Ruby core team takes ownership of RubyGems and Bundler • Hacker News Board

Re: Ruby core team takes ownership of RubyGems and Bundler

#101

Post by nxor » Fri, Oct 17, 2025, 2:49 PM UTC

shevy-java wrote: post #77

white-moss wrote: post #10

Really appreciate Matz stepping up to take on this difficult situation. As a Japanese developer, I’ve been worried about the direction things were going, so it’s reassuring to see this.

Stepping up how? It was always clear that Hiroshi Shibata didn't act solo without approval. I am not saying he knew the outcome before that, but WHEN was the decision made to take over gems + bundler? I have a slight suspicion that this may have been decided upon months ago already. > As a Japanese developer, I’ve been worried about the direction things were going, so it’s reassuring to see this. I am actually much m…

More people live in the US. What is overdominating Python?

Re: Ruby core team takes ownership of RubyGems and Bundler

#102

Post by undecisive » Fri, Oct 17, 2025, 2:49 PM UTC

elliotec wrote: post #6

This is a fascinating and seemingly unusual development that will look obvious in history. I find “BDFLs” and open source communities so incredibly interesting. Especially in the context of geopolitics and state entities. Linux! This stuff is PHD material for sociology and polisci post-grads and I’m so interested in following the progression of history with these types of things.

Yeah, certainly tickles a few neurons.

I feel like BDFLs are akin to the concept of village elders; they're not immune to corruption or scandal, but they often have this beloved status that can paper over a lot of cracks. That's probably dependant on their leadership style - the hard headed (Linus, DHH) vs the grandfatherly (Matz, Van Rossum).

Which, going back to your note on geopolitics, leads me to wonder: Is it just that more power corrupts more, or is it that (modern-day definitions of) democracy require a desire for power? I guess as the "FL" part of "BDFL" comes to bite more of the communities, we'll see better how different succession styles have different effects. I also wonder if the analytical nature of the individuals within the "populations", and inability to police defectors will mean uprisings will be more successful, either in causing BDFL attitude adjustments, or just overturning the community completely (for example, there's already a lot of momentum for a complete fork of Rails)

(Edit: having submitted this, I now see others have had very similar thoughts! Definitely an excellent conversation topic)

Re: Ruby core team takes ownership of RubyGems and Bundler

#103

Post by nxor » Fri, Oct 17, 2025, 2:50 PM UTC

xg19837 wrote: post #98

shevy-java wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stepping up how? It was always clear that Hiroshi Shibata didn't act solo without approval. I am not saying he knew the outcome before that, but WHEN was the decision made to take over gems + bundler? I have a slight suspicion that this may have been decided upon months ago already. > As a Japanese developer, I’ve been worried about the direction things were going, so it’s reassuring to see this. I am actually much m…

Yes. At least Ruby was always strongly Japanese though. In Python European and Asian developers are overtly exploited, with U.S. corporations and their employed stooges holding the reins of power. I'm considering switching to Erlang, which was developed at a corporation from the start and appears to be drama and cancel free.

Or Europeans choose to work for US corporations. What am I missing? I know Europeans who only want to work for American companies.

Re: Ruby core team takes ownership of RubyGems and Bundler

#104

Post by dudeinjapan » Fri, Oct 17, 2025, 2:50 PM UTC

shevy-java wrote: post #77

white-moss wrote: post #10

Really appreciate Matz stepping up to take on this difficult situation. As a Japanese developer, I’ve been worried about the direction things were going, so it’s reassuring to see this.

Stepping up how? It was always clear that Hiroshi Shibata didn't act solo without approval. I am not saying he knew the outcome before that, but WHEN was the decision made to take over gems + bundler? I have a slight suspicion that this may have been decided upon months ago already. > As a Japanese developer, I’ve been worried about the direction things were going, so it’s reassuring to see this. I am actually much m…

Shopify is pretty much dominating the Ruby ecosystem. It’s Canadian tho :)

Re: Ruby core team takes ownership of RubyGems and Bundler

#105

Post by shevy-java » Fri, Oct 17, 2025, 2:51 PM UTC

shadowgovt wrote: post #65

Was there ever a mirror of this dustup in the Linux distro community? I'm unaware of one ever happening, and I'm wondering whether it's because of mere fortune or because there's something about the APT / dpkg model that precludes this kind of messiness. Perhaps the Ruby community is suffering the curse of having lived with reliable Internet for so long they never had to solve the problem of building up automatic pac…

There was - see old systemd discussions. For instance, how devuan was started.

It is not 1:1 comparable though. Ruby, python etc... have a much more varied community. People contribute code. Only few contribute to the linux kernel directly. There are many more who write "apps", so this could be comparable. Still it feels different to me, since a language community is different to a community that uses different programming languages.

