[HN Gopher] Gem.coop
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Gem.coop
        
       Author : mbStavola
       Score  : 416 points
       Date   : 2025-10-06 04:59 UTC (18 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (gem.coop)
 (TXT) w3m dump (gem.coop)
        
       | bloudermilk wrote:
       | It's amazing to see the open source community step up like this.
       | Kudos and gratitude to everyone that made this happen!
        
         | lemper wrote:
         | yeah, but still, the maintainers need to be paid for their time
         | and expertise. not to mention, although bandwidth and storage
         | is cheap, somebody still have to foot the bill. i suggest
         | people donate to this project.
        
       | splittydev wrote:
       | Is there any context on why? Is there some controversy regarding
       | RubyGems.org I'm not aware of?
        
         | KingOfCoders wrote:
         | As I understood it, to secure (their words) the supply chain,
         | they took ownership of the code and repo (which others disputed
         | as being owned by them) and kicked out users from Github.
         | 
         | It is said the underlying cause is that devs push rv which is
         | threatening RubyGems.
        
           | mosselman wrote:
           | How is rv threatening rubygems? I am pretty excited about rv
           | on first glance, I tried it and it was too beta when I did to
           | work nicely, but definitely good to have a uv type tool for
           | ruby.
        
             | KingOfCoders wrote:
             | "Yes, I agree. And some of the "admins" even announced
             | publicly many days ago they were launching a competitor
             | tool and were funding raising for it. I'd not trust the
             | system to such "admin"."
             | 
             | https://bsky.app/profile/rmfranca.bsky.social/post/3lz7alpo
             | b...
             | 
             | See https://spinel.coop/
             | 
             | "Spinel develops rv, the next-generation Ruby version
             | manager"
        
               | phoronixrly wrote:
               | This doesn't explain how rv is threatening rubygems in
               | any way.
        
               | x3n0ph3n3 wrote:
               | They were using the name "rubygems" to fund-raise for
               | not-"rubygems."
        
               | phoronixrly wrote:
               | But how is this a conflict? Both are not-for-profit
               | projects with the same goal? How can one even use the
               | term 'competition' in this context? What if the Ruby
               | community embraces a new and better package manager? This
               | is, again, a net win for the Ruby community, and both
               | projects strive for that?
        
               | x3n0ph3n3 wrote:
               | It doesn't really matter if it's a non-profit. How do you
               | think your company would react if you started raising
               | money using their name?
        
               | phoronixrly wrote:
               | Is Rubygems a company? My mind cannot comprehend why are
               | people conflating not-for-profit open-source projects
               | with for-profit companies...
               | 
               | If Rubygems was a company, they'd have a trademark,
               | they'd have patents, they'd have lawyers to protect the
               | _money they were making_ from their brand and product.
               | But we are speaking about not-for-profit open-source
               | projects, not for for-profit corporations!
        
         | wallmountedtv wrote:
         | In short, a hostile takeover forced by Shopify through Ruby
         | Central.
         | 
         | It was sparked after Ruby Central chose to platform an
         | extremist figure prominently for their last RailsConf against
         | the wishes of the sponsors, losing them a lot of sponsorship
         | money, as well as community support.
         | 
         | https://joel.drapper.me/p/rubygems-takeover/
        
           | mnx wrote:
           | Might be worth noting the figure in question is the creator
           | of Ruby on Rails.
        
             | phoronixrly wrote:
             | He deserves a few more titles now. Like prolific
             | xenophobia[1] and sexism[2] proponent, and generally a
             | person that has no connection with the real world[3].
             | 
             | [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20250920061923/https://worl
             | d.hey...
             | 
             | [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20250920061926/https://worl
             | d.hey...
             | 
             | [3] https://web.archive.org/web/20250918051013/https://worl
             | d.hey...
        
           | JimDabell wrote:
           | > It was sparked after Ruby Central chose to platform an
           | extremist figure prominently for their last RailsConf
           | 
           | This is so incredibly one-sided that it misleads more than it
           | informs.
           | 
           | The person they are talking about is DHH. Inviting _the
           | creator of Rails_ to speak at RailsConf - a conference for
           | Rails - is not the outlandish behaviour this comment makes it
           | sound like.
        
             | shevy-java wrote:
             | Agreed. There is a lot of conflation of statements that are
             | not directly connected.
             | 
             | The whole DHH argument, for instance, as well as some
             | people having a vendetta about him, is not, or not
             | directly, related to the hostile take-over of rubygems.org.
             | There is a slight partial overlap, but it is a separate
             | discussion (even if DHH was involved with the take-over via
             | Shopify because he does not like Arko or Shopify wanting
             | more power-control to bully the independent developers at
             | rubygems.org with more corporate rules and restrictions;
             | and, by the way, DHH never mentions Arko's name, but even
             | this is a separate discussion still. For instance I
             | specifically do not care about rails nor DHH really, but
             | the hostile take-over was a complete no-go. Ruby Central
             | really pissed off too many people here and unfortunately
             | there are still many open questions that ruby-core has to
             | think about. I am not necessarily saying all came with
             | malicious intent, because I think there is an english
             | language barrier too in regards to Hiroshi Shibata, but
             | even then it may be better to have someone with better
             | knowledge about the english language in charge of gems;
             | there seems to be some strange disconnect or translation
             | going on between english, into japanese and japanese
             | culture, and it is super-confusing.)
        
           | byroot wrote:
           | > a hostile takeover forced by Shopify through Ruby Central.
           | 
           | That's entirely unsubstantiated.
        
             | joeldrapper wrote:
             | I heard it directly from people directly involved.
        
               | byroot wrote:
               | So it is unsubstantiated.
        
               | Kudos wrote:
               | This is a little glib, you dropped "Entirely" because you
               | know multiple first hand accounts are actually worth
               | something. If you want to argue the credibility of those
               | accounts, then please be specific about it.
        
               | byroot wrote:
               | I dropped the entirely because I am on mobile.
               | 
               | We don't have multiple first hand accounts. All we have
               | is second hand account being relayed by someone with a
               | massive axe to grind against Shopify.
               | 
               | There are a lot of truly committed Rubyists at Shopify,
               | particularly the one handling the relationship with Ruby
               | Central.
               | 
               | The idea that Shopify had done what Joel aledges without
               | a single one of the involved parties on the Shopify side
               | blowing the whistle is preposterous.
        
               | shevy-java wrote:
               | So you critisize Joel because he worked at Shopify. He
               | pointed that out when he wrote the article.
               | 
               | Let's add here that YOU also worked at Shopify, until
               | recently.
               | 
               | IF we are going to be critical, then let's be complete
               | here.
               | 
               | I actually think there is a lot of validity to the
               | statement made that Shopify is NOT a neutral party here.
               | We can dispute how much Shopify was involved, but to
               | assume "all is unsubstantiated" while not even disclosing
               | one's own work at Shopify, feels super-strange here.
        
