Transition of RubyGems Repository Ownership

[Posted October 17, 2025 by jzb]

The Ruby community has experienced some turbulence of late after Ruby Central took control of the GitHub repositories for a number of projects including RubyGems and Bundler. Those projects have historically been developed separately from Ruby itself. They are now being put under the control of Ruby's core team, according to Ruby creator Yukihiro Matsumoto (a.k.a. "Matz"):

To provide the community with long-term stability and continuity, the Ruby core team, led by Matz, has decided to assume stewardship of these projects from Ruby Central. We will continue their development in close collaboration with Ruby Central and the broader community.

Ruby Central has also issued a statement.

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Posted Oct 18, 2025 16:34 UTC (Sat) by h2g2bob (subscriber, #130451) [Link] (16 responses)

I hear a lot of discontent from the community, with https://gem.coop/ being set up as a RubyGems.org alternative, and a widely shared open letter asking Rails creator Hansson to step down.

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Posted Oct 20, 2025 9:47 UTC (Mon) by Phantom_Hoover (subscriber, #167627) [Link] (15 responses)

Hansson has nothing to do with the RubyGems controversy, has he? This seems like an attempt to purge him for having the wrong politics that coincidentally happened around the same time.

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Posted Oct 20, 2025 10:09 UTC (Mon) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link] (14 responses)

His involvement is complicated - see Joel's summary of events. The two parts that are DHH are that his involvement with a conference organised by Ruby Central was the trigger event for one of the two significant funders of Ruby Central terminating their funding, and he has since said that he approves of what's been done with Ruby Central.

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Posted Oct 20, 2025 19:43 UTC (Mon) by NYKevin (subscriber, #129325) [Link] (13 responses)

After clicking through a few of the links at the bottom of that summary, I have to say that "wrong politics" seems like a serious understatement in this context. DHH was not accused of being conservative, or of supporting some mainstream conservative policy. He was accused of being a white supremacist, which is a far more specific and damning accusation than the phrase "wrong politics" tends to imply.

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Posted Oct 20, 2025 20:15 UTC (Mon) by bmur (guest, #52954) [Link] (12 responses)

They specifically use the baseless "white supremacist" defamation because it's trendy to call people this and they know many people will not look further than the headline. DHH has done NOTHING to justify that accusation. The people on that Ruby github petition should be blacklisted for even suggesting such a false accusation.

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Posted Oct 20, 2025 20:18 UTC (Mon) by daroc (editor, #160859) [Link] (4 responses)

LWN is currently working on preparing an article about the recent RubyGems debacle; perhaps we should leave off this discussion and wait to have arguments in the comments there.

Joe really did an excellent deep-dive on the topic. I think everyone will be pleased with the article once it's published.

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Posted Oct 20, 2025 20:33 UTC (Mon) by jzb (editor, #7867) [Link] (3 responses)

Or, you know, just not have arguments in the comments at all. Radical idea, I know, but I thought I'd throw it out there in case it caught on. 🙂

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Posted Oct 21, 2025 8:15 UTC (Tue) by taladar (subscriber, #68407) [Link] (2 responses)

Next thing you are going to suggest we should stop having the same arguments over and over again in circles in both politics and software religious wars like vim vs. Emacs, huh?

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Posted Oct 21, 2025 9:27 UTC (Tue) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

Pffft... you're all wrong. JOE is the best.

(my first editor was 'Tasword' on the Amstrad, Tasword had Wordstar-ish UI... I couldn't get on with Vi or Emacs, but JOE with its similarly wordstar-ish UI just felt right).

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Posted Oct 25, 2025 19:08 UTC (Sat) by jzb (editor, #7867) [Link]

Asking people not to argue about Vim vs. Emacs would be like asking people not to argue about St. Louis Cardinals vs. the Cubs, or Beatles vs. Stones. I would never do that, so long as folks kept it civil.

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Posted Oct 21, 2025 7:23 UTC (Tue) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link] (6 responses)

Nothing except maybe express views like this where he laments that only a third of Londoners are "native Brits". Which may be news to many people, but following the link he provides, it is clear he means white British citizens. Or this where he fat-shames a Black model.

Of course he won't come out and say "I believe in white supremacy" in so many words. But that is clearly his message.

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Posted Oct 23, 2025 22:45 UTC (Thu) by fredi@lwn (subscriber, #65912) [Link] (5 responses)

Uhm, I think going to dig personal beliefs, or presumed so, of people which have nothing to do with the topic at hand, which is Ruby, is just distracting.

Just IMHO.

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Posted Oct 24, 2025 2:06 UTC (Fri) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link] (4 responses)

Just a note that the provided links are to the personal site of the Ruby on Rails' author, so it is not unrelated to Ruby (IMO).

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Posted Oct 24, 2025 3:02 UTC (Fri) by fredi@lwn (subscriber, #65912) [Link] (3 responses)

Yeah, re-reading my comment, I phrased it poorly. I just meant that, IMO, a person’s personal beliefs should be kept separate from their technical work — the discussion here is about the latter.

Disclaimer: I have no stake in Ruby or in any of the parties involved.

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Posted Oct 24, 2025 8:33 UTC (Fri) by taladar (subscriber, #68407) [Link]

To be honest you are probably pretty alone with that opinion and it is certainly not universal enough that having unpalatable personal opinions won't have a negative impact on others being willing to participate in or use projects the person holding those opinions runs, benefits from or where others have to work with them.

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Posted Oct 30, 2025 13:53 UTC (Thu) by davidgerard (guest, #100304) [Link] (1 responses)

I am pretty sure that is completely incorrect and an artificial distinction to make. If someone does that, the obvious question is to have a goose chase them yelling "WHAT BELIEFS IN PARTICULAR?"

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Posted Oct 30, 2025 15:08 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

> > I just meant that, IMO, a person’s personal beliefs should be kept separate from their technical work

> I am pretty sure that is completely incorrect and an artificial distinction to make.

"Your reality is not my reality". Belief systems matter. I'll get told off if I bring databases into this :-)

You cannot separate a person's technical ability from their personality - all aspects of it - because it's part of them, and has a big impact on their work.

Not least, to drag Free Software into this, even here we have zealots and pragmatists, and you can see the effect this has on peoples' work, and the willingness of other people to work with them.

Cheers,
Wol