Comment by Lukas_Skywalker | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Lukas_Skywalker | Hacker News Reader

Lukas_Skywalker

I'll try to summarize what I know about the reasons and what brought people to resign from the Rails project, for those missing the context. Please note that I might be partially wrong, but I'll try to summarize as neutrally as I can:

- DHH, the cofounder of Basecamp and creator of Rails serves as the de facto benevolent dictator of Rails.

- April 2021: Basecamp announces that discussions around politics and society are no longer allowed at the company. The official statement was that employees should not feel pressured to take on side or the other, and that discussions would derail into flamewars. Employees instead suspected that the announcement was made because some employees found a list of "funny customer names", that had been circulating since 2009, offensive. It apparently contained mostly Asian and African names, and led to discussions about inclusion and diversity. About a third of the employees of Basecamp quit the company. [1]

- April 2021 to March 2022: The story of Basecamp leads to many many discussions on Twitter and in blogs. DHH turns off the comments on his Twitter. People start doubting the fitness of DHH to lead the Rails project. There are flame wars from both sides. People start to turn their back on Rails. After multiple tweets, people start accusing DHH of being a cryptobro and QAnon sympathizer.

- March 2022: DHH published a blog post containing an email from the RailsConf organizers, where they tell him that they want to fill the keynote spot at Railsconf with other speakers, because he had "mostly been offline for the past year". DHH had been very active in reality, publishing code to Rails consistently. He lists his contributions, along with the other contributors of those features (among them: Kasper Timm Hansen, author of the PR linked in this post). DHH suspects that he was uninvited for political reasons and his stance on diversity. [2]

Kasper Timm Hansen tweeted, back in August 2021, that DHH was credited for work Kasper did [3]. That last blog post of DHH seems to have broken the camels back.

[1] https://www.platformer.news/p/-what-really-happened-at-basec...

[2] https://world.hey.com/dhh/no-railsconf-faa7935e

[3] https://twitter.com/kaspth/status/1431699450594988036

Thank you for the additional context.

I don't believe a keynote speech has to be delivered by the founder of the language or framework. The founder can still deliver their speech elsewhere in the schedule.

When the Crystal programming language Conference was held in 2021, the organisers asked the Ruby creator ("Matz") to give the keynote speech. I thought that was a lovely gesture from the conference organisers.

Having a different keynote speech (not from the founder) might give the audience an unusual, suprising and even inspirational presentation.

Two made-up examples:

1. Keynote speech: Ruby on Rails: From zero to hero?

Lynsey, a cafe worker, lost her job during the pandemic. During lockdown, she began to learn RoR with no idea where it might lead her. She had never programmed before and found the process complex and maddeningly frustrating - punctured with occasional moments of joy. What did Lynsey learn as a beginner to RoR? And what happened next for Lynsey?

2. Keynote speech from our founder [insert name]

A look back to our successes and progress over the past year. And a look forward to the future.

---

I know which one I would rather listen to.

I'd rather listen to the expert rather than the newbie for a keynote to be honest. Someone who just learned rails should not be doing the keynote.

Hard to say. If the expert has something informative, I'd probably rather read it at my own pace. The newbiew might be more inspirational, or point out flaws that everyone steeped in the system aren't aware of, or otherwise be more interesting. Depends on the people.

> Kasper Timm Hansen tweeted, back in August 2021, that DHH was credited for work Kasper did [3].

That tweet and its two self replies say:

>> If someone on your team isn't giving you full context, to the best of their ability and the situation, they're not collaborating; they're negotiating on their behalf using you and your expertise as leverage.

>> The experience feels like being unwittingly made to shoe shop for an elephant. They present you shoe after shoe, keeping you in the dark and thus draining you. Instead of just saying who they're shopping for, so you could say "oh an elephant doesn't need shoes at all"

>> It's about controlling you, so they get to crack the problem by themselves and get the accolades etc., as opposed to solving the problem through collaboration so you both win.

Is there more context needed to understand this? I would never have guessed just from those tweets that it is about a mis-crediting issue.

That tweet sums up twitter for me. Vague, provocative and a useless analogy

Is there any proof of him being a cryptobro qanon type? It sounds like a weird mix of buzzwords, I've been following the qanon lunacy for a while and the overlap with the crypto community is basically 0, unless we are talking about esoteric cryptos or cultish crypto like ripple.

Here's a blog post where he sympathizes with both: https://world.hey.com/dhh/i-was-wrong-we-need-crypto-587ccb0...

The trucker protest has absolutely nothing to do with qanon, but I guess that proves he does support crypto for a specific use case. Being against emergency measures and doing away with due process for freezing accounts is hardly something very extremist imo.

