[mpalmer]

    This incident involved many people over a rather long time scale, and it was important to detangle how people perceived events from how they actually unfolded. The subject matter is deeply subjective, and multiple failed attempts at writing this doc came as a result of aiming for objectivity, for blameless representation. Therefore, those named in this report are:

    - Full-time employees of Ruby Central
    - Part-time consultants who were involved in access discussions
    - Anyone who made an access change from September 10th-18th, 2025
    - Those who have already been publicly identified in the discourse

    Volunteer groups, including the Ruby Central Board and the Open Source Software (OSS) Committee, are listed, but their actions are represented as a group. Individual quotes from the OSS Committee are used without direct attribution when they represent a general consensus.


    Some execution failures and mistakes are individual, but the purpose of having a foundation and having an institution is that it can rise above individual limitations and provide robust, fault-tolerant systems. Therefore, these are our mistakes, collectively. And collectively we'll learn from them, but only if we face what happened, what we meant to do, and where we fell short.

    The hope is that by sharing this, we can provide some closure to the community and increase transparency

The undeniable effect of masking specific comments made by OSS committee members is to protect three members (2 current, 1 former) of Shopify's technical leadership around Ruby and Rails, who have all since left the committee. The one who left Shopify went to 37signals after.

[schneems]

> (2 current, 1 former) of Shopify's technical leadership

You'll have to take me on my word about it...but if I saw this as a driver of the issue I would have included it. I think saying "shopify was involved" is sort of like saying "people talked about RV at Rails World." Shopify is huge and hugely invested in Ruby's OSS ecosystem. I have my own critiques of the company, but not here. I think they're a net positive for Ruby OSS. I wish the general response was "more companies need to step up, I'll go talk to my leadership" rather than knocking these volunteers for their involvement. I've said elsewhere that if I were in the committee or in their shoes...I don't think the outcome would have been different (even if details would have). Also, you are welcome to disagree and have a different opinion.

I agree that it's best not to have situations like this. PSF bylaws "Section 5.15. Limits on Co-affiliation of Board Members." and similar rules are generally good at preventing the perception of conflict of interest (which is also important...that the perception alone can be damaging).

Right now, the committee is 100% one company (me). Because I'm the only one on it. Which is also a problem. Also, we're in a rebuilding/re-prioritizing phase with all of this...so it's hard to onboard while things are in flux.

[itsdesmond]

You’d think that name, Shopify, would appear three times, once per employee/committee member. Or just once, to say the entire OSS committee was employed by Shopify, if we’re still identifying the group strictly as a group. Either would be fine.

[schneems]

> Or just once, to say the entire OSS committee was employed by Shopify,

Mike works at Basecamp (now and then). Based on comms I don't believe any of them acted on behalf of their employer i.e. no "team orders." Or if they did, they did so in ways that aligned with my perception of what I believed to be the correct read of the situation.

I also think that we (as humans) are much less incapable of knowing what things sway and influence our opinions than we think. We are much less capable of correcting for conflicts of interest than we would like. The study "tappers and listeners" is about adjusting for knowledge (curse of knowledge), but I think it applies to influence as well. Which is to say...I'm sure that everyone was influenced in many ways, but I felt they acted as individuals and reacted in real time.

There are other details of affiliations that I omitted from the former maintainers as well, that are true to state, and likely had some impact on their decisions ... but I used judgment to omit what I didn't think was fair or didn't think was immediately relevant. Not saying I got it all right all the time, but sort of chiming in to say "I'm not only omitting information in favor of one party." Yes, I'm biased...but I'm trying to correct for that bias. (A funny thing to state after just saying humans are bad at it, I know).

[smithcoin]

I read the article but I’m out of the loop enough to not understand Shopify and 37signals piece in this can you clarify? Is there another place I can be pointed to with that background information?