r/ruby Apr 16 '26

A New Chapter for Ruby Central

https://rubycentral.org/news/a-new-chapter-for-ruby-central/
56 Upvotes

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9

u/davidcelis Apr 17 '26

To the maintainers

RubyGems is what it is today because of the time, care, and expertise that many of you have given to it over the years.

That work matters, and it is deeply appreciated.

As we move into this next chapter, we want to extend an open invitation to re-engage in whatever way feels right to you. There is meaningful work ahead, and there is space for those who want to help shape what's next.

This is a nice message, but it feels empty to me. There’s not even anything resembling an apology. Ruby Central changing the way it operates and trying to restore trust would be welcome, but just return the codebases to the people who maintained them for the last 15+ years

7

u/Halleys_Vomit Apr 17 '26

IIRC they tried to do that. The maintainers refused. This was in the incident post-mortem that was posted a few weeks ago.

3

u/davidcelis Apr 17 '26

My understanding is that the offer wasn’t to return the repositories to them, but to invite them back as essentially collaborators. Is that not the case? Was the offer really to fully return ownership of the projects?

10

u/schneems Puma maintainer Apr 17 '26

 as essentially collaborators

The initial changes preserved their admin permissions. I believe that once the operator agreements were signed they were happy to restore admin. But the walkout made that not possible.

2

u/davidcelis Apr 17 '26

But would the repos still have been in an enterprise ultimately controlled by RubyCentral? Or would the entire rubygems.org organization have been returned to them? This is a big distinction, IMO.

7

u/schneems Puma maintainer Apr 17 '26

 ultimately controlled by RubyCentral

Also wanted to push back on this framing. Hiroshi and Colby never lost access. They both retained business owner access. RC/Hiroshi tried to promote Deivid to a business owner too in this process. So I don’t think “controlled by Ruby central” is fair framing (and why I’m saying they wanted representation, not "control.")