I've been the leader of a project I assumed from another guy that he assumed from yet another guy and then the original guy even assumed leadership back after a

I've been the leader of a project I assumed from another guy that he assumed from yet another guy and then the original guy even assumed leadership back after a while. No one missed a beat. If you're involved in this community, you are most likely capable of tracking down the "correct" fork. Unfortunately, the "published gem" part is the one that has given me the most trouble historically. But now that pretty much everyone uses bundler for gems this should be a nonissue - you can even specify a branch of a fork that you'd like to build.