               | byroot wrote:
               | > He pointed that out when he wrote the article.
               | 
               | Did he point out how it ended, and how he spent the
               | better part of two years having public tantrums about it
               | on Twitter?
               | 
               | Disclosing that you worked somewhere isn't relevant.
               | Worse, it can easily give the impression that there is
               | some insider knowledge involved.
               | 
               | What is relevant is how the relationship ended.
               | 
               | > Let's add here that YOU also worked at Shopify, until
               | recently.
               | 
               | Yes, and I left over some major disagreements, hence if I
               | have a bias, it would be _against_ Shopify, not in favor.
        
         | pil0u wrote:
         | This article was the most nuanced I found while everything was
         | still hot. https://archive.ph/SEzoV
        
       | phoronixrly wrote:
       | I hope they tackle the actual main issue with Rubygems -- lack of
       | any sort of code signing... (I know the functionality exists, but
       | it's not required to publish in Rubygems, and off by default on
       | gem install. In other words it's as if it doesn't exist)
       | 
       | The fash problem in the Rails ecosystem is next on the list, and
       | I hope there is community consensus to fork this as well.
        
         | burnt-resistor wrote:
         | It has code signing. It's just optional, inconvenient, and so
         | unused because of Tragedy of the Commons and complacency.
         | https://guides.rubygems.org/security/
         | 
         | https://www.benjaminfleischer.com/2013/11/08/how-to-sign-you...
        
           | phoronixrly wrote:
           | As I said, it's as good as no code signing. The very lack of
           | a chain of trust stemming from rubygems that can be used to
           | verify gem authenticity makes the whole thing useless.
        
         | simianparrot wrote:
         | What does "fash problem" mean?
        
           | phoronixrly wrote:
           | If you know you know.
        
           | ramon156 wrote:
           | There's some weird opinions coming from mostly DHH. My
           | personal take is that they're blatantly racist, but everyone
           | can have their own
           | 
           | Here's some fun facts:
           | 
           | - DHH enforced a "No Politics at Work" policy.
           | 
           | - DHH wrote a post expressing that he wouldn't want to live
           | in London anymore because it's "no longer full of native
           | Brits", and expressed support for a Tommy Robinson march he
           | called "heartwarming". Tommy Robinson is described as "an
           | anti-Islam campaigner and one of the UK's most prominent far-
           | right activists.". The march DHH praised featured speakers
           | calling for ethnic cleansing via "remigration" and banning
           | all non-Christian religions.
           | 
           | - DHH also promoted "demographic replacement" conspiracy
           | theories and used language connecting immigration to crime,
           | particularly regarding "Pakistani rape gangs" and street
           | theft.
           | 
           | - DHH has been publicly critical of Diversity, Equity, and
           | Inclusion initiatives. This one isn't backed by facts, so
           | take it with a grain of salt.
        
             | ishouldbework wrote:
             | Cannot speak for the US, but in Europe immigration is
             | connected to crime increase in general. The Ukraine
             | refugees are one of few statistical exceptions.
        
               | mijoharas wrote:
               | Have you got any references for this claim?
        
               | ishouldbework wrote:
               | Well, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10611-02
               | 4-10144-y seems to claim there is a link for sexual
               | crimes. This paper suggests that there is some delayed
               | effect https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/
               | S092753712....
        
               | busterarm wrote:
               | I think a lot of people are forgetting or at least choose
               | to ignore that DHH is Danish (and specifically a Danish
               | expat) and is probably more inclined to have
               | controversial views on immigration from majority Islamic
               | countries. That's not to give his statements a pass, but
               | to give them some needed context.
               | 
               | And no, I'm not saying that Danes are racist.
        
               | bsammon wrote:
               | I think a lot of people don't know why being Danish is
               | relevant. Is there some reason why controversial views on
               | immigration might be less suprising coming from a Dane?
        
               | drak0n1c wrote:
               | Denmark is the rare case of a European nation where its
               | center-left listened to feedback from the electorate
               | early on and earnestly adopted policies restricting
               | immigration and refugee admission. As a result they had
               | no populist backlash, and that policy position is
               | uncontroversial to hold publicly.
        
             | mrisoli wrote:
             | He doubled down on his opinion by sharing a sequence of
             | posts from a X account that denounces "woke activism" in
             | the software industry and open source projects. He
             | criticised the political activism in open source projects,
             | then, ironically, suggested Palmer Luckey should step in to
             | steward NixOs.
        
             | maxwellg wrote:
             | Ironic that DHH is politically active enough that it
             | affects his day to day activities and public perception of
             | his company - kind of the exact opposite of his own policy
             | he expects his employees to abide by.
        
               | x3n0ph3n3 wrote:
               | He posts about it on his personal blog, not on his
               | company Slack.
        
               | phoronixrly wrote:
               | Is world.hey.com/dhh a personal blog? It's literally on
               | his company's domain... At least in the company slack
               | your fash opinions would reach just your poor
               | colleagues...
        
           | marknutter wrote:
           | That's the part where the term "fascist" is misused to smear
           | somebody they disagree with. It can be safely ignored.
        
       | steve_gh wrote:
       | I'm really pleased to see this happening, but sad that it has
       | come to this.
       | 
       | What I'd really like to see is a whole bunch of people acting
       | more professionally. Who you pray to, who you vote for, and who
       | you sleep with are irrelevant to a professional context - and
       | open source development is a professional context. So everyone
       | needs to keep their professional and personal lives separate. I
       | know that at best I would be disciplined, and at worst sacked if
       | I made comments on the lines that some of the lead players in
       | this sorry saga have made. And that's not pointing the finger at
       | any one person.
        
         | hiimkeks wrote:
         | If who you vote for will put me into a torture camp (or
         | otherwise devalues my life or personhood), then I can't work
         | with you, so no it is not irrelevant.
         | 
         | (neither the "me" nor the "you" here refer to you or me
         | personally ofc.)
        
           | pil0u wrote:
           | Agreed. Your example could sound like exaggerated, but
           | silence is a form of opinion, of vote, of approval. Even in a
           | professional context, because work is _part of_ the society
           | we live in.
           | 
           | This whole "DHH situation" with Rails has put my mind in
           | weird position. I admire the Rails creator, the business man,
           | the speaker. I admire what he builds, how passionate he is
           | about his work and open-source software. But I very strongly
           | disagree with his vision of immigration, nationalism,
           | parenting, well most of his vision of society.
           | 
           | I was made aware about these opinions _because_ people talked
           | about it. Thanks to these people, I read and listen to him
           | with more nuance, more critical thinking. That does not
           | necessarily mean I would discard Rails, cancel the dude or
           | write shit about him, but that surely means that I will be
           | more careful about how the opinions of this 1 person could
           | impact mine, the ecosystem I work with and the larger
           | ecosystem I live in that is society.
        
             | kortilla wrote:
             | > but silence is a form of opinion, of vote, of approval.
             | 
             | No it's not. Indifference is not approval.
             | 
             | Open source is global and someone in a university in
             | Argentina contributing some features does not "approve" of
             | anything because she didn't participate in some bickering
             | about US identity politics.
        