> Perhaps the Ruby community is suffering the curse of having lived with reliable Internet for so long they never had to solve the problem of building up automatic package mirrors?

No, I think it is more that people never anticipated that corporations could take over projects. This has become more of a problem in the last years. Who controls github, for instance?

> This just feels like a lot of words and energy burned on a problem that ought to be as simple as "Here's the package, here's its checksum, go to town."

This is the issue of decentralized hosting versus top-down control. Ruby didn't have that problem in the past. It became more of an issue in the last some years. See DHH having an old tweet where he pointed out that he wants more control; I think this was from 2018. I don't remember it fully but it is on the ruby reddit.

Re: Ruby core team takes ownership of RubyGems and Bundler

#106

Post by dudeinjapan » Fri, Oct 17, 2025, 2:52 PM UTC

shevy-java wrote: post #80

delichon wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matz is a pillar. Remember "Matz is nice and so we are nice"? s/nice/nice and responsible/gc.

Is that a religion now? The pickaxe guys coined it. People repeat it without thinking about it. If matz were to say "jump from the bridge", people would do it, because matz is nice? Just to point out: I do think matz is nice and a great language designer. That in itself doesn't mean anything. Why would I proxy my own decisions based on any mindless slogan? That makes no sense. Why do people in the ruby ecosystem keep…

Matz wouldn’t say jump from a bridge because he is nice.

Re: Ruby core team takes ownership of RubyGems and Bundler

#107

Post by shevy-java » Fri, Oct 17, 2025, 2:52 PM UTC

andsmedeiros wrote: post #17

So Ruby Central will still be running rubygems.org?

Sadly yes. They probably have no other choice, because what else would they do with their time? Do the unthinkable and create gems other people would use? That would be too much work.

Re: Ruby core team takes ownership of RubyGems and Bundler

#108

Post by mcphage » Fri, Oct 17, 2025, 2:52 PM UTC

shevy-java wrote: post #80

delichon wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matz is a pillar. Remember "Matz is nice and so we are nice"? s/nice/nice and responsible/gc.

Is that a religion now? The pickaxe guys coined it. People repeat it without thinking about it. If matz were to say "jump from the bridge", people would do it, because matz is nice? Just to point out: I do think matz is nice and a great language designer. That in itself doesn't mean anything. Why would I proxy my own decisions based on any mindless slogan? That makes no sense. Why do people in the ruby ecosystem keep…

> If matz were to say "jump from the bridge", people would do it, because matz is nice?

As always, there's a relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1170/

...but seriously, what on earth do you think you're saying here?

Re: Ruby core team takes ownership of RubyGems and Bundler

#109

Post by busterarm » Fri, Oct 17, 2025, 2:52 PM UTC

shevy-java wrote: post #84

dluan wrote: post #11

In the long run, having multiple sources like gem.coop is probably a safer and more robust solution. But for RubyGems specifically, the trust was fully lost, through several layers - maintainers, community members, sponsors, etc. There's still open questions that probably need to be resolved like the funding and data privacy stuff, but I think most folks in ruby land will be supportive of this.

Agreed. I think we have to wait and see how much momentum gem.coop can build. Right now they have promised "things for the future"; they will most likely also deliver eventually. But right now they are not there. If and when they open beta, though, I'll begin to republish my old gems (not all, some I merged into other gems but most of the core stuff will be back) there. They have some things they should improve on th…

Even if you're not an old-timer and don't remember what Ruby Together was like, the AWS root password changing shenanigans, presumably done by Arko, is enough of a red flag that nothing he's associated with has any credibility.

No serious business with real (business) customers will accept that kind of risk and gem.coop will never be a thing outside of hobbyists.

Re: Ruby core team takes ownership of RubyGems and Bundler

#110

Post by wbronitsky » Fri, Oct 17, 2025, 2:53 PM UTC

brightball wrote: post #83

itsnowandnever wrote: post #31

this is good and I hope this puts a lot of the drama in the rearview mirror. younger developers coming across Ruby must be like "wtf" about this situation. very peculiar to have these projects so politicised and I say that to the people that "try and keep politics out" (DHH) more than anyone. making your politics known and then being like "but you're not allowed to have an opinion on it" is't cute or clever. it's chi…

He's also in a bit of a unique situation because of his public political profile was essentially forced. - Politics at work were becoming a huge problem at 37Signals - They asked that politics be kept out of company chats, but encouraged people to be political active on non-work channels/social media/etc even during work hours - People lost their minds at this incredibly reasonable request which then blew up on the i…

I don't know how this fits into the narrative you just posted, but DHH was a keynote speaker at RailsConf this year. I was there and heard him speak. He didn't speak about anything "political"; just his usual ranting and raving, this time about how long it takes to test and deploy things.