> wordpress is valuable because it allows very bad developers / marketing people to write very bad code and get away with it, driving extremely low cost solutions for clients who are cost concious.
You've sort of nailed it, but this isn't a bad thing. An alternative for these customers does not exist.
There's another vertical which is organizations that have armies of writers churning out content. Any kind of publisher or advertiser, basically. There is no better CMS for this. Large organizations like NYT, etc chose to write their own.
>> wordpress is valuable because it allows very bad developers / marketing people to write very bad code and get away with it, driving extremely low cost solutions for clients who are cost concious.
> You've sort of nailed it, but this isn't a bad thing. An alternative for these customers does not exist.
Yes! I'm locked into WordPress, which I hate, because it's the only platform that will allow a non-developer to maintain it if I get hit by a bus.
A decade ago I had to learn and run WordPress for a job. I held my nose up the stink was so bad. But quickly I learned how to manage it and have modern sensible practices around it and I've probably gotten more real value out of it than any other CMS or web framework I've touched. That includes Rails.
Thankfully I don't have to do that anymore, but you can sanely and safely run WordPress today and there's zero shame in it.
There are options that can be run by anyone, but they're often very constrained in what they can do and show.
Wordpress is solidly in that middle ground where you can do a large amount of customization if someone'll pay for it, and then they can do the day-to-day care and feeding of it.
Everything else has either been much worse in all possible ways (Joomla!) or has been a collection of developer wish-lists unusable by anyone (Drupal).
I started building sites for clients in the late '90's, and quickly made "client can edit their phone number on all pages" a key requirement. Wordpress with a WYSIWYG page builder solves that — it's not the only solution, but it works pretty close to right out of the box.
yep. we like it because with shopify or other platforms, you run into limitations. with Wordpress I can literally just whip it into whatever shape i want.
uv is Astral's onramp to paying customers. Without uv's tight integration with Astral's other tooling that they want to charge for, they wouldn't be able to sell anything. Building a business around doing the same for Ruby may be within their rights, but it's absolutely a conflict of interest working or contracted by Ruby Central. Removing them was an obvious move.
If this is a conflict of interest, then any Ruby core systems being controlled predominantly by members of the Shopify dev team is itself a conflict of interest. I am fine saying 'we need to make sure these libraries stay independent and community controlled', but that is so clearly not what was going on here. Believing that is just letting the RC FUD and PR control your thinking on the narrative.
I'm sorry but what are Shopify's business activities that directly compete with services provided/maintained by RubyCentral?
As far as arguments about community, Shopify IS the community by virtue of being the ones putting up pretty much all the money to keep this ship afloat.
If you don't have skin in the game your positions won't be taken seriously.
Depending on your point of view, Sidekiq either turned their back on the community or tried to start a coup by pulling funding just so they could morally grandstand.
That attitude is exactly the problem. Shopify does not 'keep the ship afloat' they are just a corporation using open source systems as the foundation of their business. Competition is not by definition the backing of a 'conflict of interest', it legally refers to a person or entity with a stake in a particular outcome having control of the means to achieve that which are not legally sound , ie compromise their judgment. I think Shopify's judgement of what 'is good for the Ruby community' is severely compromised by their corporate interests, and probably by their boards political interests as well. Hence, why they are trying so hard to justify removing Andre.
Do you have any idea how expensive it is to keep the infrastructure running? RubyCentral's operating expenses are in the millions every year and exceed their revenue.
Andre's removal is easily justifiable by his own (lengthy history of) sketchy behavior.
Since when is "open source" something businesses shouldn't be allowed to get value from or even have a stake in? These things are MIT licensed. That's free as in speech AND beer. If you don't like the freedoms of the license and how other people use them, don't use the license. If you don't like someone's stewardship, fork and maintain your own.
> Do you have any idea how expensive it is to keep the infrastructure running?
Yes, I do. All hardware and bandwidth are donated by Fastly and AWS so it costs RC nothing. Their expenses were $20,000/mo for 24/7 ops coverage: $2000/mo for 6 people and $8000/mo for service maintenance (e.g. db and software upgrades). So $240,000/yr, not "millions".
Care to cite the dollar amount of Shopify's yearly contribution (not even counting the humans doing actual labor) and what Sidekiq pulled in funding while you're at it?
I don't know the details of Shopify funding. I donated $250,000 in 2024 and withdrew a planned $250,000 donation in 2025, as has been widely publicized.
Responding to your first paragraph, the rest wasn’t constructive.
Shopify paying for infrastructure related to Ruby is an investment, not charity. Hosting gems costs money and a healthy community depends on that gem hosting. Spotify, in turn, depends on that healthy community to produce and maintain gems, train future employees, stuff like that. They’re not paying that money for fun, it is to protect their interests.
And all of the above would be true even if the OSS committee wasn’t 100% Shopify affiliated. That’s gravy.
Those who write the code have more of a right than those who pay the bills. Anyone can write a check. A select few have the acumen and experience to actually write the code.
You can't unilaterally declare someone "sketchy" and then kick them out in the name of conveience.
No I'm calling him sketchy because that's the sentiment anyone who has been around in the community long enough and dealt with Andre has about him. This is very openly discussed and documented and not just in the aftermath of this event.
People having concerns about Andre's behavior around his money and his open source contributions can't even be called an open secret.
The narrative that one side of this is pushing that this is some little guys vs evil corporate overlords problem is short-circuiting so many peoples' ability to rationalize about this topic.
This is about the personal failings to communicate and organize among a very small group of highly skilled, highly productive people. It's also about how they have fallen into camps and try to apply institutional and social leverage in order to influence millions of bystanders in order to maintain/wrest control. Each credibly accusing the other of doing it for their own benefit.