               | yxhuvud wrote:
               | This is a lot more than just US identity politics, as
               | shown by the fully idiotic take on London he did.
        
               | zen928 wrote:
               | Indifference is acceptance of the status quo, though,
               | yeah? Whether that be on a conscious level of active
               | avoidance or on a subconscious level of never mentally
               | aligning it as a priority to build further understanding
               | to form a thought-out opinion.
               | 
               | There actually is a binary view on your stance against
               | things when you see unfettered hate spread by others and
               | choose (at some level) to not have an opinion. We've seen
               | it before, we see it now, we'll see it again. Not
               | everyone has the same privilege as you to remain head
               | under sand until there's no commotion left to dodge.
        
             | steve_gh wrote:
             | > but silence is a form of opinion, of vote, of approval.
             | 
             | I disagree. We don't have to have an opinion on everything.
             | And what worries me is those (both on the left and on the
             | right) who think that silence is a form of opinion or
             | approval. It's getting very close to "those who are not
             | with us are against us". And that's a worldview I have very
             | little time for.
        
               | pil0u wrote:
               | Yes, I agree with you. Silence, _when you do not have an
               | opinion_ , is totally fine. And yes, not having an
               | opinion on everything is absolutely fine, probably sane
               | even.
               | 
               | I was answering a comment about a vote that would put you
               | in a torture camp, so a vote on which you are certainly
               | opinionated about.
               | 
               | In other words, don't self-censor when you think
               | something is not right.
        
               | CaptArmchair wrote:
               | I'll put it like this.
               | 
               | Close by where I live is a monument for civilians who
               | were taken from their houses and shot by the German
               | occupiers during the last months of WWII. Simply because
               | they were suspected of having distributed pamphlets.
               | There wasn't even evidence to that claim, and retribution
               | was a thing.
               | 
               | I passed that monument countless of times during my
               | youth, giving me pause to contemplate.
               | 
               | It's a tangible reminder of what ultimately happens when
               | people stay silent about something as final and poignant
               | as one group denying the existence of another group for
               | whatever reasons.
               | 
               | I have no problem with expressing differences over world
               | views. I take issue when that world view entails denying
               | the other side's existence because of differences, and a
               | fervent intent to act on that notion.
               | 
               | It's a matter of boundaries, and speaking up.
        
               | giraffe_lady wrote:
               | > And what worries me is those (both on the left and on
               | the right) who think that silence is a form of opinion or
               | approval.
               | 
               | Definitely definitely. When a racist paramilitary is
               | disappearing my neighbors my primary concern is whether
               | people will consider me complicit for publicly stating
               | that I have no duty to interfere.
               | 
               | You don't have to have an opinion on everything but you
               | do have to have an opinion on some things. Or I mean,
               | obviously you don't, but then you have to accept the
               | social consequences of cowardice.
        
               | jaredcwhite wrote:
               | > that's a worldview I have very little time for
               | 
               | Only people who already live in a position of privilege
               | get to have "little time" and settle for worldviews which
               | advocate for a sort of bland tolerance of extremism. I
               | can assure you, for people who are being actively harmed
               | by hateful rhetoric and political policies, "those who
               | are not with us are against us" is absolutely a reality.
        
             | blast wrote:
             | Silence can also indicate disapproval.
        
           | fourseventy wrote:
           | Please stop with this type of ridiculous hyperbole.
        
             | wizzwizz4 wrote:
             | People would be less inclined to say ridiculous things like
             | this if they didn't keep happening.
        
           | ishouldbework wrote:
           | "will put me into a torture camp" for sure, but "devalues my
           | life or personhood" is pretty vague. So, for example, if I
           | value guns and consider them necessary for my well being and
           | personal safety, should I refuse to work with anyone who
           | votes for increased gun control? This sounds like a recipe
           | for very fragmented, unstable society.
        
             | bronson wrote:
             | If gun owners are being denied health care or being told
             | who they can marry ("it's illegal to marry a fellow gun
             | owner"), then yes, they'll probably want to avoid anyone
             | wretched enough to advocate that.
             | 
             | Short of that, it's NBD right? Not really comparable.
        
               | ishouldbework wrote:
               | > being told who they can marry
               | 
               | I consider this somewhat unfortunate example, since we,
               | as a society, are putting limits on this very thing. For
               | example age, or species. How is that supposed to work if
               | people are not allow to debate and express their opinions
               | on where those limits are supposed to be?
               | 
               | Similar with the health care. What is covered and what is
               | not, and who has to pay and who has it (almost) free,
               | should very much be up for a debate. Otherwise, how do
               | you improve anything?
        
               | marknutter wrote:
               | It's absolutely comparable. They both involve limiting
               | rights and freedoms.
        
           | shadowgovt wrote:
           | I think the salient meta-concept here is "Open source
           | development is an inherently collaborative enterprise, and if
           | people cannot collaborate, it stifles creation of open source
           | projects and software."
           | 
           | There may very well simply be political eras where the floor
           | of trust isn't there for open source to spring forward by
           | leaps and bounds.
        
         | wahnfrieden wrote:
         | Not everyone involved in open source has a boss. I don't care
         | what a boss would hypothetically do to me, so that's not
         | helpful guidance.
        
         | nathanaldensr wrote:
         | Completely agreed. Sorry, other folks, but you have no right to
         | gatekeep my speech in any way in a professional context. Are
         | you a family member? Then sure, we can have a discussion. Am I
         | a member of your private club or otherwise dependent on your
         | approval of my thoughts or beliefs? Then let's talk. Otherwise,
         | leave me alone. You (the collective you) don't get to decide
         | what I am and am not allowed to think and believe.
        
           | giraffe_lady wrote:
           | Nobody is constraining your beliefs or expressions of them.
           | People are exercising their own individual right not to
           | associate with people who express certain beliefs.
        
             | marknutter wrote:
             | Ah. So just good old fashioned bigotry.
        
               | shadowgovt wrote:
               | Generally, bigotry is bias based on immutable traits.
               | Beliefs are not immutable.
        
               | marknutter wrote:
               | No, bigotry is bigotry, it doesn't matter what you're
               | being bigoted about. But I could see why a bigot might
               | say that.
        
               | erxam wrote:
               | Oh, of course.
               | 
               | To a right-winger, safety is bigotry and hatred is love.
               | Of course, how else could it ever be.
               | 
               | Do you really care about freedom if you don't let white
               | nationalists abuse everyone and everything in their power
               | all the time?
        
         | tensor wrote:
         | I've been in the "keep work and politics" separate camp most of
         | my life. However, with the lines that have been crossed
         | recently, where literal democracy and freedom are at stake, I
         | don't think people have the luxury of keeping work and politics
         | separate any longer. Fascism is bad and people cannot be
         | silent.
        
           | marknutter wrote:
           | If you invoke the word "fascism" in the context of today's
           | politics, your opinion is immediately worthless.
        
             | jaredcwhite wrote:
             | If you say something like "if you invoke the word "fascism"
             | in the context of today's politics, your opinion is
             | immediately worthless", your opinion is immediately
             | worthless.
        
