It provides mostly a counter-statement to what RubyCentral wrote.
What the "real" or closer-to-the-truth statement is we may never be able to find out, but on some singular points both sides would have to agree, e. g. timeline (for the most part).
How so? Does Hiroshi handle proposals at github better? Because I have not seen evidence for that. Ruby feels much more locked down nowadays. It has always had a Japanese driven programming language, of course, but now it feels much more closely aligned to first tier japanese and second tier non-japanese (unless they worked at/for shopify or github). And I am pretty certain to not be the only one who has had the same impression (again, excluding e. g. shopify or microsoft).
Underrated comment. Unfortunately too many people won't be able to see this fact past the battle lines they've already drawn.
Those of us who just want to get our work done do though. This whole drama is so exhausting and I'm not surprised by which party is still trying to draw the pitchforks out.
On some singular points I disagree with Arko. For instance, the
bundler/gem situation - while he mentions the trademark issue,
and I have no comment to make about this, ruby itself naturally
should provide and have a use case for distributing code to
other people. Other languages have that too, see Rust + cargo.
On other points I agree, and it is really unfortunate how things
changed. I remember having used ruby before gems existed; then
I think four guys (if I recall correctly) created gems within
some days. From there it became more widely used.
Fast forward some time, until recently, and things really changed
to the worse. The first time I noticed this was when suddenly
shopify corporate hackers spawned over everywhere and, strangely
enough, tried to dictate corporate behaviour and rules onto the
ruby ecosystem. Tons of ruby devs were all employed by shopify,
and shopify here behaved very strangely overall. The isssues
were not the same as github and then github-Microsoft - something
is really strange with shopify. One shopify corporate dev demanded
that everyone must verify who they are before publishing to rubygems;
another shopify dev tried to lecture me in how to use the official
ruby tracker. I used that one for almost 15 years before and some
young 20-years older corporate hacker suddenly tries to lecture
people +twice their own age. Then suddenly the rules for rubygems.org
also changed, to appease a corporate agenda:
They can hijack gems and not bother to notify you. (Naturally they
need to be able to distribute the code, otherwise the gem ecosystem
would make no sense, but look at the legalese crap - that is now
a project under corporate control.)
What made me actually retire, after trying to talk some sense into
these new accounts that seized control, was the 100.000 download
limit. Past that point I can no longer remove my code (unless I
delete my profile, which I did, since I don't accept shopify or
whoever else hijack my code; note that on github I can remove my
own code no matter how many downloads occurred. I also told
rubygems.org to host gems THEY want to offer themselves, rather
than abuse and force-restrict ruby developers as the 100k download
limit was. That was the year before Hiroshi Shibata mass-purged
ruby developers.)
The real tragedy, though, is not the in-fight between Arko and
RubyCentral, whoever is the new corporate Overlord. The real
tragedy is that financial interests can totally pwn an ecosystem.
And unfortunately, I am also 100% certain that Hiroshi Shibata
did not act on his own but had direct approval by matz, which
makes this even more problematic. But anyway, I think rather than
dwell on the past, one another disagreement I have with arko is
that there indeed has to be a way to move forward. This won't be
easy. IMO, the structure of ruby should be changed, to completely
disentangle any financial interest that keeps on driving policy
changes. That is, in my opinion, the biggest issue - while I blame
shopify for the most part, the whole situation could be exploited
by any other big money giver too. That's not good. That's not healthy.
That should change.
The whole notion of constantly shuffling in different people into
RubyCentral, in hope that this will "fix everything" ... is naive.
That's not going to work. IMO, the better approach was when gems
was run by people from the community. Yes, I understand the issue
of funding and time allocation so I am not saying it has to be the
way it used to be, even though I found the early days of ruby + gems
MUCH much better than the shopify era (I am not even going into what
DHH writes - even AI would get angry at having to write what DHH
writes nowadays).
Unfortunately this is now a chicken-egg problem, because ruby is
struggling - and declining, let's be honest here. The language in
and by itself is great and I don't think anyone ever claimed
otherwise about the language itself, it is well-designed. But the
ecosystem changed, both due to external and internal reasons, and
it has not changed to the better, IMO.
Agreed. Though, I don't even think rails + DHH is the biggest issue. I did not use or need rails and had no issue with DHH, but now that he is driving shopify policy and ruby devs were eliminated, the situation is no longer neutral. Something changed to the worse in the ruby ecosystem, that is clear. I get less restriction at github-Microsoft than I get at rubygems.org - that part in itself is super-strange. The folks who were responsible for ruining rubygems.org should really reconsider. Look at how the new visual look is - it sucks. (It was not great before, mind you, but finding things takes much longer than it used to be before; that visual change is only perhaps 2 or 3 months old. Who is driving these crazy changes?)
That’s a heck of a thing for somebody to go through. I’m sorry man.
It provides mostly a counter-statement to what RubyCentral wrote.
What the "real" or closer-to-the-truth statement is we may never be able to find out, but on some singular points both sides would have to agree, e. g. timeline (for the most part).
Did Arko ever explain why he was trying to sell access to Rubygem's web access logs?
