4 ms·

Given some of the ways Andre Arko gets described (See https://justin.searls.co/posts/why-im-not-rushing-to-take-sides-in-the-rubygems-fiasco/ https://justin.sea

Given some of the ways Andre Arko gets described (See https://justin.searls.co/posts/why-im-not-rushing-to-take-sides-in-the-rubygems-fiasco/ https://justin.searls.co/posts/why-im-not-rushing-to-take-si... for a recent overview) I'm a little wary of what the motivation behind this is.

directionless 11mo ago
To follow up here, it sure sounds like Andre is not entirely acting in good faith. https://rubycentral.org/news/rubygems-org-aws-root-access-event-september-2025/ https://rubycentral.org/news/rubygems-org-aws-root-access-ev... discusses that a precipitating event was Andre asking for a copy of the http access logs to monetize them. I think this is confirmed by Mike Perham's comment in https://www.reddit.com/r/ruby/comments/1o2bxol/comment/ninn6b4/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1 https://www.reddit.com/r/ruby/comments/1o2bxol/comment/ninn6... > In this case I have first hand knowledge since he pitched me on the idea: would Sidekiq, being a big sponsor of Ruby Central in the past, be interested if rubygems could somehow use the remote IP to identify the companies downloading the sidekiq gem so I could use that to upsell those companies
- daniel_black 11mo ago
  ^^^ THIS ^^^! This is not being highlighted enough.
kimos 1y ago
This reads like a hit piece based on a personal vendetta. I'd be careful how much weight to give this.
- nomdep 1y ago
  > When Ruby Together first launched in 2015, the website suggested donations went to pay "our team" (...) This resulted in a nonzero number of donors believing they were funding the work of people like Steve Klabnik, Aaron Patterson, and Sarah Mei, when in fact only Andre was being paid at the time. This a fact. By this alone I don't think Andre Arko is an honest person.
  - steveklabnik 1y ago
    Back in the day, nobody ever had said to me that they believed I was earning money from Ruby Together. This whole thing was speculation at best. And regardless, once it was suggested that this may be a possibility, it was immediately changed to be unambiguous. André is absolutely a standup individual. I have tried to stay in good terms with the other people involved in this (except DHH), but this claim was always ridiculous.
    - nomdep 1y ago
      I was misremembering it. Now that I've checked, it's clear that the claim was that the money was for paying "the team" [1], which consisted of André Arko and David Radcliffe [2] [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20150919025358/https://rubytogether.org/developers https://web.archive.org/web/20150919025358/https://rubytoget... [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20150919025603/https://rubytogether.org/team https://web.archive.org/web/20150919025603/https://rubytoget...
      - steveklabnik 1y ago
        It's all good, you were quoting the blog post. Frankly that page is even more clear than I remembered. All of this happened so long ago.
      - knowitnone3 1y ago
        I just want to know how much was David Radcliffe getting paid for his time?
      - hitekker 1y ago
        Your links are off-base. They're from September 2015, which is months after Andre Arko was told to revise the /teams page. Since no /teams page was archived before March 2015, here's the Github commit of the overly vague team page https://github.com/rubytogether/rubytogether.org/blob/9a03c4c/app/views/home/team.html.erb https://github.com/rubytogether/rubytogether.org/blob/9a03c4.... This page was linked from https://web.archive.org/web/20150425040538/http://RubyTogether.org/ https://web.archive.org/web/20150425040538/http://RubyTogeth... which stated "We pool funds from corporate and individual members to pay our team[github link]" Altogether, it demonstrates how Andre misled his audience on who was getting the money. IMO, I see a distinct pattern of him crossing boundaries and then covering it up using his social skills & friend group.
- directionless 1y ago
  TBH the whole thing is pretty opaque. There are a lot of accusations floating around. It's pretty easily to capitalize on "Big evil shopify is making a takeover", but I suspect there's a lot more happening behind the scenes.
- dismalaf 1y ago
  Does it? Seems pretty detailed with plenty of easily verifiable details...
busterarm 1y ago
To take the maximally negative view of things: - uv is a cool tool, but Astral has signaled their intention to have it tie in nicely to paid services. - that's a nice moat! - Andre & friends saw that in the Python community (and uv's success) and decided they could do the same for Ruby - Their collective announces rv and now wants to make us dependent on them & friends for Ruby Gems. - After Hashicorp and others, I'm extremely wary of orgs luring me in with free shit. Hashicorp is maybe the lightest example of this but they're very intentional about enterprise-walling business-essential features. - I don't want the Ruby ecosystem dependent on one party or even a tiny collective of people. This is just as bad to me as the Ruby Central situation right now.
- davidcelis 1y ago
  By "Astral" do you mean "Spinel"? Also, what paid services? So far the only paid services they've mentioned is retainer services that essentially amount to priority customer support. The tools themselves are only ever described as free EDIT: Misread the comment and thought it was only about `rv`, not both `uv` and `rv`
  - levicole 1y ago
    "If it's free, you're the product"
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - pityJuke 1y ago
    What is Spinel? Astral is the developer of uv, and they have announced their hosted platform service, pyx [0]. It appears it will be FOSS as well, but they'll have a hosted version of it. [0]: https://astral.sh/blog/introducing-pyx https://astral.sh/blog/introducing-pyx
    - riffraff 1y ago
      spinel is the company spun up around rv, ruby's uv version. https://spinel.coop/ https://spinel.coop/