       | halicarnassus wrote:
       | Great move to counter the hostile takeover of the RubyGems GitHub
       | repo (not the rubygems.org repo) and organization by Ruby
       | Central.
       | 
       | I hope they find financing to cover hosting costs.
        
         | joeldrapper wrote:
         | I believe the hosting is already covered.
        
           | mijoharas wrote:
           | Is there anything more you can share about that? I guess I
           | should just sign up to the newsletter and wait and find
           | out...
        
       | SSLy wrote:
       | flagged??
        
         | milliams wrote:
         | Based on the comments getting downvoted, it feels like some
         | brigading going on.
        
       | joeldrapper wrote:
       | Why has this been flagged?
        
         | lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
         | Just some background: there is a controversy in the Ruby
         | community[0][2] around the governance of the rubygems project.
         | It has been maintained for a long time by employees of Ruby
         | Central but not in a corporate capacity. There was a recent
         | hostile takeover of this project by the Ruby Central corporate
         | arm.
         | 
         | The most likely reason it was flagged from my perspective is
         | that David Heinemeier Hansson (who created rails) is kind of
         | the figurehead of this community and he has controversial
         | opinions[1] which people believe make him unfit to represent
         | their community. The controversy has manifested as people
         | speaking out against DHH in his position. So this post seems to
         | have been flagged for being "political" because it is seemingly
         | in opposition to rubygems for the DHH reason.
         | 
         | 0:
         | https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=fa...
         | 
         | 1: https://davidcel.is/articles/rails-needs-new-governance
         | (this article has a lot of examples from DHH's blog)
         | 
         | 2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45348390
        
           | ilikepi wrote:
           | Er...FYI, your [2] link is to a discussion about an article
           | written by the person to whom you are responding.
           | 
           | Personally, I think the reason this post about gem.coop has
           | been flagged is that we've reached the point at which new HN
           | threads about things related to the recent RubyGems shake-up
           | quickly devolve into people rehashing the DHH "aspect" of it
           | all. So it has become less about flagging the actual target
           | of the post and more about flagging the parts of the
           | discussion that seem to go nowhere.
           | 
           | EDIT: expanded
        
             | lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
             | That's fair enough, I didn't actually notice. Regardless, I
             | was offering the information for other readers, which may
             | or may not include the person I'm replying to.
             | 
             | Edit:
             | 
             | > flagging the parts of the discussion that seem to go
             | nowhere
             | 
             | This is and isn't what actually happens, though. People do
             | flag the parts of the discussion that don't go anywhere but
             | then people also flag the post itself because they think
             | there's no reason to discuss it at all for the fact there's
             | a vocal part (minority or majority doesn't really matter)
             | that wants to discuss a topic that's not going anywhere.
             | 
             | People shouldn't flag the post itself just because it's
             | likely to gather or even has gathered a crowd that will
             | discuss such directionless topics when there are better
             | topics to discuss, even (especially?) if they're not
             | currently being discussed.
        
         | veeti wrote:
         | Remove flags 2025, all the best stuff is in
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/active. I don't even use Ruby
         | right now, have no dog in whatever drama is behind this, but I
         | don't see what's so offensive about knowing Gem.coop is now a
         | thing.
        
       | sleight42 wrote:
       | Why is this flagged? This is super relevant to HN!
        
         | wahnfrieden wrote:
         | Brigading
        
         | captn3m0 wrote:
         | +1.
        
         | lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
         | I wrote this comment with what I understand to be the relevant
         | context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45490531
        
       | directionless wrote:
       | Given some of the ways Andre Arko gets described (See
       | https://justin.searls.co/posts/why-im-not-rushing-to-take-si...
       | for a recent overview) I'm a little wary of what the motivation
       | behind this is.
        
         | kimos wrote:
         | This reads like a hit piece based on a personal vendetta. I'd
         | be careful how much weight to give this.
        
           | nomdep wrote:
           | > When Ruby Together first launched in 2015, the website
           | suggested donations went to pay "our team" (...) This
           | resulted in a nonzero number of donors believing they were
           | funding the work of people like Steve Klabnik, Aaron
           | Patterson, and Sarah Mei, when in fact only Andre was being
           | paid at the time.
           | 
           | This a fact. By this alone I don't think Andre Arko is an
           | honest person.
        
             | steveklabnik wrote:
             | Back in the day, nobody ever had said to me that they
             | believed I was earning money from Ruby Together. This whole
             | thing was speculation at best. And regardless, once it was
             | suggested that this may be a possibility, it was
             | immediately changed to be unambiguous.
             | 
             | Andre is absolutely a standup individual.
             | 
             | I have tried to stay in good terms with the other people
             | involved in this (except DHH), but this claim was always
             | ridiculous.
        
               | nomdep wrote:
               | I was misremembering it. Now that I've checked, it's
               | clear that the claim was that the money was for paying
               | "the team" [1], which consisted of Andre Arko and David
               | Radcliffe [2]
               | 
               | [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20150919025358/https://ru
               | bytoget...
               | 
               | [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20150919025603/https://ru
               | bytoget...
        
               | steveklabnik wrote:
               | It's all good, you were quoting the blog post.
               | 
               | Frankly that page is even more clear than I remembered.
               | All of this happened so long ago.
        
               | knowitnone3 wrote:
               | I just want to know how much was David Radcliffe getting
               | paid for his time?
        
               | tenderlove wrote:
               | This absolutely happened and is not speculation. I can't
               | find the emails from the individuals that emailed me, but
               | I did find my email to the board of directors asking that
               | the website language be changed because people had pinged
               | me thinking I would be getting money, or that the money
               | would go to fund rubygems.org.
               | 
               | At the time I'd sent the email I was unaware Ruby
               | Together was on HN front page (and that's why people were
               | pinging me)
        
               | steveklabnik wrote:
               | Okay, if you got emails, you got emails, but I did not.
               | 
               | I absolutely wouldn't want people to think that I'd be
               | getting the money, so I think clarifying it was a good
               | thing, regardless.
        
           | directionless wrote:
           | TBH the whole thing is pretty opaque. There are a lot of
           | accusations floating around. It's pretty easily to capitalize
           | on "Big evil shopify is making a takeover", but I suspect
           | there's a lot more happening behind the scenes.
        
         | busterarm wrote:
         | To take the maximally negative view of things:
         | - uv is a cool tool, but Astral has signaled their intention to
         | have it tie in nicely to paid services.         - that's a nice
         | moat!         - Andre & friends saw that in the Python
         | community (and uv's success) and decided they could do the same
         | for Ruby         - Their collective announces rv and now wants
         | to make us dependent on them & friends for Ruby Gems.         -
         | After Hashicorp and others, I'm extremely wary of orgs luring
         | me in with free shit.  Hashicorp is maybe the lightest example
         | of this but they're very intentional about enterprise-walling
         | business-essential features.         - I don't want the Ruby
         | ecosystem dependent on one party or even a tiny collective of
         | people.  This is just as bad to me as the Ruby Central
         | situation right now.
        
