Two disclaimers before I continue: (a) I normally post on programming-related topics elsewhere and not on my personal blog, but because this is such a personal issue for me and not about the technical aspects, I’ve decided to post here. (b) I am the lead maintainer of the Bridgetown Ruby web framework, but any views expressed here are my own and I don’t claim to represent Bridgetown as a whole in writing this.
9/23/2025 2:33PM PT Update: There’s new information out from Josef Šimánek, a 10+ year contributor & maintainer for RubyGems and the RubyGems.org service, and it’s also really damning. There’s also this update from Joel Drapper about the Ruby Central and Ruby Together merger (Ruby Together was originally the org managing all things RubyGems/Bundler).
9/24/2025 3:57PM PT Update: Both Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke and Ruby on Rails founder David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH) have weighted in on an open letter called Plan Vert to request Rails core & the Ruby community cut ties with DHH due to his “racist and transphobic views” according to the letter. (Full disclosure, I added myself as a signatory.) Tobi retweeted (xcancel link) a post regarding the open letter by a far-right agitator called The Lunduke Journal who regularly attacks “antifa” OSS, and Tobi said:
It’s such a terrible mental tax on builders that divisive clowns just ride in and spew these bullshit terms that they clearly don’t understand themselves in bad faith.
Ignore & keep building
And in a reply to a comment by Berend de Boer: “Insane, I feel so sorry for you”, DHH replied:
No reason to feel sorry. Nothing is actually happening. This is the same handful of hysteric individuals who perform these same rites and rituals they do every year. It’s rather sad to watch.
DHH also retweeted another post by The Lunduke Journal with regard to Cloudflare sponsoring DHH’s Linux distro Omarchy and said (xcancel link):
The “Nazi” label is how these people justify their all their antisocial behaviors and violent fantasies. We need to route around these nut jobs and build more open source that isn’t trapped in such tiresome ideological tar pits.
These are the people “in charge” of Ruby Central and Rails. 😕
9/24/2025 9:38PM PT Update: DHH is now accusing his critics and people who might accuse him and others of acting like “nazis” as essentially being violent politically-motivated murder sympathizers (re: Charlie Kirk) and that “you’re not wrong to be worried when political assassinations are justified and exalted in reference to the “nazi” threat”. He says “The last loonies on tech’s woke island are getting desperate.”
You know, I’m starting to think this is a sore spot with him. Keep up the pressure.
9/25/2025 12:00PM PT Update: The pressure campaign is working, on multiple fronts. André Arko, one of the principal developers of Bundler going back 15 years and the founder of Ruby Together (which later merged with Ruby Central), wrote a poignant and pointed article about his history with the project, and that he has registered “Bundler” as a trademark which he will not license to Ruby Central but will to a new organization accountable to the Ruby community at large.
Meanwhile, the Plan Vert open letter continues to gain momentum, even while a horde of DHH sycophants flood the zone both in terms of defacing PRs as well as a massive influx to a popular Ruby Discord server. Most notably, Eugen Rochko, creator of Mastodon which has become the most popular open source Rails-based application as measured by GitHub stars, has signed the letter. The symbolic importance of this cannot be overstated, and lends real weight to the movement to hold DHH and Rails Core accountable.
10/6/2025 10:00AM PT Update: Oh hey, there’s a new gem server in town, so buckle up folks! 😄 Looks like gem.coop is really the start of something.
Now, time to spill some tea, because I am done being constantly gaslit by Ruby Central.
Before I link to the latest incredible reporting by Joel Drapper on what has been going down throughout September 2025, I will offer my own timeline of events which transpired earlier this year.
- May 28, 2025: Ruby Central announces that “David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH), the creator of Ruby on Rails, will join us for a special fireside chat” at the upcoming RailsConf in July. As many in the Ruby and web technology scene are aware, DHH has become an extremely polarizing figure over the last few years, publicly aligning himself with far-right authoritarian figures in America like Donald Trump and Elon Musk and recently Tommy Robinson in the UK, and espousing views which are hateful towards immigrants, the LGBTQ+ community, black people, “fat” people, “woke” people, “crazy” people who want to “unperson” Andrew Tate, “DEI zealots”, couples who don’t want kids, therapists, and the list goes on and on. Naturally, a number of Ruby community members who were planning to attend RailsConf were upset to hear that seemingly at the last minute (6 weeks prior), DHH would be platformed—and ironically at the very conference he was asked not to keynote in 2022 seemingly as a result of Basecamp’s politically-charged implosion which led to a third of the entire company resigning in protest. It should also be noted these events in 2022 provided the impetus for DHH to launch the Rails Foundation (more on that in a moment) which began to put on its own series of annual Rails conferences called Rails World as a clear rebuke to Ruby Central. This is not my speculation: DHH has written about this on numerous occasions (remember, any time you hear DHH use the term “nonsense”, he means people holding him accountable for his abhorrent views).
