[busterarm]

uv is Astral's onramp to paying customers. Without uv's tight integration with Astral's other tooling that they want to charge for, they wouldn't be able to sell anything. Building a business around doing the same for Ruby may be within their rights, but it's absolutely a conflict of interest working or contracted by Ruby Central. Removing them was an obvious move.

[RhythmFox]

If this is a conflict of interest, then any Ruby core systems being controlled predominantly by members of the Shopify dev team is itself a conflict of interest. I am fine saying 'we need to make sure these libraries stay independent and community controlled', but that is so clearly not what was going on here. Believing that is just letting the RC FUD and PR control your thinking on the narrative.

[busterarm]

I'm sorry but what are Shopify's business activities that directly compete with services provided/maintained by RubyCentral?

As far as arguments about community, Shopify IS the community by virtue of being the ones putting up pretty much all the money to keep this ship afloat.

If you don't have skin in the game your positions won't be taken seriously.

Depending on your point of view, Sidekiq either turned their back on the community or tried to start a coup by pulling funding just so they could morally grandstand.

[RhythmFox]

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.

[busterarm]

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.

[mperham]

> 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".

[busterarm]

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?

[itsdesmond]

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.

[fhn]

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

[themafia]

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.

[busterarm]

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.

[mpalmer]

Shopify absolutely has an interest in preserving the primacy of the Rails-adjacent tooling with which rv would compete.