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

justin.searls.co

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

#81

Post by rkomorn »

armchairhacker wrote: post #80
pizlonator wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

400k/yr is excessive?

What would you buy with $400k/yr? I define a “great” standard of living as roughly: nutritious food (basic meat, vegetables, spices); a home apartment in an area without excessive crime, noise, or pollution; medical care; a couple weeks of vacation per year; ability to frequently purchase cheap things like video games, movie tickets, takeout; ability to rarely purchase more expensive things like high-end technology,…

I'd "buy" increased financial safety (which is better than current or decreased financial safety).

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

#83

Post by BrenBarn »

This is tangential to the main point of the article, but the anecdote about the dongle is interesting to me. The author's point seems to be that it was disturbing that Andre joked that being reimbursed for a new dongle (and/or meals) was no big deal. It seems to me there are three potential aspects to this:

1. Being reimbursed for a new dongle (and/or meals) 2. Joking about how that is no big deal 3. Not being transparent about whether your nonprofit blithely funds stuff like a new dongle (and/or meals)

From my perspective #3 is definitely an issue, and I can see how #2 could be annoying, but #1 is not really an issue at all, and it's not clear to me whether it's an issue for the author of this article.

It's not much of a stretch from "programmers working on open source tools deserve to earn an income that's commensurate with what salaried engineers earn at the companies who benefit from those tools" to "programmers working on open source tools deserve a level of overall employment benefits commensurate with etc.". For-profit companies routinely pay for dongles like it ain't no thang, toss money around left and right on meals (even with questionable justification), and so on and so forth. And in fact the people who benefit from this reimbursement do joke about how it's "free" to them, etc. In this context, being reimbursed for dongles and meals seems only another form of leveling the playing field.

Now of course, if people think they're donating only to pay a salary, and it turns out they're paying for meals, that's a problem (#3 in my list above). But if a person is up-front about saying "you're paying to equalize the overall compensation situation between the people who write open-source software and the people who use it", I don't think anyone should be surprised that that person expects to be reimbursed for dongles and meals. I'm not sure whether that was the case here, but, well, it's just something that stood out to me in the article.

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

#84

Post by hitekker »

davidcelis wrote: post #53
runjake wrote: post #47

Context: Justin Searls is a “high profile” person in the Ruby and Rails community. He has a reputation for being a nice person and behaving in good faith. From a personal standpoint, I can easily take his words at face value. I’m also curious about the views of Aaron “tenderlove” Patterson, who has a similar reputation. Now that Justin has spoken out, maybe Aaron will take the opportunity to. Both tend to stay out of…

Some additional context is that Justin Searls is close friends with people who are or have been on Rails Core and/or at Shopify. I've long been a fan of Justin's work, and I've spent time with him at conferences so I can attest to him being a nice person in my experience… But, given the alleged parties at play here, it's hard to take this piece as unbiased when it lacks that disclosure

It's an opinion piece by a trusted member of the community. He doesn't need to act unbiased but be credible and informative. As he wrote in his disclosure:

> People whose livelihood depends on the health of the Ruby ecosystem deserve more information than they're getting, especially now that its operational stability has come under threat.

On this count, Searls' article has done the work. I didn't know that Andre Arko baselessly threatened Google with lawyers, or that Andre played fast-and-loose with people's donations. That information was excluded from "unbiased" analyses and fact-checks which seem to largely target Andre's enemies.

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

#85

Post by dmurray »

bradly wrote: post #31
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 conta…

He's explaining why he's not taking André Arko's side, which one can infer he's been asked to do.

No one is expecting him to speak out in favour of Ruby Central's side, and he several times mentions how poorly they've executed and communicated whatever they're trying to do. And the complaints about that are well-known to anyone reading this post, and don't need to be rehashed.

So no, I think he is indeed reserving judgment, but because of what he feels the need to emphasize given the narrative so far, it looks disproportionately critical of one side.

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

#86

Post by bradly »

dmurray wrote: post #85
bradly wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 conta…

He's explaining why he's not taking André Arko's side, which one can infer he's been asked to do. No one is expecting him to speak out in favour of Ruby Central's side, and he several times mentions how poorly they've executed and communicated whatever they're trying to do. And the complaints about that are well-known to anyone reading this post, and don't need to be rehashed. So no, I think he is indeed reserving ju…

Huh. I just don’t read that post and think, this is an unbiased take by someone reserving judgment.

