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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

#71

Post by McGlockenshire »

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…

I know you're already getting piled on here but

> less emotional,

Expressing emotions is good, actually.

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

#72

Post by McGlockenshire »

fwip wrote: post #45
jmcgough wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thanks - that was helpful indeed. From there, I also found the linked post by Tekin Süleyman ( https://tekin.co.uk/2025/09/the-ruby-community-has-a-dhh-pro... ) to be informative.

Wow! When that one DHH blog went around the other day, I didn't actually pay attention to who the author was. All I saw was yet another bigoted rant and just skimmed it and rolled my eyes. (e: here it is to save people the effort: https://world.hey.com/dhh/as-i-remember-london-e7d38e64 )

I should not have skimmed it. From your link:

> In the same post he praises Tommy Robinson (actual name Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon), a right-wing agitator with several convictions for violent offences and a long history of association with far-right groups such as the English Defence League and the British Nationalist Party. He then goes on to describe those that attended last weekend’s far-right rally in London as “perfectly normal, peaceful Brits” protesting against the “demographic nightmare” that has enveloped London, despite the violence and disorder they caused.

> To all of that he ads a dash of Islamophobia, citing “Pakistani rape gangs” as one of the reasons for the unrest, repeating a weaponised trope borne from a long since discredited report from the Quilliam Foundation, an organisation with ties to both the the US Tea Party, and Tommy Robinson himself.

This is ... disqualifying. That's the best word I can summon here to express my dismay. This is a crossed line. Absolutely nutso.

edit2: Uh wow I really should not have skimmed it. Here's one paragraph from DHH's blog itself:

> Which brings us back to Robinson's powerful march yesterday. The banner said "March for Freedom", and focused as much on that now distant-to-the-Brits concept of free speech, as it did on restoring national pride. And for good reason! The totalitarian descent into censorious darkness in Britain has been as swift as its demographic shift.

Well, if that doesn't speak volumes as to DHH's values, I don't know what does.

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

#73

Post by caymanjim »

caboteria wrote: post #61
caymanjim wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Everything he quoted is a fact, which can be proven or falsified. Taken together (and if true) they're pretty damning. You responded with an ad-hominem attack. If you can offer a rebuttal of the facts then please do, otherwise try to refrain from personal attacks.

I dunno what you read, but nothing I wrote included any attacks, personal or otherwise.

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

#74

Post by bradly »

qrush wrote: post #10

I'm truly hoping for a reasonable resolution on all sides for this situation. IMO Ruby is too small, and shrinking compared to Python and JS/TS especially in the AI era, to be able to afford any splintering of efforts.

I still remember your The Legal Stuff post on Google Groups from a million years ago. <3

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

#75

Post by albedoa »

caymanjim wrote: post #73
caboteria wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything he quoted is a fact, which can be proven or falsified. Taken together (and if true) they're pretty damning. You responded with an ad-hominem attack. If you can offer a rebuttal of the facts then please do, otherwise try to refrain from personal attacks.

I dunno what you read, but nothing I wrote included any attacks, personal or otherwise.

Ah, you're constructively accusing the author of "[leaving] out a whole lot of context". Non-derogatorily.

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

#76

Post by ethagnawl »

McGlockenshire wrote: post #72
fwip wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks - that was helpful indeed. From there, I also found the linked post by Tekin Süleyman ( https://tekin.co.uk/2025/09/the-ruby-community-has-a-dhh-pro... ) to be informative.

Wow! When that one DHH blog went around the other day, I didn't actually pay attention to who the author was. All I saw was yet another bigoted rant and just skimmed it and rolled my eyes. (e: here it is to save people the effort: https://world.hey.com/dhh/as-i-remember-london-e7d38e64 ) I should not have skimmed it. From your link: > In the same post he praises Tommy Robinson (actual name Stephen Christopher Yaxley-…

... and this is the guy whose Linux "distro" Cloudflare has just announced funding for.

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

#77

Post by AlienRobot »

lloeki wrote: post #58
generalk wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does not, for me. Given that access was cut, then restored, then cut again, then days, then someone finally says "hey were were going to lose critical funding" makes it seem like a post-facto excuse for a hostile takeover. And the whole "oh, well, we're bad at comms" makes it sound even worse! Which is the whole crux of the issue. At no point in any of this did Ruby Central do anything reasonable. The they tried t…

From TFA: > Let's get some kind of committer agreement in place with those folks who need access (the same way many other high profile open source projects have), and remove access from those who don't, while still being fully open to accepting PRs and being open to re-welcoming them as committers if they decide that is how they want to spend their time in the future. > Here's the challenge. How do you tell someone t…

It's to secure the supply chain.

From the guy who has supplied most of the chain.

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

#78

Post by gsinclair »

adriand wrote: post #9
eutropia wrote: post #7

I think that if they had been up front and transparent, and cut the PR bullshit corpospeak from their damage-control post, this would have been something that's much less embarrassing for all involved. Something like: "Hey all, RC here: with the very real threat of supply-chain attacks looming around us, one of the critical financial backers of our nonprofit org gave us a deadline around tightening access to the Gith…

Sounds like you should volunteer for Ruby Central to help them with their communications! I don't mean that facetiously: it seems that they could use you, or someone like you, with comms. As the OP readily admits, this is not a strong point for them. My general take on this: 1) Nerds are often not the best at communicating. 2) People on the Internet can be very cruel towards people they don't know. We could all do be…

The organisation already has non-technical people employed. They should be able to get basic communications right.

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

#79

Post by gsinclair »

reenorap wrote: post #21

The only reason why Ruby and other open source projects survive is because large companies can trust them to do the right thing. Given the critical nature of the supply chain attacks, what the board did was 100% right. Like he said, some people's egos got hurt but if no one can trust the maintainers, then Ruby has no future in the industry and it will die quickly. This is basically like fixing technical debt. It's pa…

The board was not 100% right, not even close. I’ll assume their technical actions were justified. But they screwed the communication badly in a domain where informal trust is an important commodity. Therefore, they flubbed a big chunk of their responsibility.

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

#80

Post by danielheath »

nenenejej wrote: post #62
hyperpape wrote: post #38

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…

I mean imagine you are at work and you need to so this for SOC2 or something but dont tell your colleagues.

Firstly, you can tell them you’re working on SOC2 compliance, and secondly, those colleagues are getting paid in dollars, not doing it for the love of the work.
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