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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

#101
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How you can tell this is all lies from the board is simple: > How do you tell someone that has had commit and admin access to critical infrastructure long after that need has expired that you need to revoke that access without upsetting them? The first thing is they didn't tell them. The second bit is simple: "Hi [x], I'm sure you've seen the news about npm. Given supply chain attacks directed at them and the one rec…

100% Reasonable people would've accepted that fine. And you don't have to worry about unreasonable people, because most people will find them unreasonable and dismiss anything they say.

> Reasonable people would've accepted that fine.

No, reasonable people would not have accepted "we're unilaterally deciding to lock you out with no advance notice, over something we could and should have been discussing for many months or years, but instead screwed up so badly that we're doing it ten minutes from now".

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

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

He is claiming that Ruby Central has the authority. True or not, that claim is not consistent with a coup. You seem to be catastrophizing and constructing misleading quotes, including inverting his words, not because his claim is not true but because of how he communicated it and the impact of it.

Most coups happen when someone has power and conflates that with authority.

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

#103
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i read the article, but didn't see anything damning about it. how big of a staff do you think a tiny 501c3 like RubyCentral is? RC shepherds a pretty small community around a niche DSL with a shoestring non-profit budget that mostly goes towards running conferences.. you can see their financial reports here https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/300... expectations around "strategic planning" and "m…

"These randos" are our friends and fellow contributors. Probably everybody in the Ruby community has worked with theme in one capacity or another. The article provides no reason why they should have had their contribution permissions revoked. Just because you think of Ruby as a "niche DSL" and the people maintaining its core infrastructure as "randos" doesn't mean the rest of us do.

[deleted]

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

#104
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-…

2025 has been wild but DHH outing himself as a crazy racist was definitely not something I was expecting...

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

#105

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…

Wait, what? A maintainer of RubyGems was forcibly removed from the RubyGems GitHub org — which was renamed to Ruby Central — along with every other maintainer. Then access was restored, then revoked again. There was no explanation, no communication, and no understandable reasoning for this. And still! If there is an "official" statement, I can't find one on https://rubycentral.org/ . This wildly transcends "issues wi…

Not "a maintainer", many of the most prominent ones and trustworthy over the years.

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

#106

I think that most Rubyists want to forgive each other and move forward. The board, staff, and volunteers at Ruby Central are all people and people are fallible, that's fine. The way to receive forgiveness isn't to convince others (who weren't there and who don't have the full context) that what was done was reasonable or justified. It doesn't matter. It doesn't even matter who is at fault. What matters is who will ta…

Best comment I’ve seen on this thread so far.

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

#107
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-…

As a fellow Scandinavian, DHH is just writing what the vast majority of us think. And it isn’t racist. That word is being misused until it soon has no value left; you sure you want that?

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

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-…

2025 has been wild but DHH outing himself as a crazy racist was definitely not something I was expecting...

If he’s a crazy racist, what would you call an actual racist?

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

#109
I’m the Homebrew Project leader and care a lot about Ruby so met with both sides to attempt to mediate and posted two threads on Bluesky about what went down:

https://bsky.app/profile/mikemcquaid.com/post/3lz7klsyue22f

https://bsky.app/profile/mikemcquaid.com/post/3lzfxctubbk2y

TL;DR: Regardless of what you think of RubyCentral’s actions, it’s very clear they absolutely screwed up the execution and communication here. In general the transparency is far below what you’d expect from an open source organisation.

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