Ruby Central's Attack on RubyGems [pdf]

> The unstated reason for this change was that many of the existing Rubygems maintainers have recently quit (including their only full-time engineer) due to their continued relationship with DHH.

Can someone expand on what this means? Is it a continued relationship between Ruby Central and DHH, or the maintainers and DHH? Why does the other party have a problem with that?

EDIT: It seems the post was clarified since I copy/pasted this, and it's RC and DHH. Why do the maintainers have a problem with this? I though the stated reason was about RC removing everyone's access with no warning.

I clarified the toot.

Thanks Mike, I editted, and asked this:

> Why do the maintainers have a problem with this? I thought the stated reason was about RC removing everyone's access with no warning.

I seem to remember some of DHH's controversy due to banning politics at basecamp or something. Is it related to that?

DHH is a white supremacist. Here he complains about too many brown people in London.

https://world.hey.com/dhh/as-i-remember-london-e7d38e64

Ok... wow. I was willing to give the benefit of the doubt, but hearing him decry the lack of "native Brits"[0] and support the Tommy Robinson march is... something.

> In 2000, more than sixty percent of the city were native Brits. By 2024, that had dropped to about a third.

Over the years, I saw him inching closer to white supremacy. I didn't realize that he's gone this far off the deep end, yikes.

In the linked article, DHH links out to a wikipedia article titled "Ethnic groups in London"[0].

He then uses a statistic that "only a third" are native brits in 2021, which roughly lines up with the "White British" line in the chart.

You can argue that "white supremecist" is a charged and problematic term, but I'd say that "Here he complains about too many brown people in London." is a fairly accurate representation of the article. I'd say "disgraceful slander" is a bit too strong as a rebuttal.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_groups_in_London

just double checked, there is a separate section of the article that has the "foreign born" population of london, which is 36%, so he's definitely excluding any non-white english people there.

> I seem to remember some of DHH's controversy due to banning politics at basecamp or something. Is it related to that?

I wouldn't be surprised. The presence of this quote in the linked document:

> A person’s character is determined not only by their actions, but also the actions they stay silent while witnessing.

Suggests that the person who wrote it is deeply obsessed with political activism.

I used to work at a Ruby on Rails shop many years ago (New Bamboo, now part of ThoughtBot) which is in London.

I got pointed to the blog post, and it was such a strikingly-bad hot take that I had to write a response: http://paulbjensen.co.uk/2025/09/17/on-dhhs-as-i-remember-lo...

In my opinion, initially I thought "Oh David's been sucked into some kind of social media bubble (on X) or disinformation space", but then as I read the post, down to the bit where he started talking about "demographic replacement", I came to the view that this is who he is a person.

It's shocking and disappointing.

Didn't RC drop DHH from RailsConf because of his views? Seems weird to think they're collaborate on a coup or whatever is being suggested here.

No dog in this race but, as an outsider, it's always seemed really odd that some countries (Japan sticks out) are allowed to prioritize cultural preservation but European countries are not.

A very ironic example is that Americans moving to Mexico is seen as bad, whereas Mexicans moving to the US is seen as necessary by the left...

In Canada here, we have land acknowledgements and it's politically correct to say we stole the land and should give it back to the natives. Then when native Europeans want to keep their land, it's white supremacy...

It's a very obvious double standard.

That's an interesting observation and I think it comes down to immigration policy. I haven't actually looked into it but I've heard that Japan basically doesn't allow for long-term immigration, except probably in exceptional cases like PhDs.

Where EU countries (I know this excludes the UK but it didn't for a long time) allow easy long-term immigration by EU policy. Even with Brexit, I don't think that culture of easy immigration is going to just up and disappear. So having a culture and/or policy of easy immigration alongside "well, actually, not those guys" where "those guys" includes anybody who's not already culturally/ethnically part of the nation is, minimally, counter-productive and perhaps a bit hypocritical.

This is only one of many examples over years of DHH’s ideology. Analyzing this one instance (the most recent) does not change anything, this is a drop in a bucket

Inaction is an action in itself, they are right in this. IDK where you see a deep obsession in a recognition of this obvious fact.

There aren't a whole lot of people celebrating Japan's immigration policies. Further, their policies have been around for quite some time. It's one thing to continue enforcing decades old policies and quite another to create those same policies today.

Don't write long blog posts about how your country doesn't have enough white people (and should start deporting brown people) and you won't be called a white supremist. Pretty simple.

No, inaction is inaction.

Claiming otherwise is just a roundabout way of saying "you must actively support my agenda at all times, otherwise I will consider you my enemy, even if you take a neutral stance" that political activists love to use to pressure normal people into supporting them.

> maintainers have recently quit (including their only full-time engineer) due to their continued relationship with DHH.

Ehh, what?! Basically 0 developers in the US have quit as a protest against literal totalitarianism, major and obvious corruption, the end of vaccines (will kill countless) and the end of USAID (already killed.. how many kids?).

But, sure, DHH.. that's where we draw the line!

