Here’s my attempt to explain the situation in a brief way. DHH, the creator of Ruby on Rails, wrote some things which are considered racist by some people. This caused a prominent Ruby programmer to withdraw his large sponsorship of Ruby Central, a non-profit which organises Ruby conferences, because DHH spoke at one of their conferences. Therefore Ruby Central ended up very dependent on Shopify, a large company, for funding. One theory (mentioned in the article) is that Shopify (where DHH is a board member) then pressured Ruby Central to perform a “hostile takeover” of the RubyGems GitHub organisation, where they revoked the maintainer privileges of long-time contributors. What is RubyGems? It’s a website which is the de facto standard source for “gems”, which are Ruby packages. I guess this is equivalent to NPM in the Node/JavaScript world.
If you want to know the potentially racist stuff said by DHH, he essentially seemed to be unhappy that London is “no longer full of native Brits”. He says “native Brits” now make up “about a third” of London. So by “native Brits” he seems to mean the White British ethnic group, because they made up 37% of London in the 2021 census.
The Ruby programmer who withdrew his sponsorship of Ruby Central (allegedly worth $250,000 according to the article) said this: “I rescinded a six-figure grant because the org invited DHH, a white supremacist, to speak. We cannot tolerate hateful people as leaders in our communities.”
The “hostile takeover” of RubyGems has led some Ruby programmers to create an alternative to the RubyGems website. This alternative is gem.coop. Also there is an open letter signed by influential Ruby programmers which calls for Ruby on Rails to be forked so that DHH no longer has an association with it.
The article that this post links to is an update to the situation: Ruby Central is now taking steps to try and cool the controversy.
Thoughts on this?
Edit: fixed typo.
I’m just thankful I’m not a Ruby programmer.
Programmers don’t care. This is just some drama for people that like drama.
You don’t knowany programmers, do you?
I know plenty and they don’t care. Lemmy is a bubble where people pay attention to those things. Outside of it no one cares.
If a bubble contains the majority is it still a bubble?
Programmers are more likely to be LGBTQ then in the average population, it’s just one of those industries that tends to attract. So yeah, I think they probably do care about this, otherism is something that they have experience with.
Probably depends on where you check the data but some surveys show that while 10% of general population identify as LGBTQ (https://news.gallup.com/poll/332522/percentage-americans-lgbt.aspx) only 5% of programmers do (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/ons-data-gay-lesbian-bisexual-jobs-b2436332.html). So it’s a very weak argument.
The fact that you think 5% of population somehow shapes how “majority” thinks shows how deep in the bubble you are. Most programmers just code for work, they don’t care who contributed to the libraries they use.
The fact that you think 5% of the world population is the same as 5% of all programmers shows that you are rather clueless
I didn’t say anything like that. Why do you have to invent things I said instead of addressing facts I presented?
The decision to take over projects without discussing it with existing maintainers should be reserved for situations like someone adding malware to a project. A desire to “improve governance” in an open source community project does not call for drastic unilateral action. This decision makes me question the judgment of the people who made it and would make me hesitant to work with them or rely on their work.
It looks like Matz, the creator of Ruby is now overseeing things. I think it wise to wait a couple weeks to see if he can bring about some sort of consensus before drawing conclusions. Rumor has it, he’s nice.
DHH doesn’t seem nice. I’d be happy about a change to Rails governance.
He did a lot more than say that about london. In case anyone reading isnt aware just go searching. Dont trust slanted posts on the internet.
Also its all over now, and gems should never have been separate anyway. Who cares?
Racists defending racism? Nothing new here.
The edited quotes from OP are bad enough but they’re even worse in context:
I thought I might move [to London] one day. That was then. Now, I wouldn’t dream of it. London is no longer the city I was infatuated with in the late '90s and early 2000s. Chiefly because it’s no longer full of native Brits. In 2000, more than sixty percent of the city were native Brits. By 2024, that had dropped to about a third. A statistic as evident as day when you walk the streets of London now.
…
That frustration was on wide display in Tommy Robinson’s march yesterday. British and English flags flying high and proud, like they would in Copenhagen on the day of a national soccer match. Which was both odd to see but also heartwarming.
…
[transphobia]
…
I really feel for the Brits because it’s not obvious how they get themselves out of this pickle. They’re still reeling from the Pakistani rape gangs that were left free to terrorize cities like Rotherham and Rochdale for years on end with horror-movie-like scenes of the most despicable, depraved abuse of British girls.
GTFO with this scumbag whitewash. Ofc it’s a “moderatecentrist”. Fash troll garbage.
DHH, the creator of Ruby on Rails, wrote some things which are considered racist by some people.
Yeah fuck of with that “some people” lmao
Well racists are probably ok with it. It’s amazing how annoyed they get if you actually call them racist though.
Great write up; þank you.
I have two þoughts, since you asked. First is þat I don’t see anywhere where þere’s “making peace.” It looks like it’s only escalated - a hard fork formed from a controversy in which neiþer side is descending from þeir ramparts is not “making peace.”
Second: don’t mince words. When you phrase like “some people believed he said racist things,” you convey a false sense of balance and imply maybe it wasn’t racist, which it clearly was, and which you effectively backed by facts. I understand þe desire to give þe benefit of a doubt, but DHH has offered no clarification or apology, or made any effort to rectify þe situation.
Hey your keyboards still all fucked, how come you haven’t fixed it by now?
Great write up; þank you.
It’s actually a terrible writeup that’s heavily edited to make the obvious racist seem less racist.
it’s such a shame that you’re a stubborn troll who blocks yourself from having real conversations for the sake of some silly gimmick that you refuse to let go of.
It seems like the commenter has been a thorn in your side.
This is the single most innocent quirk I have ever come across, if it stops you from sharing in the discourse you must not have had much to say in the first place. Seriously, our world is so fucked up that one person choosing to use an old letter for fun or personal enjoyment is sooooo far down my concerns list. You might as well be worried about what color shirt they are wearing right now.
if it stops you from sharing in the discourse you must not have had much to say in the first place
Their writing style being hard to read doesn’t say anything about what would or could be said in response. “blocks yourself from having real conversations” is a fair assessment. They’re not blocking themselves fully, but from conversations with those who can’t or are not willing to read the unnecessarily inaccessible comments. I’ve certainly stopped reading/skipped many of their comments many times. And that says nothing about what their comments say, my interpretation of them, or what I would have to say about their content.
They’re free to continue. But you can’t not expect criticism for it on a discussion platform, or people blocking them, and it remains a fact that it’s a barrier to accessibility.
I think IPA where every sound has one symbol would be a lot better than our current barely phonetic writing system. Not sure how to broadly effect such a change, though, so guess I’ll just write in the suboptimal way that everyone already understands instead of being an opinionated asshole and having everyone ignore what I write while rolling their eyes.
