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Comment by white-moss | Hacker News Reader

Really appreciate Matz stepping up to take on this difficult situation. As a Japanese developer, I’ve been worried about the direction things were going, so it’s reassuring to see this.

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Stepping up how? It was always clear that Hiroshi Shibata didn't act solo without approval. I am not saying he knew the outcome before that, but WHEN was the decision made to take over gems + bundler? I have a slight suspicion that this may have been decided upon months ago already.

> As a Japanese developer, I’ve been worried about the direction things were going, so it’s reassuring to see this.

I am actually much more worried now. I don't live in the USA; I don't live in Japan. To me it seems as if Japan and the USA are totally over-dominating in the ruby ecosystem. While this is understandable that it is Japan (local community, I get it, this is different to english-speaking ones), I am absolutely upset that the USA has so much proxy-influence here. But I guess there is nothing that can be done. I guess in Python the USA also over-dominates. I just think this sucks really.

> I am actually much more worried now

Why? Japanese culture is more conservative, less prone to knee jerk decisions, and Ruby is their biggest home grown programming language.

I'm also not American nor Japanese and I think this is the best possible outcome.

Yes. At least Ruby was always strongly Japanese though. In Python European and Asian developers are overtly exploited, with U.S. corporations and their employed stooges holding the reins of power.

I'm considering switching to Erlang, which was developed at a corporation from the start and appears to be drama and cancel free.

Ericsson is drama free?

Or Europeans choose to work for US corporations. What am I missing? I know Europeans who only want to work for American companies.

American salaries are typically wildly higher, both on the low end and on the high end. It's often remote work. There are more jobs and more variety of jobs, on an absolute scale, than any particular locality. There may be more of a job ladder, and less stigma to wanting to climb it. There are some other cultural aspects as well.

I would love to see such options become available in Europe (insofar as additional options existing, not taking away the ones that already exist). But that would require some extremely successful European companies working to change it.

My comment was unclear. I am American. I think I am familiar with these differences. You seem to agree with me that in light of these aspects, referring then to American company employees as stooges is exaggerated. Regarding Asia of course it's a different topic, and I am unfamiliar with it. Obviously some American companies are bad but I just question the comment I responded to, that's all. And I don't understand "stigma to climbing it." Depending on the country, of course, but I didn't think there was stigma. Europeans compete for prestige like the rest of us. Don't they? Some do, some don't, of course.

Different money and different attitudes. Trying to get paid more than your peers if you're appropriately skilled isn't social kryptonite here in the states.

Shopify is pretty much dominating the Ruby ecosystem. It’s Canadian tho :)

More people live in the US. What is overdominating Python?

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