FFS

Edit: maybe I misunderstood why they quit, quite confused. Still..

Edit 2: Unclear if this has anything to do with DHH? And it turns out I also disagree with some of his views. But, it still stands, he's writing a blog, not literally killing kids. Where's the mass quittings for those people?

what do those things have to do with Ruby? whereas DHH has a clear link

Also consider that many people are not in the US and are not obliged to wade into US politics.

There is no "neutral stance," only ignorance of bias.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10970937

Nothing, I'll give you that. It's just frustrating to see so little action taken against those with actual power who are doing quite horrible stuff

Thanks for your post! Is there a way to add a comment there?

Inaction is a manifestation of one of two things: ignorance, or conscious decision to not act. I agree that strictly only the latter can be considered an act, while the former .. well. Not an act, but a then the question arises if an unconscious person can even be considered a person _in_relation_to_having_a_conversation_with_them_. That last point I must even more press.

I think this is what we are discussing. Please share your viewpoint on this.

> Inaction is a manifestation of one of two things: ignorance, or conscious decision to not act.

Under which of these categories would you classify the following assertion:

> As much as I've learned about subject X, I still feel that neither I — nor most people who are already acting, for that matter — truly have enough information to take an informed stance here, as the waters are being actively clouded by propaganda campaigns, censorship, and false-flag operations by one or both sides; and I believe that acting without true knowledge can only play into someone's hand in a way that may damage what turns out to be an innocent party I would highly regret damaging, when this all shakes out a decade down the line. I find myself too knowingly ignorant to conscientiously act... yet I also do not highly prioritize gaining any more information about the situation, as I have seemingly passed the threshold where acquiring additional verifiable and objective information on the conflict is cheap enough to be worth it; gaining any further knowledge to inform my stance is too costly for someone like me, who is neither an investigative journalist, nor a historiographer, nor enmeshed in the conflict myself. So I fear I must opt out of the conflict altogether.

I find myself increasingly arriving at exactly this stance on so many subjects that other people seem to readily take stances (and allow themselves to be spurred to action) on.

I suppose I may differ from the average person in at least one way — that being that, if I were tricked into harming innocent parties, I would hold myself to account for allowing myself to be tricked, rather than externalizing blame to the party responsible for tricking me. After all, only by my learning a lesson in avoiding being manipulated, do I actually lessen the likelihood of the next innocent party coming to harm. Which is a lot more important to me, in a rule-utilitarian sense, than is avoiding social approbation for not taking a stance.

You're welcome.

Unfortunately not - the page is a html export from a markdown editor (Typora), not a blog engine.

All rhetorical dichotomies are false.

While it's jarring to see someone call DHH a "white supremacist", the shoe fits. In that blog post he laments that London is "no longer full of native Brits" (what does that even mean? It's clear by the numbers he gives that he's counting "white people born in Britain") and frames demographic change as a "nightmare". That isn't neutral nostalgia (something he's claimed he doesn't have: https://world.hey.com/dhh/legacy-without-nostalgia-b19708c9) it's the same ethno-nationalist logic as "America for Americans", that old KKK slogan. When you argue that a city (especially one that's always been a multi-cultural hub) becoming less white is inherently a loss, you're not just being contrarian. You're espousing a white-supremacist worldview.

> it's always seemed really odd that some countries (Japan sticks out) are allowed to prioritize cultural preservation

can we clarify... by whom? just kidding :) whether a country is "allowed" to do something is probably a red herring.

spitballing here, i think folks who engage in criticism of ethnonationalism are most likely to criticize the ethnonationalism they see close to home, as opposed to what might be happening on the other side of the planet.

there are valid critiques of japan's treatment of its nondominant ethnicities, and lots of anecdotal experiences covering the same, but it's a lot easier to discuss the nuances of an issue like this when you're more intimately familiar with the culture and sociopolitical history of a region.

And what exactly do you want the RubyGems maintainers to do about the rise of fascism in the USA..?

Or maybe don't call someone names corresponding to behavior that they haven't endorsed.

Nowhere does the blog post say that, which is why this is libel.

They dropped him as keynote speaker a few years ago, and then under new leadership, brought DHH back for the final RailsConf hosted by Ruby Central this year.

The Ruby Central that dropped him is not the same people running Ruby Central today.

https://ruby.social/@rubycentral/114585914969796428

> There's absolutely nothing racist or xenophobic in saying that Denmark is primarily a country for the Danes, Britain primarily a united kingdom for the Brits, and Japan primarily a set of islands for the Japanese.

That is a white supremacist rhetoric and fascist rhetoric. Looking for racial purity based on geography was a core tenant of the Nazis [1], some of the most famous white supremacists (white german supremacists. Nobody is at their level.)

It's not libel if it's true.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nur_f%C3%BCr_Deutsche

Maybe don't repeat nazi slogans if you don't want to be labeled a white supremacist.

> Denmark is primarily a country for the Danes, Britain primarily a united kingdom for the Brits, and Japan primarily a set of islands for the Japanese.

