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.
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.
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".
You can't unilaterally declare someone "sketchy" and then kick them out in the name of conveience.
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.
Not an accurate characterization.
There are some people who do feel this way. But it's not everyone, by a long shot.
You are right that this ten year long interpersonal beef is ultimately at the root of all of this.
I've known him personally for years and find him perfectly fine as a person. The Rubygems maintainers worked with him for the past decade without issue. Until you cite actual issues, not vague "concerns", you're just spreading FUD and innuendo.
It appears unfair. That's the extent of my rationale. I've not seen any concrete evidence to draw any further conclusion than this. If you're managing a project and you're not cognizant of this, you probably shouldn't be managing projects; in particular, you should stay away from open source projects with a large base of volunteer contributors.
> Nobody is in the right here.
So, they went through all of this, made themselves look bad, cast tons of aspersions, and in the end, they weren't even in the right? This seems a shabby defense.
> are just spouting one side's propaganda.
I don't care about one side or the other. You see this giant crater left by these decisions though? Yea.. that's the problem.