7 ms·

This is a great account of "what." I'm still struggling to understand the "why." (That's not an implicit criticism of the article, which is extremely apprecia

This is a great account of "what." I'm still struggling to understand the "why." (That's not an implicit criticism of the article, which is extremely appreciated because it's neutral and factual) I've been away from Ruby for a few years but Shopify always seemed like a huge net positive, sponsoring lots of valuable work on both Ruby and Rails. I never followed Ruby community happenings very closely but I'm not aware of negative feelings towards their community role in the past.

tyre 1y ago
Plus one. Reading through this, I’m not sure what the fear is of Shopify taking a larger role. They’ve been strong contributors to Ruby for a really long time. Not that I agree with the actions, but I can’t parse what nefarious motives they might have from this article.
- LightBug1 1y ago
  Aren't they a profit motivated company? I'm not necessarily saying that's a bad thing. But it inevitably means they will not always be aligned.
  - hibikir 1y ago
    Anon profit, or even a random person, has their own motivations too that will not be aligned. Linus was herding cats in the kernel back when few contributors were paid by corporations to do it. Anyone that has spent any time on a large-ish OSS project has seen bad maintainers with poor incentives, as seen from the outside
    - throwaway290 1y ago
      if there are contributors with various jobs it is very different than if the package is owned by a big for profit
- Etheryte 1y ago
  Replace Shopfiy with Microsoft, Oracle or etc and surely you can see what worries people might have around a move like this. Just because a company has a positive imago does not mean that their motives align with that of the community.
  - neilk 1y ago
    Microsoft and Oracle sold closed source software that had obtained tremendous leverage in their fields, if not outright monopolies. Historically, Microsoft and Oracle’s business models were threatened by open source. They have reacted in various ways over decades: alternately resisting, embracing, or acquiring control of important projects. However, Shopify sells SAAS thst runs on open source. What does it benefit them to take over key aspects of infrastructure? If they disliked what was happening with the OSS tools, they are big and rich enough to maintain forks or their own toolchain. The OP seems to be associating the start of this controversy with some feud between DHH and the founder of Sidekiq. Shopify is indeed quite aligned with DHH. And there’s some controversy about so-called supply chain attacks, which I understand might inspire a call for a more locked-down organization. But as an outsider I am confused.
- bradgessler 1y ago
  There’s a lack of transparency playing out compounded by a poor job rolling out would should be the equivalent of boring corporate security bureaucracy. Usually when this kind of stuff is rolled out, it’s agreed upon in some form and documented. Then when people are surprised, it’s a matter of pointing to the section in the doc that’s relevant and everybody goes on their way. From the outside it appears this had none of that, so people are understandably surprised, sad, or angry. Since there’s a lack of transparency, people are filling in the blanks.
- motbus3 1y ago
  Totally on that one. Recently investments in homebrew almost turned it to be a paid tool. I can totally see someone seizing the opportunity there. (And if you think it is a good idea, you are a terrible person) I work for a small company who helps financially for ruby community, and they strongly advocate for other same size companies to do the same so there is balance. It would be terrible for pypi, rubygems, brew and other repos to be used as political or economical tools. Large companies can fork and keep living for a while or pay the cost. But for everyone else, including people developing ideas at home, it would be a shot through the heart. So if you have a company that can help those orgs, press them to do so. If you have 5 USD to help, also do it. It makes the difference.
  - nightpool 1y ago
    > Recently investments in homebrew almost turned it to be a paid tool. Can you say more about this? I haven't heard about this before.
    - motbus3 1y ago
      I'm sure you can easily find a out its creator saying he cannot make a living from brew despite putting lots of effort in it. Initial plan was to bake some sort of payment in it so companies would need to pay, then it became something people would be for everyone and then, I guess, he finally decided that it would be too much stress to get people to accept the fact so he went to make Tea For me, this means that brew will eventually phase out.
rancor 1y ago
It took a fair amount of reading between the lines, but here's what appears to have happened: 1) People and entities with partial control over RubyGems attempted to cancel DHH. 2) In response, elements aligned with DHH kicked the former out of RubyGems. 3) Everyone involved is now attempting to legitimize their motives as "good engineering." In other words, "When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die."
- johntdaly 1y ago
  Thank you, this explains it for me. The situation is still stupid tough...
  - rancor 1y ago
    Yeah, it's a bad scene, the Ruby community isn't nearly big enough to sustain major fractures.
- arresin 1y ago
  > 1) People and entities with partial control over RubyGems attempted to cancel DHH Ok there it is. That would explain why they’re being so cagey. I thought there had to more to this.
  - jmcgough 1y ago
    Nah, DHH has too much power and authority to be "cancelled". One person pulled his donations - a very generous continuous gift - because he didn't want to fund Ruby Central if they continued to platform bigotry. Ruby Central screwed themselves by relying on basically two large donors for their funding, and then offended one of those two donors.
    - Brenntron 1y ago