Nobody is in the right here. If you can't engage with that as your starting point, you aren't serious about this conversation and are just spouting one side's propaganda.
In the aftermath us bystanders are left wanting either stability or revolution. Revolutions generally aren't good for anyone. Especially the people who want it the most.
Honestly fair. There's a little too much of my personal distaste with his actions coming through here.
I think it's fairer to say that if you know him and you are in the community than you know that these opinions of him are had. That is not normal.
I also want to make it clear that there is a separation here. I do not think that Andre is a malicious or bad person. I just have questions about his decision-making based on things he's said & actions that he's taken and that leads me to think that he is untrustworthy. Not in the "will steal from me" sense but in the "will fuck up shit that I care about" sense (which ultimately he did, at least partly, whether through direct actions or poorly maintained relationships with key people). I work with this kind of infrastructure though and that's the kind of attitude that you want to have towards people to be able to do this job effectively. I don't trust a lot of people -- I want any access they have to be out in the open, limited to what's needed, etc. Governance of the project/organization was obviously a shit-show.
When I say that it's obvious to cut ties with him, I'm looking at it from the perspective of someone responsible for a high-profile project. I would make that decision 10 times out of 10 without regret. They still absolutely bungled the crap out of how that went down.
Also, I hate that this crap gets associated with the "Ruby Community". It's really just a subset of the western Ruby ecosystem that cares about foundations and events and semi-social functions. Ruby's core and a whole ecosystem of people working on and around Ruby couldn't give a crap about any of this and it's all just a massive inconvenience. Meanwhile on boards like this everyone is planting their flags and trying to exploit chaos to create change in critical services that people absolutely depend on.
> is short-circuiting so many peoples' ability to rationalize about this topic.
It appears unfair. That's the extent of my rationale. I've not seen any concrete evidence to draw any further conclusion than this. If you're managing a project and you're not cognizant of this, you probably shouldn't be managing projects; in particular, you should stay away from open source projects with a large base of volunteer contributors.
> Nobody is in the right here.
So, they went through all of this, made themselves look bad, cast tons of aspersions, and in the end, they weren't even in the right? This seems a shabby defense.
> are just spouting one side's propaganda.
I don't care about one side or the other. You see this giant crater left by these decisions though? Yea.. that's the problem.
> that's the sentiment anyone who has been around in the community long enough and dealt with Andre has about him.
I've known him personally for years and find him perfectly fine as a person. The Rubygems maintainers worked with him for the past decade without issue. Until you cite actual issues, not vague "concerns", you're just spreading FUD and innuendo.
I don't need to rehash 10+ years of documentation that's all over blog posts and prior threads on this very topic. Even if someone is unfamiliar with the details they can casually google RubyTogether and Andre and find out all kinds of details.
Don't pretend like I'm some nutter flinging wild accusations when primary and secondary actors in this story literally voiced these concerns in emails during this event.
Anyone who has been following this saga and actually cares knows because they read it already.
I have read many of the allegations against Andre, and find them to fall into:
1) Hyperbolic takes on a perceived 'communication problem' when Andre defends strong design decisions that have impacts on the Ruby ecosystem. Anyone doing what Andre does is going to have impacts on the ecosystem, that is the point. I think the ease of maintaining Ruby systems speaks to the overall good outcomes these discussions have had, and Andre's part in them.
2) Personal dislike of Andre due to disagreements over politics and/or worldviews, usually stemming from assertions of 'woke code' or something like that.
3) Distaste over Andre trying to make a living off doing what they love. This is usually couched in the 'shady' type language you have used a few times. I think that is a weird take on what are just common schemes to use data for monetization purposes, so that Andre can make a living doing design and maintenance. Nothing I have ever seen makes me worried for my data in Bundler or Rubygems.
If your main concern is that 'bad things could happen with Andre running Bundler' I have to question if it isn't just as likely, if not more likely, that bad things will happen with a Shopify run RC board running Bundler. Their motivations are much less clear other than being a corporation that is profit driven, so I can't say with confidence they won't put that motive above 'good software decisions' when push comes to shove. I don't see them as de-facto making the Ruby supply chain better by any means. Time will tell.
I am all-in on face to face relationships and no longer investing in the fiction of socializing with people through a screen (or only over the phone). And I've been here since low baud modem days and through every niche internet community and medium you can think of.
Eventually I decided to prioritize my health over everything -- job, friends, extended family, hobbies -- transient relationships with things & people just don't matter any longer. If you want community you have to cultivate it and it isn't real if it isn't deeply intertwined with most of your life.
Also, owning my own copies of things too, from books to music to video tutorials. It either goes ona shelf or in the NAS and gets indexed.
While the pandemic chip shortage resolved around 2024, a new chip shortage started in 2025 when the Dutch government took control of Nexperia (who are owned by China's Wingtech) and China retaliated by creating export restrictions. Honda, Nissan, Mercedes-Benz and others cut production. With less inventory, manufacturers and dealers are raising prices to compensate.
Also the cost of shipping never came down and lots of cars and/or their components need to cross oceans. Plus we have a new energy crisis...
It's amusing seeing this brought up in the thread when:
a) Drew is the person who wrote the major "takedown" screed accusing RMS of being a pedo(-defender).
b) Drew was subsequently outed for having a long history on the internet of consuming & sharing lolicon and saying that 14-year olds should be required by law to have IUDs installed.
A thought experiment: would the world be a better place if the US had preemptively attacked the USSR in the 50s or early 60s when it was possible to do without more than “get[ting] our hair mussed” as General Turgidson put it?
Up until the 2024 board election, the organization ran on meritocracy in the sense that those who contributed the most had the most say.
Equality means here that the organization shifted to everyone present having an equal voice. It was no longer proportional to the work contributed.
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