           | davidcelis wrote:
           | By "Astral" do you mean "Spinel"? Also, what paid services?
           | So far the only paid services they've mentioned is retainer
           | services that essentially amount to priority customer
           | support. The tools themselves are only ever described as free
           | 
           | EDIT: Misread the comment and thought it was only about `rv`,
           | not both `uv` and `rv`
        
             | levicole wrote:
             | "If it's free, you're the product"
        
             | pityJuke wrote:
             | What is Spinel? Astral is the developer of uv, and they
             | have announced their hosted platform service, pyx [0]. It
             | appears it will be FOSS as well, but they'll have a hosted
             | version of it.
             | 
             | [0]: https://astral.sh/blog/introducing-pyx
        
               | riffraff wrote:
               | spinel is the company spun up around rv, ruby's uv
               | version.
               | 
               | https://spinel.coop/
        
               | davidcelis wrote:
               | My mistake, I completely misread your comment and thought
               | you were _only_ talking about `rv` as opposed to both
               | `uv` and `rv`!
        
           | ljm wrote:
           | The Ruby ecosystem is already decentralised in that there is
           | no single source of truth for published gems. You can pull
           | the source from any software forge that uses git, you can
           | point to any self hosted gem server or use something like
           | Artifactory or GitHub package registry. You can vendor the
           | code if you want.
           | 
           | This entire post is practically the case in point, except I'm
           | not clear on how they got real time sync with RubyGems and if
           | any other competitor would have the same capability.
           | 
           | To use Astral and uv as an example, they would have to fork
           | PyPI and maintain all the infra for that and not just the
           | tool that manages the dependencies.
        
       | mijoharas wrote:
       | So, ignoring everything that got us here, what do people think
       | about this?
       | 
       | As I see it, there is the original rubygems, which has lost all
       | of it's maintainers, and this new one, that has most of the
       | original active maintainers? (how many were there before? it has
       | most of the ones I think about, but I didn't know who was active
       | over there. I mostly saw activity from deivid and didn't know
       | about most of the others to be honest).
       | 
       | It kind feels like this fork is the better maintained piece of
       | software now.
       | 
       | Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Are any people thinking of
       | moving over soon?
       | 
       | Is there any information on what the funding model will be? Also
       | @joeldrapper/anyone is there anything you can share about how the
       | hosting is being covered?[0]
       | 
       | [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45490386
        
         | mijoharas wrote:
         | re: funding model, looks like it's TBD[0]
         | 
         | [0] https://bsky.app/profile/indirect.io/post/3m2j2pcinz22j
        
         | phoronixrly wrote:
         | I don't plan on switching to a rubygems fork that does not
         | offer technical/security benefits over the original.
         | 
         | They can win me over with a gem distribution site that requires
         | code signing out of the box and a bundler that enforces it out
         | of the box.
        
           | mijoharas wrote:
           | For me, having the software be maintained (and have a
           | security engineer working on it) feels like a security
           | benefit.
           | 
           | Does the original have many maintainers left?
        
             | phoronixrly wrote:
             | It has allegedly been taken over by Shopify. I expect it to
             | be very well maintained. The issues are of ethical
             | character.
        
               | mperham wrote:
               | Well maintained? Rubygems has had no commits in the last
               | 10 days and that's not a good sign. I don't think you can
               | find a window with no commits for 10 days in its 15+ year
               | history.
               | 
               | History has shown over and over that when a for-profit
               | org takes over public infrastructure, maintenance is cut
               | to the bone.
        
               | gkbrk wrote:
               | > Rubygems has had no commits in the last 10 days and
               | that's not a good sign.
               | 
               | I honestly can't tell if this is satire.
               | 
               | You think no commits for 10 days for a piece of software
               | that has existed for around 20 years is a sign that it's
               | dead?
               | 
               | What kind of code churn do you think this project
               | requires? Perhaps the old development was too unstable if
               | there wasn't a single 10 day window without a commit in
               | 15 years, for what is essentially a solved problem and a
               | tool that people depend on to be stable.
        
           | joeldrapper wrote:
           | I expect a lot of people will stop pushing gem updates to
           | `rubygems.org` once `gem.coop` supports publishing directly
           | to namespaces.
        
           | soraminazuki wrote:
           | Which part of a project that kicked out its original
           | maintainers still feels "original" to you? At this point,
           | rubygems.org is the fork.
           | 
           | Oh, how times have changed. If Oracle were to close source
           | OpenSolaris today, many here would likely rally behind it,
           | especially if Larry Ellison appeared to align with the right.
           | Submissions about Illumos would have been heavily flagged,
           | much like this one has been for a while.
        
             | jaredcwhite wrote:
             | Excellent point, I can't help but feel gem.coop is
             | essentially Ruby Together 2.0 which reinforces my opinion
             | that the merger of RT with RC was a huge mistake. (It
             | certainly made sense at the time...hindsight is always
             | 20/20...etc....but still.)
        
           | sussmannbaka wrote:
           | They had a minor security incident right off the bat,
           | demonstrating they don't even fully understand what they
           | stole. They aren't equipped to do the job.
        
         | baggy_trough wrote:
         | I personally cannot think of a new ruby gems or bundler feature
         | from the past decade that I noticed or cared about. That isn't
         | to say that there aren't any; I just don't know what they are.
        
           | frenkel wrote:
           | Lockfile checksums are quite new and useful.
        
           | mijoharas wrote:
           | I think I basically agree with this, but my thoughts are more
           | on which org is better placed now to respond to things like
           | the recent supply chain attacks (ref for the specific recent
           | ruby one[0][1]).
           | 
           | I'm unsure on who is better placed to handle that stuff now.
           | My view is that the people that were doing that are now with
           | gem.coop, but rubygems still has the infra (i.e. you'd email
           | security@rubygems.org still for now).
           | 
           | I'm unsure about what to think about longer term (my personal
           | approach is currently "wait and see").
           | 
           | Similarly, I'm perfectly happy with bundler for now, but if
           | `rv` turns out to be like `uv`, I'd happily switch (drop-in
           | replacement, but faster/some better features).
           | 
           | [0] https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/60-malicio
           | us-...
           | 
           | [1] https://blog.rubygems.org/2025/08/08/malicious-gems-
           | removal....
        
             | knowitnone3 wrote:
             | Socket.dev states "Since at least March 2023". RubyGems
             | says "Our team first detected this activity on July 20th".
             | This attack has ran for almost 5 months undetected. I
             | wouldn't feel reassured at all.
        
           | ilikepi wrote:
           | There have been several releases with incremental but still
           | notable performance improvements. The overall cadence has
           | been pretty steady, intentionally targeting roughly one minor
           | release per year since 2019-ish, with handfuls of quality of
           | life improvements in each. Arguably RubyGems and Bundler are
           | infrastructure, so the major feature is stability. What sort
           | of big feature are you imagining is missing from your
           | dependency management system?
        
