I’m not trying to follow the latest Ruby dustup and don’t have a stake in it but as an Airbnb alum I did find this part particularly identifiable:
“Yet, Ruby and Rails remain the default stack at Shopify, and the only reason for that is the CEO. Every Shopify employee knows that suggesting straying away from Ruby wouldn’t fly there. And I’m convinced that if it were anyone else at the helm, Shopify would have joined the long list of companies that attempted to migrate to something else and are now stuck with both a Ruby monolith and a ton of half-migrated micro-services in Java or Go.”
Funny because Airbnb was one of the examples I had in mind when I wrote this (but granted it's been a long time since I heard about the state of their infra, so might be outdated by now).
I think this is just an incredibly well written blog post regardless of the topic. I often get frustrated when I realize I'm working or conversing with individuals who don't fully understand the actual mechanisms for _how_ money creates perverse incentives in the real world, how systems (*of sufficient scale) that rely on everyone to be perfect and good natured are flawed, and how just because two things rhyme doesn't mean they're the same thing.
And, though I'm sure the author wasn't particularly concerned with his literary technique, this was all foreshadowed discussing the strained relationship with Tobi (maximalist vs nuance).
This is a very broadly applicable/generalizable blog post that I think should be read even if you don't care about the specific ruby drama going on.
> Over the past decade, people in the community, not just Shopify employees, started to conclude that rubygems and bundler were being monetized by some key maintainers.
The logical conclusion of this argument is that if you maintain a critical piece of infrastructure with a "large moat" you are apparently expected to live in poverty, or turn it over to a $2.68B revenue per quarter company because trying to extract $60k/yr of living expenses from rubygems is a bridge too far.
And I just don't buy all the framing that donating your employee's time is fundamentally different from donating money.
No one should live poor, but any entity that takes donations (code, money, etc.) should be VERY above board with disclosures and conflicts of interest. The point isn't that they can't make money, the point is it shouldn't be a secret.
Yes I would actually be mad if a volunteer at an org sold member lists or gave preferential treatment to outside sponsors as a way to make ends meet for himself, for example. Like are you kidding? If you don’t like the terms and pay, change them or don’t sign up. Anything else - like monetizing off your own insider access - is underhanded and unethical.
> My former coworkers also told me their side of the story, and it’s absolutely nothing like what has been alleged so far. I deeply trust these two people, and I can’t possibly imagine they’d be lying to me, but I’d understand if you don’t want to take my word for it.
> I don’t know when their side of the story will come out, nor if it will come out at all, but I do hope it comes out soon and with receipts. Seeing so many good-natured and well-intentioned people get demonized like they have been over the last few weeks is depressing.
I haven't written Ruby professionally since 2019 (and don't have any plans to return to it currently), so my perspective on this is mostly that of an outsider who happened to be involved in the community for a few years in the past but otherwise doesn't really have much opinion about any of the organizations or people involved in all of the recent controversy. All that being said, it's hard for me to understand what the mindset is of authors of blog posts like this that attempt to provide context by providing extremely detailed history of events that involve the various personalities party to the current events right up until the actual controversy, at which point the only claims made are fairly vague allusions to there being more to the story with even a hint at what that might be. I understand the instinct to want to defend people you have good relationships with (or at least, have only had friction with in the past due around unrelated things), but at least to me, it doesn't really come across as anything other than an implicit attempt at damage control.
The grievances against Shopify seem pretty legitimate based on the only knowledge we have as outsiders. As far as I'm aware, the only concrete explanation of what happened that has been shared publicly is that they told RubyCentral that they either needed to take over the Github organization that owns bundler and the offline CLI RubyGems tool (not to be confused with the RubyGems.org package repository that RubyCentral did already own) and remove at least some of the specific external maintainers or they'd pull their funding. There have been proposed explanations for this around supply-chain security, but as far as I've read, no one has publicly stated a different set of events for what led up to the change in ownership of the Github organization, and without that, I don't think any amount of references to there being another side to the story will sound particularly convincing.
> at which point the only claims made are fairly vague allusions to there being more to the story with even a hint at what that might be.
The goal of my post was mostly to provide "character evidence".