On Twitter there is no nuance, you must pick a side.

>On Twitter there is no nuance, you must pick a side.

On Internet. It turns out 30 years later, the information super highway just isn't a good fit for discussions.

Written that way, it seems the fault is on the Internet. I'm more inclined to believe the fault is on the people... but of course, this doesn't change the facts.

Agree on both. The people, not Internet nor Social Media. Although both amplify it to the point it becomes problematic.

This is actually a very unpopular opinion on HN as most of HN believe Social Media is the root of all evil.

Let me just say that, as someone who lives in Ottawa, that his takes on the convoy occupation are complete bullshit.

The fact that he describes it as "just three weeks of honking, blocked streets and bridges, bouncy castles and flag waving", then refers to the response being "shockingly authoritarian" and "martial law" is a sign that he doesn't know what he's talking about.

To be fair, the emergency measures are our own version of martial law. Like there is no martial law in canada and if we went into a state of war, the law that would be invoked would be the exact same act. Don't forget, the emergency act was the direct replacement of the previous war measures act!

And to be honest, I have my opinion on the protest and I'll probably disagree with you on whether even what you described justified such an unprecetended response by the government ( i dont think it even happened once in the past 50 years for a western government to suspend it's own constitutional rights, even over much more violent or disruptive event). Though I still get your point!

But I think it's still very unreasonable to say he's a qanon supporter type because of his opinion on the ottawa protest, don't you agree? Like those are massively different things, and even if you agree with how trudeau handled the events it's very reasonable to think that such a controversial move might result in disagreements without being a completely insane cultist like the qanon believers usually are? Not to mention it's a very american centric accusation anyways.

They're not 'our version of martial law' because the term 'martial law' has a specific meaning, about suspending civil rights and putting the military in charge of civil security. The Emergencies Act does neither, and indeed no law in Canada allows the government to suspend the Charter.

You're right that we may disagree on some details, but I think where we'll agree is that this should not have been a situation that required a federal emergency. I fully believe this could have been handled just fine at the municipal level and, failing that, provincial level, and should not have required a federal response.

The way I see it the real emergency was that the Ottawa Police and then the Ontario government were spectacular failures, and this created a scenario where, I believe, the federal government was entirely justified in enacting the Emergencies Act and the mandates they did.

But regardless of whether it should have been invoked, what happened was not 'martial law' nor would I call it 'shockingly totalitarian', and that's why I said DHH's hot takes were bullshit.

No, for decades DHH was almost obnoxiously pretty far left.

That he is now being labeled a nazi for saying we went too far with masks and that crypto might have a use after all because the ability for government to cut off all your money with no recourse is dangerous for society… it’s absurd and pretty much exactly what he often complains about now

>DHH suspects that he was uninvited for political reasons and his stance on diversity.

To be clear, he was never uninvited. He has decided not to go because of a request for a joint keynote.

https://mobile.twitter.com/Carnage4Life/status/1499714921726...

The blog post DHH made also listed mostly work that he wasn't the primary contributor to (one of his contributions was primarily done by someone who left the community because of him!), and that didn't go over well.

As he escalates the drama he is largely seen as creating, people who have no interest in drama are leaving.

> To be clear, he was never uninvited.

That's why I wrote both what the email from RailsConf said, and how he interpreted it. But I agree that my wording about his interpretation was a bit unfortunate.

> As he escalates the drama he is largely seen as creating, people who have no interest in drama are leaving.

I've been a Rails dev for about 10 years, and I've always got the feeling that DHH very much enjoys drama, and purposefully stokes it and then escalates it. It's very much been a pattern for him. I tend to just ignore him these days, because whatever drama he's currently stoking usually has very little to do with my day to day usage of Rails.

I'm on the other hand under the impression that a lot of drama he creates is quite spot-on. A bit like Steve Jobs. Inconvenient thruths originating from a certain shrewdness.

> DHH suspects that he was uninvite

He was not uninvited. He was simply asked to share the keynote with other people. Not an unreasonable request given how large the Rails community is.

> because he had "mostly been offline for the past year"

While poorly worded and not accurate (I assume they refer to him not engaging on Twitter or perhaps lack of communication with the Railsconf-people, but yeah he has clearly been online) this is not the reason for him being asked to share the keynote. The email says the committee has made the decision while him being offline, there is no reasoning given for it beyond just having more people doing the keynote than him.

> He was not uninvited. He was simply asked to share the keynote with other people.

That's why I wrote both what the email from RailsConf said, and how he interpreted it. I agree though that my wording of his interpretation was a bit bad.

Yeah just clarifying. Good summary.

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