             | x0x0 wrote:
             | Andre is working on a combination of rbenv/asdf, bundler,
             | and gem that I think is interesting. Not that they're
             | wildly broken, but I'd rather have fewer tools and it
             | always seemed a bit odd that they're separate when they're
             | notionally managing the environment in which your ruby code
             | executes.
             | 
             | Given the rise in supply chain attacks, I'd also like a
             | private rubygem instance where I can whitelist gems and
             | even versions for my company in a way that doesn't let
             | anything else install. I'm not sure if they're taking that
             | on or not, but I'd like it.
             | 
             | the rv thesis is here:
             | https://andre.arko.net/2025/08/25/rv-a-new-kind-of-ruby-
             | mana...
        
               | riffraff wrote:
               | > I'd also like a private rubygem instance
               | 
               | that was always possible https://guides.rubygems.org/run-
               | your-own-gem-server/
               | 
               | (there's also "gem server")
        
             | baggy_trough wrote:
             | That's basically my point. I'm not missing anything, so I'm
             | happy if it just gets small / stability fixes, which
             | doesn't seem like it needs a six member maintainer group.
             | That team should go off and do a great job with 'rv' or
             | whatever the next brand new idea is, and just let rubygems
             | sit there with minor updates, same as we do for the ruby
             | logger or date class.
        
           | ilvez wrote:
           | They made bundler output compact, previously it spammed all
           | installed versions and updates mixed, now you can see just
           | updates if you do those for example.. or quite concise "all
           | OK" if everything is as it should be. Small but really nice
           | quality of life change imo
        
         | shadowgovt wrote:
         | I think right off the bat since they chose .coop as their TLD,
         | a lot of corporate firewalls auto-block them and they have
         | immediately decided to fight an uphill battle to get allow-
         | listed to be a gem repo.
         | 
         | This does not bode well for the team having the socio-technical
         | savviness to see this project through.
        
           | w0m wrote:
           | seems like an easy fix in a month with a new TLD though.
        
           | spit2wind wrote:
           | Really? Maybe I'm naive, but why would .coop be blocked?
        
             | lbhdc wrote:
             | It is pretty common that "weird" tlds get blocked more or
             | less whole sale in places you might not expect.
             | 
             | The reason is spam. Before these can get wide spread
             | "normal" adoption they can be heavily used by spammers. Its
             | hard to say if that is because they have desirable look-a-
             | likes available, or if its because the first year is
             | offered at a deep discount. So, systems will get flooded,
             | and on inspection they will see that they don't have any
             | legit traffic from those tlds and will whole sale block
             | them.
             | 
             | .xyz is kind of infamous for being in this situation.
             | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28554400
             | 
             | I have no idea if that applies to .coop though.
        
           | hombre_fatal wrote:
           | How will anything ever change we're still guilted into
           | thinking about crappy default corporate firewalls when
           | choosing a TLD?
           | 
           | Though there's no way that this is something you care about,
           | cmon.
        
             | shadowgovt wrote:
             | Most places seem to manage.
             | 
             | But thinking that they can disregard all prior Internet
             | history and just slam into the situation with no concern
             | about what came before is pretty on-brand for a project in
             | the Ruby ecosystem.
        
               | florkbork wrote:
               | Ah yes, "slam in" to a situation is definitely the
               | correct terminology for forking a project that was seized
               | from you by a hostile party.
        
               | shadowgovt wrote:
               | I mean regarding the choice of TLD. Forking the package
               | repository ecosystem I fully understand the incentives;
               | it just strikes me as a very Ruby-ecosystem thing to just
               | assume that `.coop` is a good enough TLD with no
               | consequences for using it relative to choosing to use
               | .org, .com, or .net.
        
         | nomdep wrote:
         | >It kind of feels like this fork is the better-maintained piece
         | of software now.
         | 
         | Maybe, but I feel the value of the index is the storage and
         | bandwidth and not the software itself, isn't it?
         | 
         | Could an index work by just being a search engine for gems,
         | storing the hashes, but pointing to external resources, like
         | GitHub repos, for the download itself?
        
           | soraminazuki wrote:
           | Trustworthiness is far more important for a package manager.
           | No amount of storage or bandwidth can compensate for an
           | untrustworthy package manager.
        
             | stanislavb wrote:
             | With this is in place. A ".coop" domain does not signal
             | trustworthiness. It's more like a childish revenge attempt.
             | Don't get me wrong. I think it's a great idea for the
             | original maintainers to begin work on a form. However, they
             | could have chosen a better domain name.
        
               | mijoharas wrote:
               | I saw someone else saying something about the domain
               | name, but I didn't really give it a second thought when I
               | read it.
               | 
               | Can you explain what the issue is?
        
               | seanw444 wrote:
               | I'd only say it's a real issue if this were a "normie-
               | facing" website. But being a developer tool, we all know
               | that there are legitimate domains other than .com, .org,
               | and .net.
        
               | soraminazuki wrote:
               | What? Which part of the word "co-op" sounds like a
               | "childish revenge attempt"?
               | 
               | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative
               | 
               | It's a word that nicely captures their objectives.
        
               | lawilli wrote:
               | Maybe they read it like "coup"?
        
               | florkbork wrote:
               | Read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.coop
               | 
               | Think about all of the organisational structures you know
               | of.
               | 
               | Then ask yourself how is a cooperative fundamentally
               | untrustworthy?
        
               | hatthew wrote:
               | My first-order heuristic is that legitimate websites tend
               | to get one of the top TLDs (.com/.org, maybe .net/.io).
               | In general, why should I trust domain_name.xyz over
               | domain_name.com? There are obvious caveats, e.g. it
               | doesn't matter as much for generic words like "gem" and
               | for personal sites that I don't trust much in the first
               | place. In this case, 3 seconds of critical thinking makes
               | it clear that they have a plausible reason for choosing
               | .coop. But given that much of this controversy is
               | premised on toolchain trust, there's plenty of other
               | domains that seem even more trustworthy to me at first
               | glance, e.g. gem-lib.org, gemcoop.org, stuff like that.
               | 
               | Again, a domain name is pretty minor in the scope of this
               | whole fiasco, and I wouldn't have bothered with bringing
               | up this point, but on balance I agree with it.
        
               | JimmaDaRustla wrote:
               | > It's more like a childish revenge attempt.
               | 
               | Gaslight much? "coop" implies intention and
               | direction...you know, that thing that rubygems.org could
               | have used?
        
               | skywhopper wrote:
               | Coop as in co-op, as in "co-operative".
        
           | mijoharas wrote:
           | Isn't that how golang works?
           | 
           | I remember some complaints about the traffic that it
           | produced[0] (though I don't think it's a bad idea. Basically
           | federated downloads).
           | 
           | [0] https://sourcehut.org/blog/2023-01-09-gomodulemirror/
        
             | Imustaskforhelp wrote:
             | Combining this with something like tangled.sh/bluesky's AT
             | protocol or what forejo is working on in their activitypub
             | federation integration can actually make it genuinely
             | federated as well
             | 
             | Or maybe radicle as well if someone is okay with swapping
             | in a custom software but the hiccups can be too much imo so
             | tangled.sh is the most interesting thing to me right now
             | 
             | What is stopping something like gem.coop to exist with the
             | at protocol/tangled.sh??
        