It's not for me to relay accusations made by others that I can't substantiate myself. Some other people did that previously and that is what caused that massive controversy.
> The grievances against Shopify seem pretty legitimate based on the only knowledge we have as outsiders.
My whole post is about how these allegations are horseshit.
"Over the past decade, people in the community, not just Shopify employees, started to conclude that rubygems and bundler were being monetized by some key maintainers."
Is being monetized wrong? If so...
Is there any REAL evidence?
It's bizarre to talk about this WITHOUT evidence. Is it a witch hunt?
This story is bizarre on so many levels, I have no idea what's going on, but extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
BMorearty|4 months ago
“Yet, Ruby and Rails remain the default stack at Shopify, and the only reason for that is the CEO. Every Shopify employee knows that suggesting straying away from Ruby wouldn’t fly there. And I’m convinced that if it were anyone else at the helm, Shopify would have joined the long list of companies that attempted to migrate to something else and are now stuck with both a Ruby monolith and a ton of half-migrated micro-services in Java or Go.”
byroot|4 months ago
hahahacorn|4 months ago
And, though I'm sure the author wasn't particularly concerned with his literary technique, this was all foreshadowed discussing the strained relationship with Tobi (maximalist vs nuance).
This is a very broadly applicable/generalizable blog post that I think should be read even if you don't care about the specific ruby drama going on.
lamontcg|4 months ago
The logical conclusion of this argument is that if you maintain a critical piece of infrastructure with a "large moat" you are apparently expected to live in poverty, or turn it over to a $2.68B revenue per quarter company because trying to extract $60k/yr of living expenses from rubygems is a bridge too far.
And I just don't buy all the framing that donating your employee's time is fundamentally different from donating money.
TheCleric|4 months ago
ilikehurdles|4 months ago
saghm|4 months ago
> I don’t know when their side of the story will come out, nor if it will come out at all, but I do hope it comes out soon and with receipts. Seeing so many good-natured and well-intentioned people get demonized like they have been over the last few weeks is depressing.
I haven't written Ruby professionally since 2019 (and don't have any plans to return to it currently), so my perspective on this is mostly that of an outsider who happened to be involved in the community for a few years in the past but otherwise doesn't really have much opinion about any of the organizations or people involved in all of the recent controversy. All that being said, it's hard for me to understand what the mindset is of authors of blog posts like this that attempt to provide context by providing extremely detailed history of events that involve the various personalities party to the current events right up until the actual controversy, at which point the only claims made are fairly vague allusions to there being more to the story with even a hint at what that might be. I understand the instinct to want to defend people you have good relationships with (or at least, have only had friction with in the past due around unrelated things), but at least to me, it doesn't really come across as anything other than an implicit attempt at damage control.
The grievances against Shopify seem pretty legitimate based on the only knowledge we have as outsiders. As far as I'm aware, the only concrete explanation of what happened that has been shared publicly is that they told RubyCentral that they either needed to take over the Github organization that owns bundler and the offline CLI RubyGems tool (not to be confused with the RubyGems.org package repository that RubyCentral did already own) and remove at least some of the specific external maintainers or they'd pull their funding. There have been proposed explanations for this around supply-chain security, but as far as I've read, no one has publicly stated a different set of events for what led up to the change in ownership of the Github organization, and without that, I don't think any amount of references to there being another side to the story will sound particularly convincing.
byroot|4 months ago
> at which point the only claims made are fairly vague allusions to there being more to the story with even a hint at what that might be.
The goal of my post was mostly to provide "character evidence".
It's not for me to relay accusations made by others that I can't substantiate myself. Some other people did that previously and that is what caused that massive controversy.
> The grievances against Shopify seem pretty legitimate based on the only knowledge we have as outsiders.
My whole post is about how these allegations are horseshit.
But since then, new information came out, you may want to read https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45530832, that may change your perspective.
zac23or|4 months ago
Is being monetized wrong? If so... Is there any REAL evidence? It's bizarre to talk about this WITHOUT evidence. Is it a witch hunt?
This story is bizarre on so many levels, I have no idea what's going on, but extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.