. One from Dries Buytaert, as Drupal Project Lead, and another from Megan Sanicki, as the Executive Director of the Drupal Association and the Drupal Association Board.

We recognize that events and conversations earlier this year surfaced many concerns and needs within the community. One in particular is related to Larry Garfield’s role within Drupal. After several conversations with Larry, and careful consideration, we can now provide an update to this situation, our decisions, and Larry’s role moving forward.

We thank you for your patience while we spent many hours meeting with Larry and outside experts to resolve this matter. We recognize that actions were taken quickly before, which resulted in poor communication, and we wanted to avoid this happening again. We made sure to provide the proper time and attention these conversations needed before releasing this follow-up post.

We know our poor communication in the past led to frustration with us and pain for others. For that, we are sorry. We want to learn from this and improve. We listened to the community’s request to provide more streamlined, clear, and easy-to-follow communication. So, this post includes a statement from Dries Buytaert, as Project Lead, followed by a statement from Megan Sanicki, Executive Director of the Drupal Association.

Statement from Dries Buytaert, as Drupal Project Lead

I know there are many people out there still uneasy about where things were left off with regards to Larry's status and uncertainty around why he was asked to leave. I would like to personally clear up these things.

The actions that led me to ask Larry to resign involve a woman who attended Drupal community events with Larry, and was "allowed" to contribute by him. I originally characterized these actions as 'beliefs,' which was inaccurate on my part. To be clear, potential legal and ethical questions were raised by various people, including the Drupal Association lawyers, that this person could be vulnerable and may have been subject to exploitation, which raised the risk of substantial damage to the project.

Based on the legal and ethical risks to the Drupal project caused by Larry’s actions, both the Drupal Association and I needed to take action.

In balancing these questions and this risk, with Larry’s stated desire for privacy, the most obvious solution at the time was to ask him to resign. This was difficult. Larry has been a longtime contributor and colleague, and given the gravity of this situation, I did not communicate as clearly as I should have. When Larry chose not to resign, I took no immediate action with Larry’s role in the community in order to allow more time to better understand the situation and for mediation to occur.

Instead of continuing a dialogue and working towards a solution, Larry chose to end our discussion and share parts of the information surrounding this situation publicly. I understand why Larry blogged, and I support Larry’s — and every community member’s — right to speak out constructively when they disagree with those of us in leadership roles. However Larry’s blogs led people to think that I, and the Drupal Association, doxxed, bullied, and discriminated against him, which we did not. His blog posts led many to think that people who are into kink are not welcome in our community, which is not true. Larry's posts created material disruption to the project and the Association based on incomplete and inaccurate information. Even though Larry saw the negative impact he further inflamed the situation with additional blog posts.

Our current governance model lays out numerous positions that can be held within the project and who has the ability to appoint or remove people from them. Larry’s various roles and who governs them are listed in the table below. Most of Larry’s leadership roles are associated with the Drupal Association, but as project lead, I am responsible for assigning technical leadership positions within the project. Part of my job is to appoint and replace maintainers, to make sure the team functions well; and to make sure the leadership team is effective setting the technical direction of the project as well as collaborating with other members of the Drupal community to achieve our technical vision.

After talking to Larry and consulting other key contributors, I remain steadfast in my decision that it is best for Drupal that Larry should not continue to hold a technical leadership role. I've therefore decided to remove Larry as a core subsystem maintainer and as the PHP-FIG representative for Drupal. Larry will maintain his individual contributor roles which means he can participate in the development of Drupal as a regular member of the community.

Statement from Megan Sanicki, Executive Director of the Drupal Association and the Drupal Association Board

As the Executive Director of the Drupal Association a key part of my job is to protect the Drupal Association and the project from risk and harm. The Drupal Association is the steward of two critical drivers for Drupal’s longevity: Drupal.org and DrupalCon. And we are charged with caring for those spaces. Should the sustainability of the Drupal Association be impacted, we would no longer be able to maintain Drupal.org, which would have devastating implications for the project.

