A board member's perspective of the RubyGems controversy

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 recently foiled against the python folks, we're [doing fill in here], including reducing permissions. [More info here.] Further updates as soon as we have them."

That email takes 10 minutes to write and send.

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.

Exactly.

And communicating [situation], [action(s)], [how this affects you] is one of the most basic professional communication skills you could imagine.

99% agree, but it's a very sensitive topic and I'd take like an hour to pulish it.

There's a bunch of red flags here. The author of the article is desperately trying to sound like pert of the Ruby developer community, not some corporate type power player trying to maximise profits and their own bonus...

In the linked post the author claims to be just some grateful Ruby developer volunteering their time to mundane bookkeeping tasks for an organisation they feel lead to support, describing themselves with:

-----------------------------------------------------------------

When I first discovered Ruby, watching some crazy video where a blog was built in just a few minutes, I was just a young man working at a bank who would sometimes get paid to build software for other people on the side. Ruby opened my eyes to the idea that code could be a craft, a skill I could hone and develop. It also introduced me to the idea that code could be poetry... code could be art.

20 years later, and here I am, a reasonably successful person who's built a career out of building software.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Yet the Ruby Central website describe them like this:

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Freedom Dumlao is a seasoned technology executive with experience at leading companies like Vestmark, Flexcar, Zipcar, Wayfair, and Amazon. Currently the CTO of Vestmark, Freedom brings strategic insights that will help drive Ruby Central’s efforts to expand the Ruby ecosystem and build stronger connections with top companies and startups.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

The post appears to be signed as "MINASWAN", a well know pseudonym for Yukihiro Matsumoto, the chief designer of the Ruby programming language. Hard to imagine a scenario where that was accidental and not an attempt to manipulate readers into assuming Yukihiro has something to do with writing the post.

It's posted to a Substack launched 1 day ago. With the username/subdomain "apiguy" - suspiciously not 'ctoguy' or 'seasonedtechnologyguy'.

I place pretty close to zero respect for the OPs position, compared to well known names in the decade long Ruby Gems committer community.

> The post appears to be signed as "MINASWAN", a well know pseudonym for Yukihiro Matsumoto, the chief designer of the Ruby programming language.

From https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/MINASWAN

> Initialism of Matz is nice and so we are nice: a motto of the Ruby programming language community, in reference to the demeanor of Yukihiro Matsumoto (nicknamed Matz) [...].

Oh yeah, 100% corporate speak damage control attempt.

> 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".