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A board member's perspective of the RubyGems controversy

(apiguy.substack.com)
104 points Qwuke | 5 comments | 21 Sep 25 19:20 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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sc68cal ◴[22 Sep 25 17:50 UTC] No.45336997[source]▶
This story is missing any context around what occurred. The only thing I was able to find was by searching, and I came to this PDF statement.

https://pup-e.com/goodbye-rubygems.pdf

> On September 9th, with no warning or communication, a RubyGems maintainer unilaterally:

> renamed the “RubyGems” GitHub enterprise to “Ruby Central”,

> added non-maintainer Marty Haught of Ruby Central, and

> removed every other maintainer of the RubyGems project.

> On September 18th, with no explanation, Marty Haught revoked GitHub organization membership for all admins on the RubyGems, Bundler, and RubyGems.org maintainer teams

Which is important context that was left out of this board member's statement.

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jmcgough ◴[22 Sep 25 19:22 UTC] No.45338226[source]▶
I found this helpful in explaining what's happened: https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/22/ruby_central_rubygems...

Sounds like they made some really big changes and put zero effort into communicating to people who've spent 10+ years working on the project.

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fwip ◴[22 Sep 25 19:57 UTC] No.45338668[source]▶
Thanks - that was helpful indeed. From there, I also found the linked post by Tekin Süleyman ( https://tekin.co.uk/2025/09/the-ruby-community-has-a-dhh-pro... ) to be informative.
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McGlockenshire ◴[22 Sep 25 21:24 UTC] No.45339633[source]▶
Wow! When that one DHH blog went around the other day, I didn't actually pay attention to who the author was. All I saw was yet another bigoted rant and just skimmed it and rolled my eyes. (e: here it is to save people the effort: https://world.hey.com/dhh/as-i-remember-london-e7d38e64 )

I should not have skimmed it. From your link:

> In the same post he praises Tommy Robinson (actual name Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon), a right-wing agitator with several convictions for violent offences and a long history of association with far-right groups such as the English Defence League and the British Nationalist Party. He then goes on to describe those that attended last weekend’s far-right rally in London as “perfectly normal, peaceful Brits” protesting against the “demographic nightmare” that has enveloped London, despite the violence and disorder they caused.

> To all of that he ads a dash of Islamophobia, citing “Pakistani rape gangs” as one of the reasons for the unrest, repeating a weaponised trope borne from a long since discredited report from the Quilliam Foundation, an organisation with ties to both the the US Tea Party, and Tommy Robinson himself.

This is ... disqualifying. That's the best word I can summon here to express my dismay. This is a crossed line. Absolutely nutso.

edit2: Uh wow I really should not have skimmed it. Here's one paragraph from DHH's blog itself:

> Which brings us back to Robinson's powerful march yesterday. The banner said "March for Freedom", and focused as much on that now distant-to-the-Brits concept of free speech, as it did on restoring national pride. And for good reason! The totalitarian descent into censorious darkness in Britain has been as swift as its demographic shift.

Well, if that doesn't speak volumes as to DHH's values, I don't know what does.

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simianparrot ◴[23 Sep 25 05:50 UTC] No.45343189[source]▶
As a fellow Scandinavian, DHH is just writing what the vast majority of us think. And it isn’t racist. That word is being misused until it soon has no value left; you sure you want that?
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1. fredrikholm ◴[23 Sep 25 06:20 UTC] No.45343419[source]▶
I'm happy to say that ~80% of Sweden and Norway don't vote for right wing populist parties like SD and Fremskrittspartiet, so "vast majority of us" might be a bit of a stretch.
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2. ◴[23 Sep 25 07:38 UTC] No.45343944[source]▶
3. simianparrot ◴[23 Sep 25 07:44 UTC] No.45343979[source]▶
That's a misrepresentation of statistics though. FRP is the second largest party this election, with 23,8% of votes, only second to AP who got 28%. But many people won't vote based on the immigration issues, because so far, other issues are more pressing.

But my point was that I am absolutely sure the majority of Norwegians _want Norway to remain a country that retains its cultural history_ while not being exclusive to one ethnic group. It's about retaining a majority.

I don't understand why that sentiment is so problematic here on HN, because simultaneously people are clamoring for a Palestinian state for the Palestinian people.

Why can't Norway have a Norwegian state for the Norwegian people? Or Denmark? Or the UK?

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4. fredrikholm ◴[23 Sep 25 13:27 UTC] No.45346728[source]▶
> That's a misrepresentation of statistics though.

I can't speak for Norway, but in Sweden the only party worth keeping an eye on that adheres to the usual combination of pro-Russia, anti-abortion, anti-immigrant, anti-EU rhetoric etc is Sverigedemokraterna (formerly Bevara Sverige Svenskt, a party based solely on the idea of an ethnostate). They're hovering around 20%.

> But my point was that I am absolutely sure the majority of Norwegians _want Norway to remain a country that retains its cultural history_ while not being exclusive to one ethnic group. It's about retaining a majority.

Is the existence of history dependent on the ethnicity of the person reading it? I'm sure you've met non-native people who are in all other respects very much Norwegian.

Unless you mean to imply that culture is constrained to genetics. I deeply hope that that is not what you meant.

> I don't understand why that sentiment is so problematic here on HN, because simultaneously people are clamoring for a Palestinian state for the Palestinian people.

How many Norwegian cities were leveled by bombs this year? How many were murdered by foreign military?

> Why can't Norway have a Norwegian state for the Norwegian people? Or Denmark? Or the UK?

They do. Here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denmark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK

All fully functioning sovereign states, all internationally recognized by their peers and enemies alike.

5. thevillagechief ◴[24 Sep 25 15:24 UTC] No.45361685[source]▶
Frankly, I might be sympathetic to this view, except for a few countries: The US, the UK, France, Belgium and maybe a few others. The US is a country of immigrant, so none of that cultural history nonsense holds, except maybe for the Native Americans. As for France and the UK, yeah no one told them to go colonize a bunch of countries around the world and impose their culture on them. They don't get to complain about retaining their cultural history. Belgium doesn't get to complain either after the atrocities they committed in Central Africa.