It was also brought up on the related Reddit thread. Someone surmised this might be "motivated by the direct competition."
To which rszrama (Ryan Szarma) said "As a co-founder of Platform.sh, I know with absolute certainty this is not the case."
Assuming Ryan knows more than both of us, and he would be in a position to gain from making such a claim -- it's important to note he emphatically said NO.
https://www.reddit.com/r/drupal/comments/60y9mq/larry_garfie...
I'd argue that Ryan can't really gain from making a claim that Dries is trying to damage his business, because then he's admitting that his business has been damaged without any real recourse. But I do agree that he knows plenty that we don't!
My thesis is not that Crell's behavior was acceptable. I know I don't have the standing to opine on that. My thesis is that Dries isn't accountable for this conflict of interest and the demands of running a venture-backed startup are largely at odds with the demands of running a community worthy of its code of conduct.
Of course, Dries is not the only BDFL with this kind of a conflict of interest. Many of us who have a career on the Internet live in the shade of one tree or another...
So I have a darker take on this: Dries banned Crell as a face-value reason to strip a competitor of a seat at the core contributor table. Crell works for Platform.sh, a challenger to Acquia's main hosting platform product. Drupal has lots of very senior architectural voices already, so losing Crell isn't going to jeopardize the platform, and it's more convenient for Acquia for them to work in the same place.
According to Crell's post about this [https://www.garfieldtech.com/blog/tmi-outing], the Drupal Association apparently attempted to apply their code of conduct and found repeatedly that Crell had done nothing wrong. But then Dries decided to ban Crell with little fanfare. Hard to believe that Dries cares that much about Crell's sex life. Easy to believe that he's become a cutthroat opportunist who would use the Code of Conduct to optimize Acquia's outcomes. What would have happened if Crell had worked for Acquia?
That's the thing about a BDFL. Give him enough VC money and ultimately all that's left is a giant D.