         | x3n0ph3n3 wrote:
         | I'm starkly opposed to this ridiculous fragmenting of the
         | community. They can and should all go work out contribution
         | agreements with RubyCentral and get over their egos.
        
           | davidcelis wrote:
           | What makes you think they _haven't_ tried to work things out
           | with Ruby Central? As per a separate article[1], this seems
           | to be a last resort:
           | 
           | > "Since Ruby Central has informed us they will never allow
           | us to continue working on the projects they now claim they
           | own, that we successfully maintained and operated for the
           | last ten years, the former RubyGems team is launching
           | gem.coop today."
           | 
           | [1]: https://socket.dev/blog/gem-cooperative-emerges-as-a-
           | communi...
        
             | x3n0ph3n3 wrote:
             | I suspect many of these maintainers are making absurd
             | ultimatums of RubyCentral.
        
               | mijoharas wrote:
               | That's a strange suspicion. Why?
        
               | x3n0ph3n3 wrote:
               | Because many mass-resigned unless Andre was re-instated.
        
               | mijoharas wrote:
               | I think many mass resigned when their commit access was
               | taken away from their own project by a company that
               | doesn't have a right to do that.
               | 
               | Some people might consider that a dick move.
        
         | ljm wrote:
         | The main page itself provides little to no info so I'm going to
         | make a few assumptions that, to me, seem logical:
         | 
         | 1. It must depend on RubyGems in order to stay in sync, because
         | people publish to RubyGems.
         | 
         | 2. It has no UI to search or view gems, so still depends on
         | RubyGems for that.
         | 
         | Ignoring any question about technical detail or implementation:
         | there is zero practical reason or motivation to switch unless I
         | am ideologically aligned with the maintainers and their
         | reasoning.
         | 
         | As such, there is zero reason to even entertain the idea of
         | switching in a professional context. At best I'd have to care
         | enough to remember it for personal projects.
         | 
         | So it is with almost any fork. It'll either converge with the
         | mainline after achieving its goals, take over as the new status
         | quo, or fade into obscurity. If I don't have any direct stake
         | in that then I'm going to wait it out.
         | 
         | This isn't to discredit or discount the work or the reasoning,
         | of course. It arguably has a far better standing than forking
         | Rails because of DHH.
        
           | daitangio wrote:
           | True, but this is a new beginning.Give time and credit to
           | build an alternative. I think another repo server will not
           | harm anyone in the long run
        
             | dmix wrote:
             | So why are we being asked to have opinions on it?
             | 
             | rubygems works perfectly fine, if they end up having
             | maintenance or logistically issues as a result of their
             | changes then people may consider an alternative.
             | 
             | Otherwise this is mostly just hopes and dreams for a major
             | endeavor that'd probably take at least half a decade for
             | people to switch over - once there is real incentives.
        
       | realty_geek wrote:
       | Flagging this post is quite disturbing.
       | 
       | There is a conversation around this which needs to be had. Maybe
       | on bsky or x?
       | 
       | https://x.com/africajam/status/1975206106738901110
       | 
       | https://bsky.app/profile/indirect.io/post/3m2iq5p7eoc2j
        
       | sandstrom wrote:
       | I understand forking is sometimes needed, but it's also somewhat
       | discouraging to see that the differences couldn't be reconciled.
       | 
       | As long as people are aligned on advancing the Ruby ecosystem, I
       | think it should be possible to cooperate even if there are
       | disagreement in other areas [which political party you support,
       | differences in personal opinions, etc].
       | 
       | Maybe it'll be resolved eventually, just like Merb <> Rails,
       | Bundler <> RubyGems and RubyTogether <> RubyCentral were
       | eventually merged. That's what I'm hoping for!
        
       | thomascountz wrote:
       | If we isolate this from the recent controversy: in general, is an
       | alternative (yet mostly compatible) package source, package
       | manager, and/or language version manager neutral, good, or bad
       | for an open source ecosystem?
        
         | MrDarcy wrote:
         | Mostly good. Monopolies stagnate. Competition helps drive
         | innovation.
         | 
         | In open source too.
        
       | soraminazuki wrote:
       | So RubyGems has betrayed its community by ousting its
       | maintainers. When a community-focused alternative created by the
       | original maintainers is announced, it gets flagged on HN. What is
       | wrong with people?
       | 
       | This situation is eerily similar to the Freenode takeover[1] and
       | the subsequent formation of Libera Chat[2] a few years ago, even
       | down to the political leanings of those behind the takeover.
       | Except if the Freenode incident occurred today, there would be a
       | vocal portion on HN vehemently siding with Freenode solely based
       | on the perceived political affiliations of its owners.
       | Submissions about Libera Chat would face heavy flagging, much
       | like this one has.
       | 
       | It seems the Freenode team may have advanced their plans just a
       | bit too early.
       | 
       | [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27286628
       | 
       | [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27207734
        
         | sosodev wrote:
         | Flagging is definitely getting abused more on HN lately. The
         | consensus seems to be that politics and/or morals are
         | irrelevant outside of personal affairs so we must not have
         | these conversations here.
        
           | soraminazuki wrote:
           | Which is absurd because the hostile takeover of RubyGems
           | primarily involves technology, with serious implications for
           | the security and trust of nearly all Ruby code. Those
           | flagging this submission are the ones prioritizing politics
           | over this critical issue.
        
             | busterarm wrote:
             | Politically-charged ultimatums _caused_ the hostile
             | takeover of RubyGems. This whole thing is politics all the
             | way down.
        
               | soraminazuki wrote:
               | Someone withdrawing funding from Ruby Central doesn't
               | necessitate a hostile takeover of RubyGems. The
               | responsibility lies squarely on people doing the
               | takeover. Needless to say, you haven't shown me any
               | convincing arguments for suppressing the announcement of
               | gem.coop.
        
         | shevy-java wrote:
         | I could be wrong but it may be that some have an additional
         | agenda to try to make e. g. competition to Ruby Central fail.
         | You can see this on ruby-reddit, e. g. by u/f9ae8221b - either
         | way I think the by far best strategy for gem.coop is to address
         | all concerns and statements made, including the wrong ones.
         | Simply be better than rubygems.org - everywhere. (Also,
         | u/f9ae8221b is super-impatient; why can't he wait for a while?
         | Rome was not built in a day, it is strange how he thinks to
         | know the future. I don't know the future - let's wait and see.
         | In the worst case gem.coop will fail; in the best case it'll
         | fix numerous issues, including, by the way, gem/bundler not
         | having had the same functionality. And namespacing too; and
         | inactive accounts, and so on, and so forth. There is a ton of
         | things to do.)
        
       | insane_dreamer wrote:
       | Important move to maintain a free community. I'm switching over
       | to Gem.coop now.
        
       | salzig wrote:
       | Just a thought of mine: why don't we switch fully to git? Commit
       | signing, tag signing, Decentralize. Doesn't that sound like a
       | good alternativ?
        
