←back to thread

A board member's perspective of the RubyGems controversy

(apiguy.substack.com)
104 points Qwuke | 3 comments | 21 Sep 25 19:20 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
Show context
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.

replies(4): >>45337310 #>>45337618 #>>45338226 #>>45338752 #
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.

replies(1): >>45338668 #
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.
replies(3): >>45339633 #>>45344076 #>>45344618 #
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.

replies(6): >>45339862 #>>45341630 #>>45342142 #>>45343077 #>>45343189 #>>45343530 #
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?
replies(5): >>45343419 #>>45343489 #>>45343744 #>>45344431 #>>45345878 #
1. ellen364 ◴[23 Sep 25 07:09 UTC] No.45343744[source]▶
I've been thinking about whether "$some_country rape gangs" seems racist to me. I've come down on "yes".

The reason might seem odd. But it ocurred to me that if you want to use immigration to reduce crime, including rape, the obvious solution is to ban all male immigration.

That shocked me because it seems so wildly discriminatory. Yes, most violent crimes are committed by men. But very few men commit violent crimes. Banning male immigration would punish a large group for the appalling actions of a few. Making it about "$some_country's men" doesn't seem a whole lot better. It's still unjust to punish someone for someone else's crime.

If anyone is curious about the exercise, I recommend trying it. It was disconcerting to sit with the idea of banning male immigration, really seriously consider it and realise how viscerally shocked I was by the idea.

Edit: for context, in the UK right now, phrases like "rape gangs" are part of the debate/argument about immigration.

replies(2): >>45343952 #>>45344184 #
2. simianparrot ◴[23 Sep 25 07:40 UTC] No.45343952[source]▶
The Grooming Gangs feature a lot of nationalities, but some more than others.

There's nothing racist about the facts. How one responds to it can indeed be racist -- ie. "all people of one of said nationalities are like these ones" would be racist. But observing that a nationality of immigrants are vastly overrepresented is just using your eyes to observe reality.

3. Dr_Incelheimer ◴[23 Sep 25 08:10 UTC] No.45344184[source]▶
Your solution of banning male immigration makes perfect sense to me. Maybe not ban it entirely but at least ensure a 1-1 ratio of men to women (male surplus has a tendency to turn countries into shitholes).

Disallowing someone from immigrating is not a punishment because there is no right to immigration anyway. In fact I believe we should go even further and see immigrants as investments. If the immigrant is unlikely to have a net positive tax contribution (or at least not being a rapist, for a more realistic target), I don't see any reason to allow him or her to be here. If you accept this idea, there is nothing wrong with training a neural network on characteristics of existing immigrants to predict the future value of a particular potential immigrant.