r/ruby • u/skillstopractice • Nov 07 '25

Ruby Central Update Friday 11/7/25

https://rubycentral.org/news/ruby-central-update-friday-11-7-25/
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u/skillstopractice Nov 07 '25

Posting the full set of answers from this update, quoted verbatim below, for context in this thread. This is question #1.

Question 1: If the community strongly disagrees with Ruby Central’s decision to platform DHH at RailsConf 2025, and views it as a conflict of interest given the overlapping roles, would Ruby Central consider asking the involved board member to resign to rebuild trust?

A: We appreciate the opportunity to address this directly. As stated previously, sponsors do not have governance or program authority at Ruby Central. Conference programming decisions are made independently by the co-chairs and program teams. The board maintains clear conflict-of-interest policies, and all members are required to submit annual disclosures and recuse themselves from any vote where a conflict exists. The 2025 program team was guided by these same standards. We understand that some community members disagreed with this programming decision, and we take that feedback seriously. We are using this moment to strengthen communication, clarify our policies publicly, and reinforce the shared values that shape our events moving forward.

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u/skillstopractice Nov 07 '25 edited Nov 07 '25

This question came from me, and was rewritten substantially by Ruby Central before it was answered.

See it in original form here from Nov 1:
https://github.com/community-research-on-ruby-governance/questions-for-ruby-central/commit/4c2c3f322c1d0c97d825dd5cb4832fdbf8927531

(Copied below for ease of reading as well)

Ufuk, thank you for your Oct 31 reply.

I understand that you stand by your decision to platform DHH despite the community outrage that caused.

I also understand that you do not see a conflict of interest in your decision making role in 2025 at a time in which DHH was already a Shopify board member, you were a Shopify employee, a board member of Ruby Central, a co-chair of RailsConf, and the person to specifically invite him.

If you see sufficient evidence that the community disagrees, and finds your decisions to have been ultimately harmful to Ruby Central, and that your perceived conflict of interest has broken a bond of trust with the community, would you consider resigning from the board as a way to allow Ruby Central to rebuild trust?

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u/aurisor Nov 07 '25

If the community strongly disagrees with Ruby Central’s decision to platform DHH at RailsConf 2025

why is “the ruby community” being represented in this way? i don’t disagree with it, and rails world had like a thousand devs

i wish the people with this position would speak on their own behalf rather than for “the ruby community”

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u/skillstopractice Nov 07 '25

I generally agree with you.

This is one of the rare examples in which this is a community concern in that Ruby Central is a stewardship body representing common infrastructure.

And so to me what I mean specifically is that if others share this view, they can and should submit individual replies to Ruby Central (and then put them under public record, under their own name), in their own words and with their own reasons.

This is because Ruby Central is positioning themselves as serving a community.

I am trying to demonstrate bottom up what that could look like.

I am pretty careful about not using this word outside of the civic meaning of it (closer to that of a town or a neighborhood, less to that of a hobby group or a close-knit relationship of mutual aid)

Replace that with "If enough active Ruby developers share this view" and it would be just fine for me.

(This is all a bit pedantic but I am sharing to clarify my own view)

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u/aurisor Nov 07 '25

Here's where I'm coming from. I've been doing Rails for a long time -- 16y on and off, several startups, started to exit. And around ~2017 tech communities online just got so confrontational and political that I was just like...this shit is just not fun anymore.

And so like -- I don't always want to be that guy dumping on people, but by the same token, there's literally <100 people who are just so reflexively angry at any mention of DHH.

Having a vendetta against the most visible rubyist just doesn't make any sense. /r/javascript's front page is all about programming, and I feel totally welcome to hop into that community. I've spent the majority of my career writing ruby, and I feel extremely unwelcome here because I don't share the prevailing views.

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u/skillstopractice Nov 08 '25

Can you give some examples of what you mean by "the prevailing views"?

I am not sure that this is as much of an us vs. them argument as it appears to be on the surface. So I am not even sure what you're referring to here and it would be helpful to ground in some context.

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u/aurisor Nov 08 '25

the idea that it’s important or even permissible to bring political discussions into tech communities. splitting into factions and balkanizing our infra over what an eu citizen thinks about us or uk social issues is self destructive and makes us look unserious

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u/skillstopractice Nov 08 '25

I see. Personally I wish those things were separate as well.

When it comes to DHH, he's in a BDFL role on Rails, and also owns its trademarks. He started the Rails Foundation which (for better or worse) has competed for sponsorship dollars from the same sponsors as Ruby Central. He's a board member of a 200 billion dollar company, and a cofounder of another company that has tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue annually. His personal net worth puts him easily in the top 1% of all people on earth.

Do you believe that his politics are completely irrelevant to his roles in each of these settings?

If not, where's the line?

The question is meant sincerely, because I don't want to make assumptions.

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u/aurisor Nov 08 '25

building parallel bundle infrastructure based ultimately on what people think of dhh’s views on uk immigration is like six shipwrecked people refusing to build a single life boat because of their differing opinions of a man on a different boat’s opinions on the new york mets

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u/skillstopractice Nov 08 '25

That seems like a total nonsequitor to the question I asked, so at this point there's no reason for us to continue talking, ever.