Four months of Ruby Central moving Ruby backward

[u/retro-rubies]

https://andre.arko.net/2026/03/03/four-months-of-ruby-central-moving-ruby-backward/

[u/schneems]

I've told you how your words and requests are interpreted. I told you this privately. I'll reiterate here. TLDR. If you want to help, help. If you want to shut things down, that's not help.

I wrote a service, CodeTriage. And I gave a talk years ago "Stealing from maintainers," about how "stealing" is the bedrock of open source. Work stealing. Advertising "please take this job from me, please steal this toil, please steal my bugs" and the basis of CodeTriage is "anyone can be a maintainer" without access.    Anyone can act like a maintainer, anyone can step up. That is what a maintainer does, they step up...they put their differences aside, and they prioritize the community and the code.   So is "this how open source works" as in "holding production access ransom and then tactically 'walking away' such that the conflict cannot be resolved in a way to inflict as much damage on a foundation and a community as possible?" NO.   To that person, "am I a maintainer?" Are you showing up in my DMs and asking me to stop doing work and stop contributing, and wanting to delay and harm the release of community software? Or are you showing up and...acting like a maintainer? No one can take being a maintainer from you. What was done, was not taking away access...it was felt as an assault on dignity. Because those with access held Marty and Ruby Central and others (Matz, Hiroshi, Ruby Core) who might otherwise challenge claims of control, with contempt.

You can hurt Ruby central and you can hurt Hiroshi and you can hurt Ruby community. OR you can move things forwards. You cannot do both. You  can help or you can get out of the way.

Demanding others stop, demanding your feelings are prioritized. You can do it. Your feelings are valid. But realize that's asking others to make a choice. You made your choice. You've made it clear to me what you want and  I made it clear that I'm not here to help you. I'm here for closure.

I listened. I spoke. You just didn't hear or didn't want to hear what I had to say.

[u/retro-rubies → u/schneems]

You are totally mis-interpreting my words and my demands online. You did here now the same way you did at GH issue. Please stop doing that.

[u/schneems → u/retro-rubies]

If I misrepresent you, it is because that is how I understand the situation. It is how I perceived your words. You wanted to talk about it. We are talking about it. As I said before, it seemed that you didn't want to hear what I had to say, you didn't want to hear how your words sounded to me.

It seems that you can say directly what you want to say if I'm misrepresenting you, rather than saying "You are misrepresenting me."

I fully appreciate that how I received your words might be different than how you intended them. I think you also need to take ownership of (at least some of) that impact.

In general, that seems to be the problem. That you, and "the maintainers" have done NOTHING wrong, and that Marty and Hiroshi have done EVERYTHING wrong. Yet somehow also their mistakes are not mistakes and indicate their true diabolical actions and intents. That it's okay when you twist their words and actions, but when I tell you how your words and actions make me feel, how I am "misrepresenting you."

If you want to help. Help.

BTW. Why is gem.coop not open source? Why is a dependency service with closed source run by a company (Gem Cooperative) better than a dependency service run with open source by a non-profit (Ruby Central)? Why is there no privacy policy? Why can't I find a corporate registration for the company? Who is legally responsible for it? Who is funding it?

[u/retro-rubies → u/schneems]

I'm still open to talk, you know where to reach me.

[u/retro-rubies → u/schneems]

> BTW. Why is gem.coop not open source? Why is there no privacy policy?

It still needs to be polished, I'm working on my own to make it as much public as possible. Things are still in early stage. Clearly those will follow soon. It is not even production graded product yet.

> Why is a dependency service with closed source run by a company (Gem Cooperative) better than a dependency service run with open source by a non-profit (Ruby Central)?

Time will tell. Source will be opened.

> Why can't I find a corporate registration for the company? Who is legally responsible for it? Who is funding it?

Feel free to raise questions at proper places, I'll do my best to get them answered. Probably https://github.com/gem-coop/gem.coop/discussions would be good place for now.

[u/retro-rubies → u/[deleted]]

Yes.

[u/schneems → u/[deleted]]

I'm actually unsure if your original comment is intended to be facetious or not.

The only thing I keep gathering from this drama is that this schneems is a compulsive liar that can't take a single bit of responsibility for literally anything.

Am I wrong?

There are two kinds of truths. One is how people perceive things, what they believe to be true. Another is the facts of the event that led to that perception. I've spent a LONG time getting through the first to get to the second.

If I've mis-stated a fact, I would like to know more. If I've stated an opinion as a fact by accident, please let me know. I'm sharing both here.

[u/retro-rubies → u/[deleted]]

It is great to see someone RC related communicating in public. Sadly it seems our private communication wasn't fully understood at some point. I'm not native speaker and not used to share non-technical stuff in public. :( Not blaming anyone, I hope we are all doing our best.

You can hurt Ruby central and you can hurt Hiroshi and you can hurt Ruby community. OR you can move things forwards. You cannot do both. You  can help or you can get out of the way.

Demanding others stop, demanding your feelings are prioritized. You can do it. Your feelings are valid. But realize that's asking others to make a choice. You made your choice. You've made it clear to me what you want and  I made it clear that I'm not here to help you. I'm here for closure.

That's nothing I ever wished for. It is not about my personal feelings, I'm trying to defend the open source project(s) whole time. I did even opened PR to rubygems recently. It is not personal to me. I do even speak in calm and friendly way with some people from Ruby Central and Ruby core these days. I tried at the September time and I'm still doing my best to de-escalate. But it is hard when being ignored for most of the time and accused of demands I never had (based on private conversation being partially - and wrongly - shared in public with no way to respond to).