      This is a hell of a way to find out DHH is on the anti-DEI wagon.
    - hitekker 1y ago
mvdtnz 1y ago
[flagged]
- sanderjd 1y ago
  The confusing thing to me about Shopify's role in this - assuming this reporting is accurate - is that if they think having a dependency on open source infrastructure like this is an existential threat, then you would think the solution is to do their own work to break that dependency, not to throw their weight around in this public and dramatic way.
  - shadowgovt 1y ago
    If they can just consolidate control of the supply chain, they don't have to spend the eng-hours replacing their open source dependencies and/or forking them for internal maintenance. It's the kind of thing that can be the net cheapest option in the long run (see also: Facebook creating and open-sourcing one of the most popular JavaScript interactive-UI frameworks, resulting in them having control of that ecosystem).
    - sanderjd 1y ago
      Seems like a much riskier move to me. Maybe this will just blow over and it will all work out for them, but I wouldn't feel certain of that outcome if I were them. Agreed that if they had created and fully controlled the whole thing from the start, like your Facebook example, that would make more sense. But this aggressive addition of a new owner and removal of existing owners and maintainers seems very hostile and risky to me.
  - tremon 1y ago
    DHH is on Shopify's board: https://www.shopify.com/news/david-heinemeier-hansson-board https://www.shopify.com/news/david-heinemeier-hansson-board That should illuminate their role in all this.
- watwut 1y ago
  It does not sound like Shopify were adults in the room. Sounds like they were the assholes essentially stealing in the room. Pulling funding is legitimate step on the other hand.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
X0nic 1y ago
The "what" seems to be purely a reaction to this article DHH posted: https://world.hey.com/dhh/as-i-remember-london-e7d38e64 https://world.hey.com/dhh/as-i-remember-london-e7d38e64 Apparently, the reason is having an incorrect opinion.
- lowsong 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - gedy 1y ago
    I think that term gets tossed around too much flippantly - if you've ever ran into real white supremacists they are a magnitude more scary and dangerous than DHH's dopey opinion.
    - JohnBooty 1y ago
      Regardless of whether or not that's the correct term for DHH.... real white supremacists they are a magnitude more scary and dangerous than DHH's dopey opinion I would like to caution you against the use of the term "real" white supremacists. Are you imagining a "real" white supremacist as guy who burns crosses, is covered with racist tattoos, and openly spouts slurs? Because the effective and dangerous ones are a hell of a lot more stealthy than that. Racism in general, including white supremacy, is more accurately viewed as a spectrum and not a binary racist/non-racist divide.
      - gedy 1y ago
        > viewed as a spectrum and not a binary racist/non-racist divide That's exactly my point why I suggest not watering down the term white supremacy with "I hate this annoying opinion when I interpret it maximally". Calling DHH a white supremacist is silly.
        queenkjuul 1y ago
        He went on the Internet and said London is worse because it's less white than before. That's at least mild white supremacism
maroon_unperson 1y ago
It sounds like a mix of good intentions, misunderstandings, and poor communication. Shopify wanted to put in place better goverance and access control, to reduce the risk of a supply chain attack and put a deadline on that. Part time maintenaners left it to the last minute, didn't consult or communicate well and then over exerted their influence by taking over things without consensus to do so. Existing maintainers then rightfully alarmed, when it all could probably have been handled better. Doesn't help that the rift over a competing tool being created probably played a part in some of the heavy handedness. DHH's drift to white supremacy probably hasn't helped either, but likely neither are the cause here.
- saghm 1y ago
  I don't know about this interpretation. The blog post points out that one of the conditions of the continued funding by Shopify was literally removing one of the specific maintainers of the stolen tooling who had been working on it them for a decade, and it provided ample evidence that this was funding that essentially was the only thing keeping the service afloat. It's kind of hard to imagine threatening to sink the entire RubyGems service unless the people in charge of it steal ownership of a related but separately owned tool to force out one specific person as "good intentions" but with "poor communication" when it's presented the way it has been by the perpetrators. To preempt any potential objections on the basis of the removed funding from Sidekiq based similarly on a relationship with a single person, there are two pretty crucial differences: the funding was withdrawn because of the relationship the organization had itself with someone, rather than someone involved with something that literally had to be stolen to terminate their involvement, and the funding withdrawn by Sidekiq was done openly with umambiguously communicated intentions. Deciding to not give money to an organization because of an actual choice that they made and tell everyone that is just being transparent about your morals; secretively pressuring an organization to exploit their existing connections to force someone out of a project they don't own and then having them represent it publicly as something they chose to do on their own for the greater good might as well be out of the playbook of organized crime or foreign intelligence services.

tyre 1y ago

Plus one. Reading through this, I’m not sure what the fear is of Shopify taking a larger role. They’ve been strong contributors to Ruby for a really long time. Not that I agree with the actions, but I can’t parse what nefarious motives they might have from this article.