directionless 11mo ago

To follow up here, it sure sounds like Andre is not entirely acting in good faith. https://rubycentral.org/news/rubygems-org-aws-root-access-event-september-2025/ https://rubycentral.org/news/rubygems-org-aws-root-access-ev... discusses that a precipitating event was Andre asking for a copy of the http access logs to monetize them. I think this is confirmed by Mike Perham's comment in https://www.reddit.com/r/ruby/comments/1o2bxol/comment/ninn6b4/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1 https://www.reddit.com/r/ruby/comments/1o2bxol/comment/ninn6... > In this case I have first hand knowledge since he pitched me on the idea: would Sidekiq, being a big sponsor of Ruby Central in the past, be interested if rubygems could somehow use the remote IP to identify the companies downloading the sidekiq gem so I could use that to upsell those companies

daniel_black 11mo ago
^^^ THIS ^^^! This is not being highlighted enough.

kimos 1y ago

This reads like a hit piece based on a personal vendetta. I'd be careful how much weight to give this.

nomdep 1y ago
> When Ruby Together first launched in 2015, the website suggested donations went to pay "our team" (...) This resulted in a nonzero number of donors believing they were funding the work of people like Steve Klabnik, Aaron Patterson, and Sarah Mei, when in fact only Andre was being paid at the time. This a fact. By this alone I don't think Andre Arko is an honest person.
- steveklabnik 1y ago
  Back in the day, nobody ever had said to me that they believed I was earning money from Ruby Together. This whole thing was speculation at best. And regardless, once it was suggested that this may be a possibility, it was immediately changed to be unambiguous. André is absolutely a standup individual. I have tried to stay in good terms with the other people involved in this (except DHH), but this claim was always ridiculous.
  - nomdep 1y ago
    I was misremembering it. Now that I've checked, it's clear that the claim was that the money was for paying "the team" [1], which consisted of André Arko and David Radcliffe [2] [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20150919025358/https://rubytogether.org/developers https://web.archive.org/web/20150919025358/https://rubytoget... [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20150919025603/https://rubytogether.org/team https://web.archive.org/web/20150919025603/https://rubytoget...
    - steveklabnik 1y ago
      It's all good, you were quoting the blog post. Frankly that page is even more clear than I remembered. All of this happened so long ago.
    - knowitnone3 1y ago
      I just want to know how much was David Radcliffe getting paid for his time?
    - hitekker 1y ago
      Your links are off-base. They're from September 2015, which is months after Andre Arko was told to revise the /teams page. Since no /teams page was archived before March 2015, here's the Github commit of the overly vague team page https://github.com/rubytogether/rubytogether.org/blob/9a03c4c/app/views/home/team.html.erb https://github.com/rubytogether/rubytogether.org/blob/9a03c4.... This page was linked from https://web.archive.org/web/20150425040538/http://RubyTogether.org/ https://web.archive.org/web/20150425040538/http://RubyTogeth... which stated "We pool funds from corporate and individual members to pay our team[github link]" Altogether, it demonstrates how Andre misled his audience on who was getting the money. IMO, I see a distinct pattern of him crossing boundaries and then covering it up using his social skills & friend group.
directionless 1y ago
TBH the whole thing is pretty opaque. There are a lot of accusations floating around. It's pretty easily to capitalize on "Big evil shopify is making a takeover", but I suspect there's a lot more happening behind the scenes.
dismalaf 1y ago
Does it? Seems pretty detailed with plenty of easily verifiable details...

busterarm 1y ago

To take the maximally negative view of things: - uv is a cool tool, but Astral has signaled their intention to have it tie in nicely to paid services. - that's a nice moat! - Andre & friends saw that in the Python community (and uv's success) and decided they could do the same for Ruby - Their collective announces rv and now wants to make us dependent on them & friends for Ruby Gems. - After Hashicorp and others, I'm extremely wary of orgs luring me in with free shit. Hashicorp is maybe the lightest example of this but they're very intentional about enterprise-walling business-essential features. - I don't want the Ruby ecosystem dependent on one party or even a tiny collective of people. This is just as bad to me as the Ruby Central situation right now.

davidcelis 1y ago
By "Astral" do you mean "Spinel"? Also, what paid services? So far the only paid services they've mentioned is retainer services that essentially amount to priority customer support. The tools themselves are only ever described as free EDIT: Misread the comment and thought it was only about `rv`, not both `uv` and `rv`
- levicole 1y ago
  "If it's free, you're the product"
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- pityJuke 1y ago
  What is Spinel? Astral is the developer of uv, and they have announced their hosted platform service, pyx [0]. It appears it will be FOSS as well, but they'll have a hosted version of it. [0]: https://astral.sh/blog/introducing-pyx https://astral.sh/blog/introducing-pyx
  - riffraff 1y ago
    spinel is the company spun up around rv, ruby's uv version. https://spinel.coop/ https://spinel.coop/