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Comment by RhythmFox | Hacker News Reader

That attitude is exactly the problem. Shopify does not 'keep the ship afloat' they are just a corporation using open source systems as the foundation of their business. Competition is not by definition the backing of a 'conflict of interest', it legally refers to a person or entity with a stake in a particular outcome having control of the means to achieve that which are not legally sound , ie compromise their judgment. I think Shopify's judgement of what 'is good for the Ruby community' is severely compromised by their corporate interests, and probably by their boards political interests as well. Hence, why they are trying so hard to justify removing Andre.

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Do you have any idea how expensive it is to keep the infrastructure running? RubyCentral's operating expenses are in the millions every year and exceed their revenue.

Andre's removal is easily justifiable by his own (lengthy history of) sketchy behavior.

Since when is "open source" something businesses shouldn't be allowed to get value from or even have a stake in? These things are MIT licensed. That's free as in speech AND beer. If you don't like the freedoms of the license and how other people use them, don't use the license. If you don't like someone's stewardship, fork and maintain your own.

> Do you have any idea how expensive it is to keep the infrastructure running?

Yes, I do. All hardware and bandwidth are donated by Fastly and AWS so it costs RC nothing. Their expenses were $20,000/mo for 24/7 ops coverage: $2000/mo for 6 people and $8000/mo for service maintenance (e.g. db and software upgrades). So $240,000/yr, not "millions".

Care to cite the dollar amount of Shopify's yearly contribution (not even counting the humans doing actual labor) and what Sidekiq pulled in funding while you're at it?

I don't know the details of Shopify funding. I donated $250,000 in 2024 and withdrew a planned $250,000 donation in 2025, as has been widely publicized.

As a British born Chinese American, thank you.

Responding to your first paragraph, the rest wasn’t constructive.

Shopify paying for infrastructure related to Ruby is an investment, not charity. Hosting gems costs money and a healthy community depends on that gem hosting. Spotify, in turn, depends on that healthy community to produce and maintain gems, train future employees, stuff like that. They’re not paying that money for fun, it is to protect their interests.

And all of the above would be true even if the OSS committee wasn’t 100% Shopify affiliated. That’s gravy.

so you're saying Shopify should all funding. By your own reasoning, saying ALL companies should withdraw funding for ALL OSS projects.

I absolutely didn’t say anything even similar to that. Are you ok?

Those who write the code have more of a right than those who pay the bills. Anyone can write a check. A select few have the acumen and experience to actually write the code.

You can't unilaterally declare someone "sketchy" and then kick them out in the name of conveience.

No I'm calling him sketchy because that's the sentiment anyone who has been around in the community long enough and dealt with Andre has about him. This is very openly discussed and documented and not just in the aftermath of this event.

People having concerns about Andre's behavior around his money and his open source contributions can't even be called an open secret.

The narrative that one side of this is pushing that this is some little guys vs evil corporate overlords problem is short-circuiting so many peoples' ability to rationalize about this topic.

This is about the personal failings to communicate and organize among a very small group of highly skilled, highly productive people. It's also about how they have fallen into camps and try to apply institutional and social leverage in order to influence millions of bystanders in order to maintain/wrest control. Each credibly accusing the other of doing it for their own benefit.

Nobody is in the right here. If you can't engage with that as your starting point, you aren't serious about this conversation and are just spouting one side's propaganda.

In the aftermath us bystanders are left wanting either stability or revolution. Revolutions generally aren't good for anyone. Especially the people who want it the most.

> that's the sentiment anyone who has been around in the community long enough and dealt with Andre has about him.

Not an accurate characterization.

There are some people who do feel this way. But it's not everyone, by a long shot.

You are right that this ten year long interpersonal beef is ultimately at the root of all of this.

Honestly fair. There's a little too much of my personal distaste with his actions coming through here.

I think it's fairer to say that if you know him and you are in the community than you know that these opinions of him are had. That is not normal.

I also want to make it clear that there is a separation here. I do not think that Andre is a malicious or bad person. I just have questions about his decision-making based on things he's said & actions that he's taken and that leads me to think that he is untrustworthy. Not in the "will steal from me" sense but in the "will fuck up shit that I care about" sense (which ultimately he did, at least partly, whether through direct actions or poorly maintained relationships with key people). I work with this kind of infrastructure though and that's the kind of attitude that you want to have towards people to be able to do this job effectively. I don't trust a lot of people -- I want any access they have to be out in the open, limited to what's needed, etc. Governance of the project/organization was obviously a shit-show.

When I say that it's obvious to cut ties with him, I'm looking at it from the perspective of someone responsible for a high-profile project. I would make that decision 10 times out of 10 without regret. They still absolutely bungled the crap out of how that went down.

Also, I hate that this crap gets associated with the "Ruby Community". It's really just a subset of the western Ruby ecosystem that cares about foundations and events and semi-social functions. Ruby's core and a whole ecosystem of people working on and around Ruby couldn't give a crap about any of this and it's all just a massive inconvenience. Meanwhile on boards like this everyone is planting their flags and trying to exploit chaos to create change in critical services that people absolutely depend on.

> is short-circuiting so many peoples' ability to rationalize about this topic.

It appears unfair. That's the extent of my rationale. I've not seen any concrete evidence to draw any further conclusion than this. If you're managing a project and you're not cognizant of this, you probably shouldn't be managing projects; in particular, you should stay away from open source projects with a large base of volunteer contributors.

> Nobody is in the right here.

So, they went through all of this, made themselves look bad, cast tons of aspersions, and in the end, they weren't even in the right? This seems a shabby defense.

> are just spouting one side's propaganda.

I don't care about one side or the other. You see this giant crater left by these decisions though? Yea.. that's the problem.

> that's the sentiment anyone who has been around in the community long enough and dealt with Andre has about him.

I've known him personally for years and find him perfectly fine as a person. The Rubygems maintainers worked with him for the past decade without issue. Until you cite actual issues, not vague "concerns", you're just spreading FUD and innuendo.

I don't need to rehash 10+ years of documentation that's all over blog posts and prior threads on this very topic. Even if someone is unfamiliar with the details they can casually google RubyTogether and Andre and find out all kinds of details.

Don't pretend like I'm some nutter flinging wild accusations when primary and secondary actors in this story literally voiced these concerns in emails during this event.

Anyone who has been following this saga and actually cares knows because they read it already.

I have read many of the allegations against Andre, and find them to fall into:

1) Hyperbolic takes on a perceived 'communication problem' when Andre defends strong design decisions that have impacts on the Ruby ecosystem. Anyone doing what Andre does is going to have impacts on the ecosystem, that is the point. I think the ease of maintaining Ruby systems speaks to the overall good outcomes these discussions have had, and Andre's part in them.

2) Personal dislike of Andre due to disagreements over politics and/or worldviews, usually stemming from assertions of 'woke code' or something like that.

3) Distaste over Andre trying to make a living off doing what they love. This is usually couched in the 'shady' type language you have used a few times. I think that is a weird take on what are just common schemes to use data for monetization purposes, so that Andre can make a living doing design and maintenance. Nothing I have ever seen makes me worried for my data in Bundler or Rubygems.

If your main concern is that 'bad things could happen with Andre running Bundler' I have to question if it isn't just as likely, if not more likely, that bad things will happen with a Shopify run RC board running Bundler. Their motivations are much less clear other than being a corporation that is profit driven, so I can't say with confidence they won't put that motive above 'good software decisions' when push comes to shove. I don't see them as de-facto making the Ruby supply chain better by any means. Time will tell.

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