LightBug1 1y ago
Aren't they a profit motivated company? I'm not necessarily saying that's a bad thing. But it inevitably means they will not always be aligned.
- hibikir 1y ago
  Anon profit, or even a random person, has their own motivations too that will not be aligned. Linus was herding cats in the kernel back when few contributors were paid by corporations to do it. Anyone that has spent any time on a large-ish OSS project has seen bad maintainers with poor incentives, as seen from the outside
  - throwaway290 1y ago
    if there are contributors with various jobs it is very different than if the package is owned by a big for profit
Etheryte 1y ago
Replace Shopfiy with Microsoft, Oracle or etc and surely you can see what worries people might have around a move like this. Just because a company has a positive imago does not mean that their motives align with that of the community.
- neilk 1y ago
  Microsoft and Oracle sold closed source software that had obtained tremendous leverage in their fields, if not outright monopolies. Historically, Microsoft and Oracle’s business models were threatened by open source. They have reacted in various ways over decades: alternately resisting, embracing, or acquiring control of important projects. However, Shopify sells SAAS thst runs on open source. What does it benefit them to take over key aspects of infrastructure? If they disliked what was happening with the OSS tools, they are big and rich enough to maintain forks or their own toolchain. The OP seems to be associating the start of this controversy with some feud between DHH and the founder of Sidekiq. Shopify is indeed quite aligned with DHH. And there’s some controversy about so-called supply chain attacks, which I understand might inspire a call for a more locked-down organization. But as an outsider I am confused.
bradgessler 1y ago
There’s a lack of transparency playing out compounded by a poor job rolling out would should be the equivalent of boring corporate security bureaucracy. Usually when this kind of stuff is rolled out, it’s agreed upon in some form and documented. Then when people are surprised, it’s a matter of pointing to the section in the doc that’s relevant and everybody goes on their way. From the outside it appears this had none of that, so people are understandably surprised, sad, or angry. Since there’s a lack of transparency, people are filling in the blanks.
motbus3 1y ago
Totally on that one. Recently investments in homebrew almost turned it to be a paid tool. I can totally see someone seizing the opportunity there. (And if you think it is a good idea, you are a terrible person) I work for a small company who helps financially for ruby community, and they strongly advocate for other same size companies to do the same so there is balance. It would be terrible for pypi, rubygems, brew and other repos to be used as political or economical tools. Large companies can fork and keep living for a while or pay the cost. But for everyone else, including people developing ideas at home, it would be a shot through the heart. So if you have a company that can help those orgs, press them to do so. If you have 5 USD to help, also do it. It makes the difference.
- nightpool 1y ago
  > Recently investments in homebrew almost turned it to be a paid tool. Can you say more about this? I haven't heard about this before.
  - motbus3 1y ago
    I'm sure you can easily find a out its creator saying he cannot make a living from brew despite putting lots of effort in it. Initial plan was to bake some sort of payment in it so companies would need to pay, then it became something people would be for everyone and then, I guess, he finally decided that it would be too much stress to get people to accept the fact so he went to make Tea For me, this means that brew will eventually phase out.

rancor 1y ago

It took a fair amount of reading between the lines, but here's what appears to have happened: 1) People and entities with partial control over RubyGems attempted to cancel DHH. 2) In response, elements aligned with DHH kicked the former out of RubyGems. 3) Everyone involved is now attempting to legitimize their motives as "good engineering." In other words, "When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die."

johntdaly 1y ago
Thank you, this explains it for me. The situation is still stupid tough...
- rancor 1y ago
  Yeah, it's a bad scene, the Ruby community isn't nearly big enough to sustain major fractures.
arresin 1y ago
> 1) People and entities with partial control over RubyGems attempted to cancel DHH Ok there it is. That would explain why they’re being so cagey. I thought there had to more to this.
- jmcgough 1y ago
  Nah, DHH has too much power and authority to be "cancelled". One person pulled his donations - a very generous continuous gift - because he didn't want to fund Ruby Central if they continued to platform bigotry. Ruby Central screwed themselves by relying on basically two large donors for their funding, and then offended one of those two donors.
  - Brenntron 1y ago
    This is a hell of a way to find out DHH is on the anti-DEI wagon.
  - hitekker 1y ago

