A new statement on this topic was posted on July 14, 2017 and can be found here.

We understand that there is uncertainty and concern in the Drupal community about project founder, Dries Buytaert, asking Larry Garfield to leave the Drupal community, and about the Drupal Association removing Larry's DrupalCon sessions and ending his term as track chair.

We want to be clear that the decision to remove Larry's DrupalCon session and track chair role was not because of his private life or personal beliefs. The Drupal Association stands by our values of inclusivity. Our decision was based on confidential information conveyed in private by many sources. Due to the confidential nature of the situation we cannot and will not disclose any information that may harm any members of our community, including Larry.

This decision followed our established process. As the Executive Director, charged with safekeeping the goodwill of the organization, I made this decision after considering input from various sources including the Community Working Group (CWG) and Drupal Project Lead, Dries Buytaert. Upon Larry’s request for an appeal, the full board reviewed the situation, all the evidence, and statements provided by Larry. After reviewing the entirety of the information available (including information not in the public view) the decision was upheld.

In order to protect everyone involved we cannot comment more, and trust that the community will be understanding.

We do see that there are many feelings and questions around this DrupalCon decision and we empathize with those community members. We will continue to monitor comments. We are listening.

Update: 29 Mar 2017

Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts, concerns, and questions. I wanted to reach back out and reaffirm that we are listening. In addition to watching the comments here, we are also listening in other places like the Drupal community Slack, IRC, and the community blog posts that have come to our attention. Your comments are being heard and they are helping us to be thoughtful about our next steps.