         | zdragnar wrote:
         | Someone has to run the git server. Then, someone has to find
         | the git server to pull each gem from, since not every git
         | server is likely to be up-to-date with the each gem, or the
         | correct version. Since these are all decentralized, each
         | individual owner of a git server has to independently scale as
         | more people start using each one.
         | 
         | The benefit to being centralized is... everything is in one
         | place. Everything scales at once. Every update is available at
         | the same time.
         | 
         | We did this back in the day using artifactory and co. to proxy
         | NPM and a few other package managers as well as docker
         | containers and some other things. No third party service going
         | down could keep us from deploying.
         | 
         | Not everyone does it because as a solo developer or a small
         | team, as it feels like pointless overhead.
        
         | pornel wrote:
         | The git protocol is more complex and harder to scale. It's
         | especially wasteful if people are going to redownload all
         | packages every time their amnesiac CI runs.
         | 
         | Single-file archives are much easier to distribute.
         | 
         | Digests and signatures have standard algorithms, not unique to
         | git. Key/identity management is the hard part, but git doesn't
         | solve it for you (if you don't confuse git with GitHub).
        
           | webstrand wrote:
           | git bundles exist to solve the single-file caching and
           | distribution problems
        
       | pdntspa wrote:
       | Is this not an overreaction to the rubygems rubycentral fiasco?
        
         | florkbork wrote:
         | No.
         | 
         | Imagine if someone came into your house and changed all of the
         | locks on you/your family, because "security". You had built
         | that house from your original designs but the other party
         | claims they own it now because they happen to manage a series
         | of rental listings for houses built to your design. You had
         | even made it so the plans could be copied and modified in
         | private; if "security" were a real concern with about 10
         | minutes effort to do so.
         | 
         | Would you agree that it is right, do nothing? Or would you
         | rebuild something new, given how little time it takes to copy
         | the plans.
         | 
         | Swap "house design" for "software project" and "rental
         | listings" for "running an instance of your software project"
         | and you have the current situation.
         | 
         | Developers are free to choose the party they trust more.
        
       | sergiotapia wrote:
       | Is this political or does it have actual technical merit?
        
         | CaptainOfCoit wrote:
         | The best "technical" benefit from this is that if one goes
         | down, you could switch to the other in a pinch, so arguably
         | better than the status quo even if you disagree with the
         | organizational/"political" motives.
        
       | NARKOZ wrote:
       | FYI, this is Ruby Central's response:
       | https://rubycentral.org/news/our-stewardship-where-we-are-wh...
        
         | steveklabnik wrote:
         | This cannot be a response, as it was posted days before this
         | was released.
        
         | dubbel wrote:
         | The response you link to was published on September 30, 2025,
         | so it's not the response to gem.coop? I'd say gem.coop is the
         | response to Ruby Central's actions?
        
       | poorman wrote:
       | Here's the thing. They could have put up link to a git repository
       | where others can follow along with the maintenance of this
       | project, but here isn't one. There is a list of maintainers
       | explicitly mentioned on this page but no link to the git
       | repository. This leads me to think this project is not about the
       | code but about the people.
        
         | steveklabnik wrote:
         | Source lives here: https://github.com/gem-coop
        
           | byroot wrote:
           | The only public repo is a static website.
        
             | steveklabnik wrote:
             | Ah! Good catch. I saw the repo exists but didn't dig into
             | the contents, given that it's (as far as I know) purely a
             | proxy for rubygems at the moment, I figured it would be
             | pretty simple.
             | 
             | I agree they should post the whole source, regardless.
        
         | soraminazuki wrote:
         | It's a package repository. A link to an Ansible repository or
         | whatever doesn't need to be in the first announcement.
         | 
         | > This leads me to think this project is not about the code but
         | about the people.
         | 
         | Trust is of utmost importance to a package repository. Even
         | more so than code. A hostile takeover, like the one that
         | occurred with RubyGems, fundamentally undermines that trust. In
         | contrast, an alternative run by the original maintainers who
         | have built years of trust, represents a positive shift.
         | 
         | Unfortunately, it seems that your conclusion was drawn before
         | your justifications. When you invent justification though, at
         | least make sure you don't undermine your own position. Where's
         | the prominent link to the Git repo on rubygems.org top page?
         | 
         | https://web.archive.org/web/20251003112525/https://rubygems....
        
           | eek2121 wrote:
           | I think the issue that you overlook is that you assume this
           | group of individuals is trustworthy.
           | 
           | I'm not saying they aren't, but there are a LOT of
           | conflicting opinions about what happened, why it happened,
           | and who was right/wrong.
           | 
           | This it what tends to happen when money gets involved in a
           | project without a clear structure/business plan/guarantees
           | put in place. People just did whatever and made assumptions,
           | and now suddenly the whole community is rocking and rolling
           | thanks to the actions/view points of a select few.
        
       | ChrisArchitect wrote:
       | A brief announcement post:
       | https://andre.arko.net/2025/10/05/announcing-gem-coop/
        
       | varispeed wrote:
       | > initially his own, but eventually others--by paying themselves
       | a market hourly rate
       | 
       | This is massively flawed thinking. So called "market rate" is
       | actually a tool for value extraction from the workers and is not
       | connected in any shape or form with what they create for company
       | they work at. As corporations refer to this as if it was a
       | consensus (as in developer should earn $x an hour), they pay this
       | much and workers have no choice but to accept (if someone has
       | working class background and no trust fund, it is rather
       | impossible to throw the towel and start own business, sometimes
       | there are even regulations designed to keep workers captive).
       | 
       | In such a project, "founder level" people should pay themselves
       | as much as they think their worth is. Simple as that.
       | 
       | I often hear VC talking that if founder takes too much money,
       | it's a bad look. They just want to shame people into not taking
       | the slice they deserve.
       | 
       | It's interesting that IT is full of intelligent people, yet they
       | can't grasp how they are being played by the market frames set by
       | the rich.
        
         | eek2121 wrote:
         | hard disagree. For a project like this, all members should be
         | paid a fair, but not "get rich" sum. There are companies out
         | there that pay EVERYONE the same salary, all the way from CEO
         | to janitor. Mysteriously, those companies don't have folks
         | trying to hijack things, because nobody benefits.
         | 
         | It's almost like removing money from the equation stops all the
         | nasty stuff that happens inside organizations. Who'd have
         | thought?
        
       | eek2121 wrote:
       | I feel like a change to the way gems are distributed/downloaded
       | could fix this. Unfortunately, the very powers that could make
       | that happen are the powers that control the software and
       | infrastructure, and have the least incentive to improve things.
       | 
       | I honestly find it ridiculous that this situation happened to
       | begin with, and I also have no clue why people are hating on DHH.
       | 
       | The easiest way to kill an open source project is drama and
       | forking like this. Ruby has been around forever, obviously,
       | however it is far from the most used languages, and drama like
       | this just hurts the ecosystem as a whole.
       | 
       | As a former Ruby dev, it makes me sad.
        
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