As Larry stated in his blog post, he was in a relationship with a woman he describes as “acutely autistic” and “mentally handicapped”. They attended Drupal events together where, in Larry’s own words, he “allowed” her to contribute to Drupal. The Drupal Association Board and I learned about this information from other sources as well as from Larry himself before Larry’s blog post was issued.

I was concerned not only about this person’s well-being, but I also had legal concerns about her ability to give informed consent or whether she was being exploited. The Drupal Association recognizes that Larry did not use the accurate medical terms to describe this person and we also recognize that most vulnerable people have the ability to consent. However, in this case, given the information we received about this person, we were concerned that it was possible that she could not consent. I sought input from board members and from professional experts, including legal counsel, who expressed concern that Larry’s action in his leadership roles created possible legal risk to the organization.

I learned about these issues just as the DrupalCon Baltimore sessions were about to be announced, and in order to give myself time to evaluate the risks, I ended Larry’s role as track chair and removed his session for only DrupalCon Baltimore. Making a decision for just one event provided me the time to better understand the situation and how to address the risks and concerns with appropriate counsel and authorities. The Drupal Association can not and should not investigate or adjudicate legal matters. We referred the situation to our legal counsel and followed their advice by removing Larry from leadership roles and we referred the matter to authorities.

Larry's subsequent blog posts harmed the community and had a material impact on the Drupal Association, including membership cancellations from those who believed we doxed, bullied, and discriminated against Larry as well as significant staff disruption. Due to the harm caused, the Drupal Association is removing Larry Garfield from leadership roles that we are responsible for, effective today.

These roles include being a DrupalCon track chair, DrupalCon speaker, member of the Drupal Association Advisory Board, and a member of the Licensing Working Group. Larry will maintain his individual contributor roles that the Drupal Association governs, which includes attending DrupalCon and contributing on Drupal.org using his Drupal.org user profile. It is important to note that Dries recused himself from the Drupal Association board decisions on this matter to avoid as many conflicts of interests as possible.

As long as Larry does not harm or disrupt the project, he will continue to be a member of the community as an individual contributor. However, we reserve the right to remove Larry's individual contributor roles if that is not the case. Also, we recognize that situations can change over time, so the Drupal Association will revisit these decisions in two years.

I recognize that my communication to Larry and with the community did not provide transparency into this situation and I apologize for the pain and confusion that caused. Our advisors told us not to share these details in order to protect all parties pending evaluation from authorities. Also, when Larry shared these details during the appeal process, he asked us to keep them confidential. It is my hope that this statement provides the clarity that many have been requesting.

What We Have Learned

Dries, Megan, and the Drupal Association Board of Directors hope that the community can stay focused on healing and the needed discussions about ways we can improve our community.

It is clear that we were unprepared for a challenge of this complexity. We struggled to move forward in a careful, timely, and clear fashion. We need to provide the community with clarity and understanding whenever possible. Many ideas are surfacing from the recent community discussions and we are looking at them to identify other ways to be better prepared for future challenges.

Another key take-away from this incident is that everyone in our community needs to be able to understand the answers to these questions:

What is expected of me by the community?

What can I expect from the community?

How is Drupal governed?

How can I participate in governance?

The best way for the community to get these answers is by working together to refine our community governance model. We support this work and we are eager to help the community achieve its vision.

We believe this community is a role model for the world on how to be a great open source community. Even at its messiest, we believe this community is strong and has much to share with other projects and communities. We consistently come together to solve hard problems. Even now, we are coming together to redefine our community governance and we are confident Drupal will become stronger because of it.

If you want to be part of creating a stronger and healthier community for the future, we encourage you to get involved in the discussions taking place on Drupal.org. Plus, you can go here to learn about the findings from the recent Community Discussions that were mediated by Whitney Hess along with the next steps that the community wants to take in evolving governance. We hope you will join this effort.

As mentioned in Dries' statement, these are Larry's roles and who governs each one.