Ruby on Rails Does Not Equal Its Core Team | Hacker News Reader

Ruby on Rails Does Not Equal Its Core Team

luigimontanez.com

18 pointsluigi5 comments

When I was younger, around high school, I thought leadership wasn't very important. I thought things like football coaches mostly acted as a drill sergeant, and what really mattered was the individuals on the team and whether they pulled together and made it happen.

I have since learned that this is unmitigated bullshit. The team's performance is bounded at the top by the raw talent of the team, but the coach is the primary factor determining how much that talent actually manifests. A leader sets the tone for the community, no matter what the community is, but most especially in voluntary communities.

Those who like the leaders stay, those who don't leave. Over time, the community becomes a reflection of the leader. Not a direct reflection in all cases, as some leaders can build diverse communities, as the Ruby leaders indeed have, but nevertheless, over time the community is largely determined by its leaders.

Leadership matters, and the damage done by the leadership here is quite significant, and no amount of protest by the ones led can really change this. (And remember the damage here was the reaction, not the initial problem; one guy can make a bad choice and we'd have all pretty much moved on; the choice to double-down was the bit that is the real problem.)

If you are seriously concerned by this, I would suggest the path of least community effort is for some of those names to step up and become the leaders. Open source leadership is quite fungible. The path of least individual effort is to go join the Python or Perl communities. Because yes, leadership does in fact set the tone for the entire community, and if the community doesn't like that, it's time to change leaders, or change communities.

Leadership is important, but how a leader derives his power differs greatly by context. In the case of a football coach, it's basically positional power - you "take it or leave it", because as a subordinate, you can't change it. The military, corporations, and other forms of hierarchical organizations operate this way.

As you alluded to, open source leadership is derived by a different sort of power - it's earned. Leaders rise to the top by the respect they earn. In this context, who the top leader is varies, and there's not a clear cut designation of "leadership". What usually tends to happen is that leaders in this "open" context will try to switch to a "positional" context (eg, by issuing a decree that designates titles). Fortunately, we don't see much of that in the open source world and the Rails leadership has shown tremendous vision by focusing on what matters to Rails developers: code. If you take a quick glance across the Rails landscape, the "leaders" are there because of technical excellence; nothing else. DHH will always have a special place in the Rails landscape as the originator, but the true technical leadership has been people like Yehuda Katz, Jeremy Kemper, Josh Peek, etc. (others mentioned in the article).

The other wonderful thing about Rails is that it's based on Ruby, and Ruby is anchored by some wise old men whose leadership is second to none.

Despite some ugliness here and there, I still feel the Ruby and Rails communities are wonderful communities to participate in and its leadership is in good hands.

I think it is fair to say that Ruby on Rails is more than its core team, but to say they are not equal can be misconstrued to suggest that the Rails culture is independent of the core team. The core team exercises a strong influence over the technical direction and the culture of Rails notwithstanding the fine contributions from such great folks.

Interesting that HN doesn't allow for exclamations(!) in the submission titles. Must be to prevent "OMG So Cool!!!1" posts...

OMG So Cool11111

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