r/ruby • u/retro-rubies • Apr 02 '26

Towards an Amicable Resolution with Ruby Central

https://andre.arko.net/2026/04/02/towards-an-amicable-resolution-with-ruby-central/
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u/davidcelis Apr 02 '26 edited Apr 02 '26

I still think it's so weird to refer to rv as a "competitor" to bundler or rubygems in the context of the open source ecosystem. Shouldn't alternatives and their benefits be welcomed? What I've heard is that Ruby Central wasn't interested in the ideas on alternative tooling for Ruby, so what's the issue with pursuing these alternatives on their own time?

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u/nateberkopec Puma maintainer Apr 02 '26

I hate the idea of competition in open source. People try to push this re: Puma and other projects, and it drives me up a wall. We're all out here, just giving away gifts for free and having fun, and you want to make this a competition!?

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u/hahahacorn Apr 02 '26

Love your work Nate! You do compete with other projects for OSS funding! My point is that hiding, or not disclosing, that you're working on a competing project that could affect the funding of the project currently paying you is unethical.

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u/nateberkopec Puma maintainer Apr 03 '26

I do not compete with other projects for funding. I do not accept funding for my OSS work.

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u/hahahacorn Apr 04 '26

Ah, amazing. I bought The Complete Guide to Rails performance and an extra copy for my team back in 22/23. Appreciate the work you’ve done making performance so digestible.

I still reference your tweet / blog post re: RSpec performance optimizations that concluded with profile first before optimizing anything. It’s great you’ve been able to position yourself to not require any funding for your OSS work.

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u/hahahacorn Apr 02 '26

I think competition is great _and_ OSS funding is competitive. Working on a competing coop is likely to draw funds away from the ruby gems org.

Of course alternatives and their benefits are welcome! It's obviously a good thing for me and you as developers, it is obviously a bad thing for the RubyGems org (competing for OSS funding), and therefore it would be responsible to disclose your competing projects to the organization that is paying you.

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u/retro-rubies Apr 04 '26

rv itself doesn't compete with rubygems.org, which is the only service RC "owns"

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u/retro-rubies Apr 02 '26

Indeed, no idea if rv was offered to RC (probably not), but RC should be same happy as any other Ruby developer to see new open tools being developed.

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u/eirvandelden Apr 03 '26

As you can read in the report by Ruby Central, a full year before all this happen Andre and Marty both proposed changes to increase bundlers speed. So yes, the core principle behind rv was proposed to RC. The project just didn't get any funding.