mvdtnz 1y ago

[flagged]

sanderjd 1y ago
The confusing thing to me about Shopify's role in this - assuming this reporting is accurate - is that if they think having a dependency on open source infrastructure like this is an existential threat, then you would think the solution is to do their own work to break that dependency, not to throw their weight around in this public and dramatic way.
- shadowgovt 1y ago
  If they can just consolidate control of the supply chain, they don't have to spend the eng-hours replacing their open source dependencies and/or forking them for internal maintenance. It's the kind of thing that can be the net cheapest option in the long run (see also: Facebook creating and open-sourcing one of the most popular JavaScript interactive-UI frameworks, resulting in them having control of that ecosystem).
  - sanderjd 1y ago
    Seems like a much riskier move to me. Maybe this will just blow over and it will all work out for them, but I wouldn't feel certain of that outcome if I were them. Agreed that if they had created and fully controlled the whole thing from the start, like your Facebook example, that would make more sense. But this aggressive addition of a new owner and removal of existing owners and maintainers seems very hostile and risky to me.
- tremon 1y ago
  DHH is on Shopify's board: https://www.shopify.com/news/david-heinemeier-hansson-board https://www.shopify.com/news/david-heinemeier-hansson-board That should illuminate their role in all this.
watwut 1y ago
It does not sound like Shopify were adults in the room. Sounds like they were the assholes essentially stealing in the room. Pulling funding is legitimate step on the other hand.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

X0nic 1y ago

The "what" seems to be purely a reaction to this article DHH posted: https://world.hey.com/dhh/as-i-remember-london-e7d38e64 https://world.hey.com/dhh/as-i-remember-london-e7d38e64 Apparently, the reason is having an incorrect opinion.

lowsong 1y ago
[flagged]
- gedy 1y ago
  I think that term gets tossed around too much flippantly - if you've ever ran into real white supremacists they are a magnitude more scary and dangerous than DHH's dopey opinion.
  - JohnBooty 1y ago
    Regardless of whether or not that's the correct term for DHH.... real white supremacists they are a magnitude more scary and dangerous than DHH's dopey opinion I would like to caution you against the use of the term "real" white supremacists. Are you imagining a "real" white supremacist as guy who burns crosses, is covered with racist tattoos, and openly spouts slurs? Because the effective and dangerous ones are a hell of a lot more stealthy than that. Racism in general, including white supremacy, is more accurately viewed as a spectrum and not a binary racist/non-racist divide.
    - gedy 1y ago
      > viewed as a spectrum and not a binary racist/non-racist divide That's exactly my point why I suggest not watering down the term white supremacy with "I hate this annoying opinion when I interpret it maximally". Calling DHH a white supremacist is silly.
      - queenkjuul 1y ago
        He went on the Internet and said London is worse because it's less white than before. That's at least mild white supremacism

maroon_unperson 1y ago

It sounds like a mix of good intentions, misunderstandings, and poor communication. Shopify wanted to put in place better goverance and access control, to reduce the risk of a supply chain attack and put a deadline on that. Part time maintenaners left it to the last minute, didn't consult or communicate well and then over exerted their influence by taking over things without consensus to do so. Existing maintainers then rightfully alarmed, when it all could probably have been handled better. Doesn't help that the rift over a competing tool being created probably played a part in some of the heavy handedness. DHH's drift to white supremacy probably hasn't helped either, but likely neither are the cause here.

saghm 1y ago
I don't know about this interpretation. The blog post points out that one of the conditions of the continued funding by Shopify was literally removing one of the specific maintainers of the stolen tooling who had been working on it them for a decade, and it provided ample evidence that this was funding that essentially was the only thing keeping the service afloat. It's kind of hard to imagine threatening to sink the entire RubyGems service unless the people in charge of it steal ownership of a related but separately owned tool to force out one specific person as "good intentions" but with "poor communication" when it's presented the way it has been by the perpetrators. To preempt any potential objections on the basis of the removed funding from Sidekiq based similarly on a relationship with a single person, there are two pretty crucial differences: the funding was withdrawn because of the relationship the organization had itself with someone, rather than someone involved with something that literally had to be stolen to terminate their involvement, and the funding withdrawn by Sidekiq was done openly with umambiguously communicated intentions. Deciding to not give money to an organization because of an actual choice that they made and tell everyone that is just being transparent about your morals; secretively pressuring an organization to exploit their existing connections to force someone out of a project they don't own and then having them represent it publicly as something they chose to do on their own for the greater good might as well be out of the playbook of organized crime or foreign intelligence services.