Dries Buytaert

Last week Megan Sanicki, executive director of the Drupal Association, and I published a joint statement. In this blog post, I wanted to follow up with a personal statement focused on the community at large.

I've talked to a lot of people the last two weeks, and it is clear to me that our decisions have caused much alarm and distress in our community. I feel this follow-up is important even though I know it doesn't undo the hurt I've caused.

I want to deeply apologize for causing grief and uncertainty, especially to those in the BDSM and kink communities who felt targeted by the turmoil. This incident was about specific actions of a single member of our community. This was never meant to be about sexual practices or kinks, so it pains me that I unintentionally hurt you. I do support you and respect you as a key part of our community.

Shortly after I started Drupal more than 15 years ago, I based its core values on openness and equality. Gender, race, religion, beliefs, sexuality ... all are welcome in our community. We've always had people with wildly different views and identities. When we walk into a sprint at DrupalCon, we've been able to put our opinions aside, open our laptops, and start collaborating. Diversity has always been a feature, not a bug. I strongly feel that this foundation is what made Drupal what it is today; a global family.

Serving a community as unique and diverse as Drupal is both rewarding and challenging. We've navigated through several defining moments and transitions in our history. I feel what we are going through now is another one of these defining moments for our culture and community. In an excruciating but illuminating way this has shown some of what is best about our community: we care. I'm reminded that what brings us together, what we all have in common, is our love and appreciation of open-source software. Drupal is a positive force, a collective lifting by thousands and thousands, created and maintained by those individuals cooperating toward a common goal, whose other interests have no need to be aligned.

I want to help our community heal and I'm open to learn and change. As one of the next steps, I will make a follow-up post on improving our governance to a healthier model that does not place such sensitive decisions on me. I love this community, and recognize that the things we hold in common are more important than our differences.

(Comments on this post are allowed but for obvious reasons will be moderated.)