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This is a disappointing look for Ruby Central. I have to get back to work, but their retroactive framing that Andre and Samuel's work on RV justified Ruby Centr

by thramp 6mo ago

This is a disappointing look for Ruby Central. I have to get back to work, but their retroactive framing that Andre and Samuel's work on RV justified Ruby Central's subsequent actions is contradicted by their own admissions. By their own admission, André is a contractor to Ruby Central. Contractors, especially under California law, have no contractual obligation of confidentiality to the other party unless there's a pre-existing agreement in place. They later admit in this "incident report" that they didn't have any legal agreements with André in place, so there's no basis for claiming André couldn't work on rv. Samuel was an employee, not a contractor, but [California Bus. & Prof. Code § 16600](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=BPC&sectionNum=16600 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio....) voids non-compete agreements—so even as an employee, he had every right to work on a competing project. There's no indication that he used Ruby Central's proprietary information to do so, and the report doesn't allege that. I have little doubt that if Samuel or André used proprietary information to develop rv, they would have already presented evidence of that. Independent of the legalese, a "uv but for ruby" is a blindingly obvious thing to do, and Ruby Central doesn't get to lick the cookie and get upset when an independent contractor—Ruby Central's own characterization—does a thing they didn't fund. My sourcing on this is that I run a 10-person business with employees in California. I'm not a lawyer, but I looked over enough of this paperwork that I feel confident opining on an internet forum.

busterarm 6mo ago
uv is Astral's onramp to paying customers. Without uv's tight integration with Astral's other tooling that they want to charge for, they wouldn't be able to sell anything. Building a business around doing the same for Ruby may be within their rights, but it's absolutely a conflict of interest working or contracted by Ruby Central. Removing them was an obvious move.
- RhythmFox 6mo ago
  If this is a conflict of interest, then any Ruby core systems being controlled predominantly by members of the Shopify dev team is itself a conflict of interest. I am fine saying 'we need to make sure these libraries stay independent and community controlled', but that is so clearly not what was going on here. Believing that is just letting the RC FUD and PR control your thinking on the narrative.
  - busterarm 6mo ago
    I'm sorry but what are Shopify's business activities that directly compete with services provided/maintained by RubyCentral? As far as arguments about community, Shopify IS the community by virtue of being the ones putting up pretty much all the money to keep this ship afloat. If you don't have skin in the game your positions won't be taken seriously. Depending on your point of view, Sidekiq either turned their back on the community or tried to start a coup by pulling funding just so they could morally grandstand.
    - RhythmFox 6mo ago
      That attitude is exactly the problem. Shopify does not 'keep the ship afloat' they are just a corporation using open source systems as the foundation of their business. Competition is not by definition the backing of a 'conflict of interest', it legally refers to a person or entity with a stake in a particular outcome having control of the means to achieve that which are not legally sound , ie compromise their judgment. I think Shopify's judgement of what 'is good for the Ruby community' is severely compromised by their corporate interests, and probably by their boards political interests as well. Hence, why they are trying so hard to justify removing Andre.
      - busterarm 6mo ago
        Do you have any idea how expensive it is to keep the infrastructure running? RubyCentral's operating expenses are in the millions every year and exceed their revenue. 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.
        themafia 6mo ago
        Those who write the code have more of a right than those who pay the bills. Anyone can write a check. A select few have the acumen and experience to actually write the code. You can't unilaterally declare someone "sketchy" and then kick them out in the name of conveience.
tuckerman 6mo ago
That wasn't my read of what the postmortem is claiming. I didn't see a claim that anyone did anything illegal with proprietary information and the only legal question anyone raised was around a tangentially related proposal with user data[1]. I think the question about working on competing work is unfortunately more grey than most on HN would like, but even then nobody was fired/terminated for that. It sounds like people voluntarily left. My biggest takeaway from this is the intermingling of opensource work/foundations/companies and employees/contractors/volunteers needs to be incredibly explicit. It sounds like everyone had very different expectations about what this group of people was (ranging from an exclusive club of influential ruby developers to a very formal, business-like foundation) and, as a result, each other's actions seemed hostile/strange/confusing. [1] I actually think the comments about the proposal of selling the user data does a disservice to the postmortem. I think it invokes a much more emotional reaction from the reader than anything else and, while potentially interesting, seems like dirty laundry that doesn't change the lesson the postmortem teaches.
- RhythmFox 6mo ago
  They are still trying to sue Andre, that is by definition claiming he did something illegal. The rest is just fluff to cover their insincerity (IMO).
  - tuckerman 6mo ago
    The document didn't mention a lawsuit and I was just responding to the above comment with only the context of the postmortem and pointing out that this particular article didn't claim anything illegal happened. You and some others here might have much more context that I or other readers of this postmortem don't have. I seem to remember there were some threats of legal action related to unauthorized access after this kerfuffle but I a) don't know what is going on with that, b) don't know what the law actually says about that and c) don't know if that is what you are referring to. If so, I think it is different than what the original comment alleged which was more about moonlighting/using proprietary information/competing. I think that topic is extremely complicated (e.g. I am not so sure moonlighting for a competitor while an employee is necessarily protected in California...) but that wasn't alleged in the postmortem anyway.