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

#87

Post by GreenWatermelon »

hn8726 wrote: post #64

I'm sorry but the article seems pretty biased, and doesn't really give any argument for why what happened would be in any way justified. Author keeps adding their own interpretation to Github comments and events, which — just by looking at the contents — are needlessly negative. For example [1] where commit message states > We've been continuing to backport bugfixs to the 1.7.x series just for Heroku, but unless Hero…

I felt the exact same as you while reading the article.

I started reading with an open mind, got a bit confused by the "dongle" joke, which the author doesn't remember but somehow it should be inappropriate. It's equivalent to saying "I think he said something bad 10 years ago but I'm bit really sure"

Then there's the part about "leverage control" to extort heroku, which was a blatant misrepresentation of events and shows a clear Agenda.

Not taking sides my ass. I can only conclude the author's reputation, as being ine of the nicest persons in the community, was earned through similar manipulation.

And since the entire article is a "take my word" type of story, the blatant bias already displayed casta a shadow of doubt over the veracity of any other claims it makes, leading me to conclude the opposite: André is actually a nice and likable person, and has good principles.

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

#88

Post by konnor »

renewiltord wrote: post #41

I wonder if there's a term for this kind of thing where people use the word "including". As an example, I might have a non-profit that serves soup at soup kitchens and also pays me to manage it. If someone gives $100k, suppose I pay myself $90k and use $10k to serve soup. When someone threatens to cut the contribution, I say "This will affect the non-profit's mission since the $100k a year goes to critical things lik…

Boy do I have something to tell you about a lot of non-profits...Take Susan G. Komen with breast cancer research...

https://theappalachianonline.com/problems-susan-g-komen/

> In the organization’s 2010-2011 financial report it was revealed that Susan G. Komen only devotes 20.9 percent of the donations it receives to researching breast cancer.

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

#89

Post by ChoHag »

999900000999 wrote: post #48
satvikpendem wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Expecting to get paid for open source work is like expecting that people don't pay you for cookies they take from your store labeled "Free Cookies."

But if you take my cookies, add sprinkles then resell them, I can expect a modest donation to keep the bakery running. Otherwise I'm going to run out of flour and no one gets cookies. This is the original sin of FOSS. Large mega corps end up taking up a disproportionate amount of bandwidth while only contributing when they feel like it. At least with . net core Microsoft ultimately pays the bills. No one knows how ot…

> But if you take my cookies, add sprinkles then resell them, I can expect a modest donation to keep the bakery running.

You cannot expect any such thing. You gave them away for free.

If you want to get paid, don't give your work away for free. If you give your work away for free, you cannot expect to get paid.

It's shocking how frequently people who deal in rigorous logic day in, day out are unable to understand this very simple principle.

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

#90

Post by wgjordan »

hitekker wrote: post #84
davidcelis wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some additional context is that Justin Searls is close friends with people who are or have been on Rails Core and/or at Shopify. I've long been a fan of Justin's work, and I've spent time with him at conferences so I can attest to him being a nice person in my experience… But, given the alleged parties at play here, it's hard to take this piece as unbiased when it lacks that disclosure

It's an opinion piece by a trusted member of the community. He doesn't need to act unbiased but be credible and informative. As he wrote in his disclosure: > People whose livelihood depends on the health of the Ruby ecosystem deserve more information than they're getting, especially now that its operational stability has come under threat. On this count, Searls' article has done the work. I didn't know that Andre Ark…

The problem is not that Searls has opinions, it's that this petty hit piece against Andre was heavily wrapped in neutral, 'all I can do is offer a little bit of context', 'I'm not rushing to take sides' framing language, resulting in a disingenuous, passive-aggressive tone.

Why is Justin dredging up that one time eight years ago when Andre mistakenly called out a repo for infringing upon his employer's work (for which he publicly apologized five hours later)? Why is he harping on anecdotes from nine years ago in order to suggest Andre may have allegedly (gasp) expensed technology purchases and business meals to his employer? What does this all have to do with the current situation, other than unnecessarily stir the pot with a laundry list of old petty grievances fed to him by a bunch of anonymous contacts ('a lot of different people told me a lot of concerning stories')?

I think the author's close ties to Rails Core / Shopify employees is extremely important context for this post, especially since it's context that's been intentionally hidden by a neutral, unbiased framing.

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