He did not try to do that, he proposed a monetization scheme
Meanwhile, bundler and rubygems are being maintained ably, if not better, by hsbt.
How so? Does Hiroshi handle proposals at github better? Because I have not seen evidence for that. Ruby feels much more locked down nowadays. It has always had a Japanese driven programming language, of course, but now it feels much more closely aligned to first tier japanese and second tier non-japanese (unless they worked at/for shopify or github). And I am pretty certain to not be the only one who has had the same impression (again, excluding e. g. shopify or microsoft).
Dude there's 12 comments in this thread (including this one) and you're 4 of them and definitely the biggest wall of text out of any of em.
In fact EVERY time this topic comes up, you're all over it just like this.
Underrated comment. Unfortunately too many people won't be able to see this fact past the battle lines they've already drawn.
Those of us who just want to get our work done do though. This whole drama is so exhausting and I'm not surprised by which party is still trying to draw the pitchforks out.
On some singular points I disagree with Arko. For instance, the bundler/gem situation - while he mentions the trademark issue, and I have no comment to make about this, ruby itself naturally should provide and have a use case for distributing code to other people. Other languages have that too, see Rust + cargo.
On other points I agree, and it is really unfortunate how things changed. I remember having used ruby before gems existed; then I think four guys (if I recall correctly) created gems within some days. From there it became more widely used.
Fast forward some time, until recently, and things really changed to the worse. The first time I noticed this was when suddenly shopify corporate hackers spawned over everywhere and, strangely enough, tried to dictate corporate behaviour and rules onto the ruby ecosystem. Tons of ruby devs were all employed by shopify, and shopify here behaved very strangely overall. The isssues were not the same as github and then github-Microsoft - something is really strange with shopify. One shopify corporate dev demanded that everyone must verify who they are before publishing to rubygems; another shopify dev tried to lecture me in how to use the official ruby tracker. I used that one for almost 15 years before and some young 20-years older corporate hacker suddenly tries to lecture people +twice their own age. Then suddenly the rules for rubygems.org also changed, to appease a corporate agenda:
https://rubygems.org/policies
They can hijack gems and not bother to notify you. (Naturally they need to be able to distribute the code, otherwise the gem ecosystem would make no sense, but look at the legalese crap - that is now a project under corporate control.)
What made me actually retire, after trying to talk some sense into these new accounts that seized control, was the 100.000 download limit. Past that point I can no longer remove my code (unless I delete my profile, which I did, since I don't accept shopify or whoever else hijack my code; note that on github I can remove my own code no matter how many downloads occurred. I also told rubygems.org to host gems THEY want to offer themselves, rather than abuse and force-restrict ruby developers as the 100k download limit was. That was the year before Hiroshi Shibata mass-purged ruby developers.)
The real tragedy, though, is not the in-fight between Arko and RubyCentral, whoever is the new corporate Overlord. The real tragedy is that financial interests can totally pwn an ecosystem. And unfortunately, I am also 100% certain that Hiroshi Shibata did not act on his own but had direct approval by matz, which makes this even more problematic. But anyway, I think rather than dwell on the past, one another disagreement I have with arko is that there indeed has to be a way to move forward. This won't be easy. IMO, the structure of ruby should be changed, to completely disentangle any financial interest that keeps on driving policy changes. That is, in my opinion, the biggest issue - while I blame shopify for the most part, the whole situation could be exploited by any other big money giver too. That's not good. That's not healthy. That should change.
The whole notion of constantly shuffling in different people into RubyCentral, in hope that this will "fix everything" ... is naive. That's not going to work. IMO, the better approach was when gems was run by people from the community. Yes, I understand the issue of funding and time allocation so I am not saying it has to be the way it used to be, even though I found the early days of ruby + gems MUCH much better than the shopify era (I am not even going into what DHH writes - even AI would get angry at having to write what DHH writes nowadays).
Unfortunately this is now a chicken-egg problem, because ruby is struggling - and declining, let's be honest here. The language in and by itself is great and I don't think anyone ever claimed otherwise about the language itself, it is well-designed. But the ecosystem changed, both due to external and internal reasons, and it has not changed to the better, IMO.
Tragic
a lot of tragic things keep happening to the ruby ecosystem.
the language has improved in the recent additions - ractors, it's faster now & always a pleasure to write.
however the ruby ecosystem has a tendency to deny reality - ruby is falling down rankings - people deny that's false but everything points to that.
the ecosystem is not willing to move away from rails. & DHHs antics don't help either.
Agreed. Though, I don't even think rails + DHH is the biggest issue. I did not use or need rails and had no issue with DHH, but now that he is driving shopify policy and ruby devs were eliminated, the situation is no longer neutral. Something changed to the worse in the ruby ecosystem, that is clear. I get less restriction at github-Microsoft than I get at rubygems.org - that part in itself is super-strange. The folks who were responsible for ruining rubygems.org should really reconsider. Look at how the new visual look is - it sucks. (It was not great before, mind you, but finding things takes much longer than it used to be before; that visual change is only perhaps 2 or 3 months old. Who is driving these crazy changes?)