by thramp 6mo ago

busterarm 6mo ago

uv is Astral's onramp to paying customers. Without uv's tight integration with Astral's other tooling that they want to charge for, they wouldn't be able to sell anything. Building a business around doing the same for Ruby may be within their rights, but it's absolutely a conflict of interest working or contracted by Ruby Central. Removing them was an obvious move.

RhythmFox 6mo ago
If this is a conflict of interest, then any Ruby core systems being controlled predominantly by members of the Shopify dev team is itself a conflict of interest. I am fine saying 'we need to make sure these libraries stay independent and community controlled', but that is so clearly not what was going on here. Believing that is just letting the RC FUD and PR control your thinking on the narrative.
- busterarm 6mo ago
  I'm sorry but what are Shopify's business activities that directly compete with services provided/maintained by RubyCentral? As far as arguments about community, Shopify IS the community by virtue of being the ones putting up pretty much all the money to keep this ship afloat. If you don't have skin in the game your positions won't be taken seriously. Depending on your point of view, Sidekiq either turned their back on the community or tried to start a coup by pulling funding just so they could morally grandstand.
  - RhythmFox 6mo ago
    That attitude is exactly the problem. Shopify does not 'keep the ship afloat' they are just a corporation using open source systems as the foundation of their business. Competition is not by definition the backing of a 'conflict of interest', it legally refers to a person or entity with a stake in a particular outcome having control of the means to achieve that which are not legally sound , ie compromise their judgment. I think Shopify's judgement of what 'is good for the Ruby community' is severely compromised by their corporate interests, and probably by their boards political interests as well. Hence, why they are trying so hard to justify removing Andre.
    - busterarm 6mo ago
      Do you have any idea how expensive it is to keep the infrastructure running? RubyCentral's operating expenses are in the millions every year and exceed their revenue. 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.
      - themafia 6mo ago
        Those who write the code have more of a right than those who pay the bills. Anyone can write a check. A select few have the acumen and experience to actually write the code. You can't unilaterally declare someone "sketchy" and then kick them out in the name of conveience.

tuckerman 6mo ago

That wasn't my read of what the postmortem is claiming. I didn't see a claim that anyone did anything illegal with proprietary information and the only legal question anyone raised was around a tangentially related proposal with user data[1]. I think the question about working on competing work is unfortunately more grey than most on HN would like, but even then nobody was fired/terminated for that. It sounds like people voluntarily left. My biggest takeaway from this is the intermingling of opensource work/foundations/companies and employees/contractors/volunteers needs to be incredibly explicit. It sounds like everyone had very different expectations about what this group of people was (ranging from an exclusive club of influential ruby developers to a very formal, business-like foundation) and, as a result, each other's actions seemed hostile/strange/confusing. [1] I actually think the comments about the proposal of selling the user data does a disservice to the postmortem. I think it invokes a much more emotional reaction from the reader than anything else and, while potentially interesting, seems like dirty laundry that doesn't change the lesson the postmortem teaches.

RhythmFox 6mo ago
They are still trying to sue Andre, that is by definition claiming he did something illegal. The rest is just fluff to cover their insincerity (IMO).
- tuckerman 6mo ago
  The document didn't mention a lawsuit and I was just responding to the above comment with only the context of the postmortem and pointing out that this particular article didn't claim anything illegal happened. You and some others here might have much more context that I or other readers of this postmortem don't have. I seem to remember there were some threats of legal action related to unauthorized access after this kerfuffle but I a) don't know what is going on with that, b) don't know what the law actually says about that and c) don't know if that is what you are referring to. If so, I think it is different than what the original comment alleged which was more about moonlighting/using proprietary information/competing. I think that topic is extremely complicated (e.g. I am not so sure moonlighting for a competitor while an employee is necessarily protected in California...) but that wasn't alleged in the postmortem anyway.