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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 qu

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.
  - thramp 6mo ago
    A couple of gentle corrections: > 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 are correct that they did not make any claims, but the article did insinuate illegal behavior on the part of André and Samuel by selectively juxtaposing facts to imply wrongdoing without ever directly stating or saying that their behavior was illegal. For example: 1. André's first commit on RV is placed on the same bullet point as the Ruby Central-funded maintainer offsite, which implies Ruby Central's travel money subsidized a competing project's creation. 2. The `rubygems-github-backup` access token covering "all repos, including private repos" is introduced in the same timeline section as RV development, without any allegation it was used for RV. 3. The "Incident Lessons" section recommends adding an "Outside Business Activities" declaration policy, which only reads as a "lesson" if André's undisclosed side project is being framed as the problem in need of remediation. 4. The report states André "had intimate knowledge of the foundation roadmap" and "did not tell anyone in Ruby Central about this work until it launched". This frames nondisclosure of a lawful side project as a transgression. However, Ruby Central passed on this work, and even if they didn't, André has no obligation to tell Ruby Central about his work! 5. André's proposal to have his consultancy analyze RubyGems.org download logs is presented alongside an OSS Committee member raising PII and "reputational risk" concerns, casting a perfectly sensible rejected business proposal as something suspect. By my count, Ruby Central makes roughly 10 insinuations throughout the report, but not once do they actually claim any of these constitute a transgression. > 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...) California is actually quite clear on this! Bus. & Prof. Code § 16600 voids non-compete agreements, and California courts have consistently read it broadly enough that working on a competing project during employment is protected. The line is whether you used your employer's proprietary information or resources to do it, not whether you competed. The report does not allege that Samuel or André used Ruby Central's proprietary information, and given how thoroughly they documented everything else, I'd expect them to have said so if they had evidence of it. Ruby Central is insinuating that working on RV in the first place is a problem, not that they crossed any legal or contractual line.
- deleted 6mo ago
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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.
- thramp 6mo ago
  A couple of gentle corrections: > 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 are correct that they did not make any claims, but the article did insinuate illegal behavior on the part of André and Samuel by selectively juxtaposing facts to imply wrongdoing without ever directly stating or saying that their behavior was illegal. For example: 1. André's first commit on RV is placed on the same bullet point as the Ruby Central-funded maintainer offsite, which implies Ruby Central's travel money subsidized a competing project's creation. 2. The `rubygems-github-backup` access token covering "all repos, including private repos" is introduced in the same timeline section as RV development, without any allegation it was used for RV. 3. The "Incident Lessons" section recommends adding an "Outside Business Activities" declaration policy, which only reads as a "lesson" if André's undisclosed side project is being framed as the problem in need of remediation. 4. The report states André "had intimate knowledge of the foundation roadmap" and "did not tell anyone in Ruby Central about this work until it launched". This frames nondisclosure of a lawful side project as a transgression. However, Ruby Central passed on this work, and even if they didn't, André has no obligation to tell Ruby Central about his work! 5. André's proposal to have his consultancy analyze RubyGems.org download logs is presented alongside an OSS Committee member raising PII and "reputational risk" concerns, casting a perfectly sensible rejected business proposal as something suspect. By my count, Ruby Central makes roughly 10 insinuations throughout the report, but not once do they actually claim any of these constitute a transgression. > 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...) California is actually quite clear on this! Bus. & Prof. Code § 16600 voids non-compete agreements, and California courts have consistently read it broadly enough that working on a competing project during employment is protected. The line is whether you used your employer's proprietary information or resources to do it, not whether you competed. The report does not allege that Samuel or André used Ruby Central's proprietary information, and given how thoroughly they documented everything else, I'd expect them to have said so if they had evidence of it. Ruby Central is insinuating that working on RV in the first place is a problem, not that they crossed any legal or contractual line.
deleted 6mo ago
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