Why I'm not rushing to take sides in the RubyGems fiasco • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I'm not rushing to take sides in the RubyGems fiasco

#31

Post by bradly » Sun, Sep 28, 2025, 5:07 PM UTC

its-summertime wrote: post #8

This seems to be mostly "I dislike Andre" and not really about the current events? I think a total of half a paragraph is about current events in any form.

I got a similar feeling. The article’s title and closing paragraph reference not taking a side, but sandwiched between those are a lot of words that to me clearly indicate a “side” taken by the author.

Through all this I will say that Ruby Central hired a non-technical director whose responsibilities I would expect to include communication and operational expertise to not let these situations happen or at least contain the volatility. That was a failure by Ruby Central regardless of the actions of engineers.

Re: Why I'm not rushing to take sides in the RubyGems fiasco

#32

Post by cramsession » Sun, Sep 28, 2025, 5:08 PM UTC

armchairhacker wrote: post #29

999900000999 wrote: post #5

[flagged]

You left out the rest of the paragraph (emphasis mine): > I remember being extremely sympathetic to this perspective , having also wasted countless hours of my life maintaining open source for free only for others to benefit from it. I also recall a figure like either $200 or $250 per hour being mentioned as the rate he was effectively paying himself. Whatever the rate actually was, I distinctly remember thinking, "h…

$200 /hr is a pretty low consulting rate. You are never going to be 100% utilized, so right off the bat you can divide that $400k by at least 50% over a long period of time. You also have to pay for your own insurance, equipment...

$200 /hr would be what I would consider to be the going rate for any mid level, non-FAANG type developer and pretty fair imho!

Re: Why I'm not rushing to take sides in the RubyGems fiasco

#33

Post by motbus3 » Sun, Sep 28, 2025, 5:08 PM UTC

busterarm wrote: post #12

motbus3 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Be that as it may, they effectively entirely handed governance of Ruby Central over to a single party and manufactured a funding crisis that that party used to make drastic change. This directly damaged the entire Ruby community. Their dollars had influence that they could have used to steer the organization elsewhere, but instead they took their toys away and gave control to the very people they disagreed with.

Maybe the lack of support from all other companies and people to the ruby foundation was the culprit. Sidekiq was help without obligation.

Re: Why I'm not rushing to take sides in the RubyGems fiasco

#34

Post by JoshTriplett » Sun, Sep 28, 2025, 5:09 PM UTC

busterarm wrote: post #28

its-summertime wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you lay fault with the sponsor pulling funding, and not with the people who opted to have someone so controversial as a speaker, causing the sponsor to pull funding?

Because we all have to get along regardless of what you believe and DHH hasn't advocated for violence against anyone. You can't unperson everyone disagreeable, especially relative to their contributions in the Rails community. Notice I said Rails community, not Ruby community. Not letting DHH speak at RailsConf is like barring the Pope from the Vatican. There are a lot of big new changes in Rails this year that he ha…

> Because we all have to get along regardless of what you believe

False. Freedom of association is a human right. And nobody is obligated to donate their money to a cause or organization they do not support.

Refusing to associate with someone who would like to "Make Britain White Again" (among many other things) is a completely reasonable stance.

https://tekin.co.uk/2025/09/the-ruby-community-has-a-dhh-pro...

https://davidcel.is/articles/rails-needs-new-governance

People are free to say whatever they want. And others are free to respond in a variety of ways, including choosing to not provide support.

Re: Why I'm not rushing to take sides in the RubyGems fiasco

#35

Post by add-sub-mul-div » Sun, Sep 28, 2025, 5:12 PM UTC

busterarm wrote: post #28

its-summertime wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you lay fault with the sponsor pulling funding, and not with the people who opted to have someone so controversial as a speaker, causing the sponsor to pull funding?

Because we all have to get along regardless of what you believe and DHH hasn't advocated for violence against anyone. You can't unperson everyone disagreeable, especially relative to their contributions in the Rails community. Notice I said Rails community, not Ruby community. Not letting DHH speak at RailsConf is like barring the Pope from the Vatican. There are a lot of big new changes in Rails this year that he ha…

The paradox of intolerance doesn't kick in only after violence is advocated.

Re: Why I'm not rushing to take sides in the RubyGems fiasco

#36

Post by Exuma » Sun, Sep 28, 2025, 5:14 PM UTC

ameliaquining wrote: post #3

Exuma wrote: post #2

[flagged]

This doesn't seem responsive to anything in the linked article.

[flagged]

Re: Why I'm not rushing to take sides in the RubyGems fiasco

#37

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Sep 28, 2025, 5:14 PM UTC

busterarm wrote: post #28

its-summertime wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you lay fault with the sponsor pulling funding, and not with the people who opted to have someone so controversial as a speaker, causing the sponsor to pull funding?

Because we all have to get along regardless of what you believe and DHH hasn't advocated for violence against anyone. You can't unperson everyone disagreeable, especially relative to their contributions in the Rails community. Notice I said Rails community, not Ruby community. Not letting DHH speak at RailsConf is like barring the Pope from the Vatican. There are a lot of big new changes in Rails this year that he ha…

[deleted]

Re: Why I'm not rushing to take sides in the RubyGems fiasco

#38

Post by ccgreg » Sun, Sep 28, 2025, 5:15 PM UTC

busterarm wrote: post #28

its-summertime wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you lay fault with the sponsor pulling funding, and not with the people who opted to have someone so controversial as a speaker, causing the sponsor to pull funding?

Because we all have to get along regardless of what you believe and DHH hasn't advocated for violence against anyone. You can't unperson everyone disagreeable, especially relative to their contributions in the Rails community. Notice I said Rails community, not Ruby community. Not letting DHH speak at RailsConf is like barring the Pope from the Vatican. There are a lot of big new changes in Rails this year that he ha…

I've seen a Nobel Laureate disinvited from speaking at a conference due to an incredibly offensive statement. Toxic speech has consequences.

Re: Why I'm not rushing to take sides in the RubyGems fiasco

#39

Post by motbus3 » Sun, Sep 28, 2025, 5:17 PM UTC

echelon wrote: post #13

motbus3 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I'm totally out of the loop. What did DHH do? Edit: I did a little googling and it sounds like he banned political speech at work? Is that the extent of it? His Wikipedia article doesn't say anything about controversy or racism.

Please read his post on his blog to take your own conclusions, but as I and many other read it his post, basically non white people are incompatible with British culture and immigrants are solely a problem and serve only purpose to foster rape gangs and drug dealers.

Re: Why I'm not rushing to take sides in the RubyGems fiasco

#40

Post by motbus3 » Sun, Sep 28, 2025, 5:20 PM UTC

dangus wrote: post #14

999900000999 wrote: post #5

[flagged]

Programmers need to grow up and dispense with this belief. They’d like to imagine a world where there’s no such thing as sales and marketing, where they can interact with humans and especially business manager types who tell them what to build as little as possible. So many developers seem to genuinely not understand why their contributions to software used by millions don’t magically generate income. If you’re a FOS…

I don't agree. You can have a good life from Open source. The problem is that people assumes the money that keeps rails and whatever going is guaranteed and that no one should contribute too because it is free.

Sidekiq has all the right to remove the support for someone they find troublesome and can harm their image.

Now if another company is able to take full control is because there were never anyone else doing that. It seems pure luck that Sidekiq never pushed their own coup themselves, probably they are just good guys.