> I also do not highly prioritize gaining any more information about the situation

You acknowledge your ignorance and then refuse to remedy that.

This is an act. Perfectly acceptable and understandable. But what is more important it's deliberate and you accept responsibility for any and all consequences.

> I suppose I may differ from the average person in at least one way — that being that, if I were tricked into harming innocent parties, I would hold myself to account for allowing myself to be tricked, rather than externalizing blame to the party responsible for tricking me.

Very commendable. I wish more people held themselves to this standard. It is one of the foundations of learning after all.

Since when does the PDP-6 implement only dichotomous state?

How is nationality equivalent to race? Watch this:

America should be a country for Americans.

Which race am I talking about here?

> refuse to remedy

They did not say this. They said they would not highly prioritize it. Which is, of course, reasonable: given two topics, I have little metric to prioritize learning about one over the other. I have no way to know that I am prioritizing my research adequately.

The real question is who isn't American? When someone says "X is for Xes" they are implicitly saying "and not for Ys".

If you don't believe that's the case, then tell me exactly what that phrase means other than to exclude some group. To claim "these are not real Americans".

Totally dodging the issue. You claimed "white supremacist" was an accurate title, cited Nazis who invaded other countries and eradicated the local culture/population/racial groups without assimilating (eerily similar to mass immigration), and then immediately moved the goalposts when it was illustrated how ignorant such a statement could be.

> who isn't American?

Is this a trick question? People who were not born in America are clearly not American, save for naturalized citizens and a handful of other caveats. If you were born in Iceland, Greenland, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark (just picking some traditionally/predominantly-white countries to really drive it home) and are not the child of a diplomat or even a citizen: you are not American.

Seriously: do you believe you are Japanese? If you actually are Japanese, do you think you're Peruvian, too? Are you also a Liechtensteiner? People are citizens of specific nations, believe it or not - this is not some new, misunderstood concept.

> means other than to exclude some group

Why is it a foregone conclusion that exclusion is automatically unjust?

Are countries not permitted to exclude people? Again: this is not based on race. Does one have an automatic right to immigrate wherever they please?

We all know what deprioritize means. But this is fine.

I would like to put the emphasis on doing this consciously. This is the important point. Too many people just do not think or know what introspection is.

DHH has grown on me so much in the last few years. Love that he's talking about this and putting so many good products out at the same time.

> I haven't actually looked into it but I've heard that Japan basically doesn't allow for long-term immigration, except probably in exceptional cases like PhDs.

Hasn’t been correct for at least the past decade, if you post here there’s a good chance you would be able to relocate to Japan and have permanent residency within 1-3 years.

Japan has one of the most generous immigration policies in the developed world at the moment.

Yet another "it's okay if I move there, but now that they have moved there, it sucks and is 'foreign'" take.

It just reads like thinly veiled racism.

> It just reads like thinly veiled racism.

Thinly veiled? What veil - it's completely naked, one can clearly see all the constituent parts, including the repugnant bits.

Hoo yeah. DHH's racism is looking thick, solid, and tight. Keep us all posted on your continued progress!

You are feigning ignorance.

I'm done, you aren't been honest in this exchange.

But let me spell it out.

When someone says "America for the Americans" they are saying "not the Latinos or Muslims or brown people I don't like". This is crystal clear with how ICE is currently operating and by the number of Latino citizens they've arrested.

Also, yes, someone that naturalizes is American. We're a melting pot nation. You can be two things. American and Japanese. American and Peruvian, American and Mexican. Where you or your parents were born does not take away from you being American.

Feel free to write more about how "actually no, it's just a patriotic call".

Like they already said, it's either true ignorance or it's a deliberate choice of wilful ignorance - or it's a conscious decision to feign ignorance. The latter is something that a lot of people do in order to escape accountability for their beliefs, and that has to be taken into consideration, and the previous comment didn't mention that possibility.

If someone doesn't know enough about an issue to care and also doesn't know the things that would motivate them to find out more about the issue that would make them care, that is true ignorance.

If someone doesn't know about an issue and deliberately avoids exposing themselves to things that would care, then it's a deliberate choice.

And yet the comment is flagged. On HN, you may not call anyone a white supremacist for any reason, ever.

I can't reply to the parent any more because it's flagged, so I'll reply to you, because I need to get this out.

Overtime I gave him so much benefit of the doubt, and steelmanned his arguments because I really respected him as a Software Engineer and I aligned with him on his views in technology... But that blog post was the last straw. It's clear-as-day racism. No room for misinterpretation.

I was willing to overlook his remarks about DEI, Trump, Kirk, etc.... because there were nuggets of truth and genuine pain points.. but it turns out he was a racist, white supremacists all along. Sigh...

I have never seen a PDP-6 in its natural habitat (only in zoos) so take this with a grain of salt, but I'm pretty sure the PDP-6 is not a rhetorical device.

> Only my opinion can be valid

I think it depends on why there is inaction.