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A board member's perspective of the RubyGems controversy

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Re: A board member's perspective of the RubyGems controversy

#31

Post by stickfigure »

khamidou wrote: post #30
dewey wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at the core maintainers of Rails for example. Many are paid by Shopify and Basecamp, so it’s much more commercial than your regular open source project. Which isn’t a bad thing that people get to contribute on company time.

Again this is mixed causality. Rails did not take off because of commercial interests – besides dhh who was working on it on the side, all the initial committers were doing that for fun. Eventually they brought rails in many commercial companies and these companies succeeded to the point they could pay people to maintain rails.

However it started, there's a big hosting bill and somebody has to pay it.

Re: A board member's perspective of the RubyGems controversy

#32

Post by throwaway346434 »

caymanjim wrote: post #24
sc68cal wrote: post #13

This story is missing any context around what occurred. The only thing I was able to find was by searching, and I came to this PDF statement. https://pup-e.com/goodbye-rubygems.pdf > On September 9th, with no warning or communication, a RubyGems maintainer unilaterally: > renamed the “RubyGems” GitHub enterprise to “Ruby Central”, > added non-maintainer Marty Haught of Ruby Central, and > removed every other maintain…

Everything you're quoting is from one aggrieved person, who clearly felt slighted, and who left out a whole lot of context in their own post. The article above is a lot more reasoned, less emotional, and seems completely reasonable to me. Ruby Central clearly has issues with both internal and external communication. And the above article isn't an official statement either; it's just one person, not involve in the dec…

It's not just one person.

Between the initial removal of access, then giving it back after explaining it was a mistake; the people involved started a conversation about governance to clarify/fix things.

https://github.com/rubygems/rfcs/pull/61

The conversation terminated because the majority of those people then had their access revoked again.

When weighing the facts here; which group or claimant has the most evidence for their claims? The technical folks with lots of commits over many years, or the treasurer of an organisation who says the impetus for this was a "funding deadline" so all access had to be seized?

Re: A board member's perspective of the RubyGems controversy

#33

Post by sc68cal »

caymanjim wrote: post #24
sc68cal wrote: post #13

This story is missing any context around what occurred. The only thing I was able to find was by searching, and I came to this PDF statement. https://pup-e.com/goodbye-rubygems.pdf > On September 9th, with no warning or communication, a RubyGems maintainer unilaterally: > renamed the “RubyGems” GitHub enterprise to “Ruby Central”, > added non-maintainer Marty Haught of Ruby Central, and > removed every other maintain…

Everything you're quoting is from one aggrieved person, who clearly felt slighted, and who left out a whole lot of context in their own post. The article above is a lot more reasoned, less emotional, and seems completely reasonable to me. Ruby Central clearly has issues with both internal and external communication. And the above article isn't an official statement either; it's just one person, not involve in the dec…

> who clearly felt slighted,

I think this person has good cause for being very upset at the lack of communication and the sudden removal of them from the organization. They were a maintainer of RubyGems for a decade.

Re: A board member's perspective of the RubyGems controversy

#34

Post by khamidou »

stickfigure wrote: post #31
khamidou wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again this is mixed causality. Rails did not take off because of commercial interests – besides dhh who was working on it on the side, all the initial committers were doing that for fun. Eventually they brought rails in many commercial companies and these companies succeeded to the point they could pay people to maintain rails.

However it started, there's a big hosting bill and somebody has to pay it.

For sure – but maybe it doesn't have to be the side project of a non-profit whose main thing is RailsConf.

Re: A board member's perspective of the RubyGems controversy

#35

Post by dewey »

khamidou wrote: post #30
dewey wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at the core maintainers of Rails for example. Many are paid by Shopify and Basecamp, so it’s much more commercial than your regular open source project. Which isn’t a bad thing that people get to contribute on company time.

Again this is mixed causality. Rails did not take off because of commercial interests – besides dhh who was working on it on the side, all the initial committers were doing that for fun. Eventually they brought rails in many commercial companies and these companies succeeded to the point they could pay people to maintain rails.

Rails was built in a company to build commercial products so I’d say it had commercial interests from day one.

> 37signals built Rails for Basecamp and has since used it to create all their web products.

From: https://rubyonrails.org/foundation/37signals

Re: A board member's perspective of the RubyGems controversy

#36

Post by weaksauce »

stickfigure wrote: post #31
khamidou wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again this is mixed causality. Rails did not take off because of commercial interests – besides dhh who was working on it on the side, all the initial committers were doing that for fun. Eventually they brought rails in many commercial companies and these companies succeeded to the point they could pay people to maintain rails.

However it started, there's a big hosting bill and somebody has to pay it.

most of the hosting is donated for free outside of the influence of monetary donations.

Re: A board member's perspective of the RubyGems controversy

#37

Post by jmcgough »

sc68cal wrote: post #13

This story is missing any context around what occurred. The only thing I was able to find was by searching, and I came to this PDF statement. https://pup-e.com/goodbye-rubygems.pdf > On September 9th, with no warning or communication, a RubyGems maintainer unilaterally: > renamed the “RubyGems” GitHub enterprise to “Ruby Central”, > added non-maintainer Marty Haught of Ruby Central, and > removed every other maintain…

I found this helpful in explaining what's happened: https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/22/ruby_central_rubygems...

Sounds like they made some really big changes and put zero effort into communicating to people who've spent 10+ years working on the project.

Re: A board member's perspective of the RubyGems controversy

#38

Post by hyperpape »

A lot of people are arguing about whether locking down access was justified to resolve the security issues. I guess it's debatable.

But I don't see any excuse for not putting out a statement when you do it. You have to know there will be a fight, and you will look like the bad guy. Perhaps I could see directly communicating to the maintainers that you expect that they'll be reinstated. But to say nothing? To let the post by duckinator float around for days without having a "we did this because of security concerns, we want to work together and find a resolution..." It's incomprehensible that they thought this would go well.

Re: A board member's perspective of the RubyGems controversy

#39

Post by cyanydeez »

vintagedave wrote: post #29

> A deadline (which as far as I understand, we agreed to) loomed. Either Ruby Central puts controls in place to ensure the safety and stability of the infrastructure we are responsible for, or lose the funding that we use to keep those things online and going. This makes a lot of sense, and it puts the 'drastic' action in understandable light. It also contrasts with the 'On September 9th, with no warning or communica…

Pretty sure github issues would enligghten everyone on the timely communication of funding requirements

Re: A board member's perspective of the RubyGems controversy

#40

Post by padjo »

baggy_trough wrote: post #8

Locking out a guy like David Rodriguez (the main person I see doing bundler commits) in a dramatic fashion just seems like absolute craziness. I can't fathom doing it without a very good reason, which has yet to be revealed if it exists.

Does “lest we lose critical funding because we don’t have proper agreements with our committers” not cut it as a reason for you? Genuinely curious, it seems like a reasonable explanation assuming it’s true.
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