- May 30: A mere two days after the announcement of DHH’s firesite chat at RailsConf, DHH posts the following on X regarding an r/rails discussion on Reddit where people are voicing their displeasure at the RailsConf platforming news:
@dhh: While the rest of the tech world has mostly moved on from the nonsense of the early 2020s, there are still a few ardent ideologues fighting the last war on Reddit, believing that ridiculous accusations like “nazi” and “fascist” still carry any weight 🙄
I make an effort to bookmark this, because…
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June 10: Ruby Central hosts a Zoom meeting with Executive Director Shan Cureton, Marketing Director Rhiannon Payne (who since left Ruby Central on September 1, more on that in a moment), some of the engineers who work on RubyGems, Bundler, etc., as well as folks involved in RailsConf programming, to address concerns from the community. I attend this Zoom meeting. I don’t feel at liberty to share who I recall also attended, but you would definitely recognize their name from recent criticism of Ruby Central. At the start of the meeting, Ruby Central asked permission from everyone to record the call. At the time, I took this to mean they wanted to be able to publish it later for folks who were unable to attend.
Much of the concern expressed in the meeting around DHH returning to RailsConf centered around why this announcement was made so close to the date of the conference, if sponsors were putting pressure on RC to permit his appearance, how they would protect the community from more hateful rhetoric, what steps RC is taking to create safe spaces for minority groups, etc. Here is a key exchange: in a conversation regarding DHH’s behavior outside of the conference, someone from Ruby Central (I forget who exactly) said they’d keep an eye on anything DHH might say regarding his return that’s a form of “weaponization” against his perceived political opponents—aka using his RailsConf appearance as a justification for his behavior. At this point, I shared the link to what DHH had already posted two weeks prior which is referenced above (aka “ardent ideologues”). Shan Cureton specifically replied that she wasn’t aware of that post and they would have to look into it. Again, this is key information: Shan Cureton and Ruby Central, as of June 10, knew DHH was already weaponizing his return to RailsConf to attack his enemies, because I was the one who shared this information with them. The Zoom meeting concluded in a reasonably cordial fashion, but it was obvious this would need to be the first in a series of difficult conversations to come.
- A few weeks later: I regret I’m unable to find this exchange now in my archives, but I had been holding off on commenting on what went down during the Zoom meeting because I wanted to wait for Ruby Central to release the video recording, and I finally contacted someone at RC about the video recording, at which time I received a reply back that they would not release the recording due to privacy concerns…but they were working on addressing the community’s feedback in a FAQ they would post on the RailsConf website. This is the FAQ they released. I want to point out that nowhere in this FAQ do they actually address the community uproar around DHH’s return, instead framing all of the answers they provide in the abstract without mentioning any one person.
- July 8: DHH has his fireside chat with Elise Shaffer at RailsConf as planned. As far as I’m aware, no punitive action was ever taken against DHH, nor any mention of his weaponization of his return which I had reported.
- September 1: I receive “The Ruby Central README” marketing email which includes the following:
Ruby Central’s leadership will be in Amsterdam this week for Rails World, and we’d love to see you there! Executive Director Shan Cureton and Director of Open Source Marty Haught will both be attending.
Again, I am beside myself that Ruby Central is blithely heading off to DHH’s pet conference—especially with DHH’s public views as toxic as ever on a regular basis (as you’ll soon see), so on September 4 (at the start of Rails World) I send the following email to contact@rubycentral.org:
“Ruby Central’s leadership will be in Amsterdam this week for Rails World, and we’d love to see you there! Executive Director Shan Cureton and Director of Open Source Marty Haught will both be attending.”
Meanwhile, DHH is posting this on X:
“First-world problems” shouldn’t be seen as an insult, but a celebration! Hurraaaay, I have ascended from the daily toils and tribulations of a life in the third world, so my worries may now include slow laundry machines and air conditioning, not starvation or failed states 🎉
I regret to say I am unable to support an organization which seems unable to publicly disavow a man who has demonstrated numerous times to be a racist, homophobe, transphobe, fatphobe, ableist white nationalist who is now apparently cheering on death via starvation in third world countries.
Disassociating with Nazis should be the bare minimum of ethical behavior by anyone in a civilized world. I’m sad I can no longer in good conscience support Ruby Central.
Regards,
Jared White
P.S. I am lead maintainer of the Ruby-based Bridgetown web framework. I have been outspoken on this topic and will continue to speak out. I’ve tried to keep a low profile with regard to speaking about Ruby Central specifically, but given the non-published Zoom conference prior to RailsConf which resulted in a nothing-burger Q&A response which didn’t even mention DHH by name in any way and now this…I am flabbergasted and dumbfounded.
A week later, I had not received any response to this email, so I replied again with the following:
I’m disappointed I never received a response back to my message, and furthermore, the exact thing I warned you about in the Zoom conference I attended prior to RailsConf—that DHH would weaponize his inclusion at RailsConf by attacking and silencing his political opponents and gaslighting the public that all is well in the community—is continuing to happen! (see the attached from his HEY World blog*)
Your silence is now complicity! Can you explain how it’s possible to uphold ethical policies which protect the LGBTQ+ community and other marginalized people, people in “third world” countries, the disabled, and others who are frequent targets of DHH’s wrath on his public HEY World blog, all while doing nothing to disassociate from him and his abhorrent views and instead sanctioning (!!) the Rails World conferences and the Rails foundation?
Jared
* This was what I had attached, a screenshot of DHH’s blog post reflecting on Rails World 2025 as stated here:
Thanks again to all The Rails Foundation members who believed in the vision for a new institution back in 2022. It looks like a no-brainer to join such a venture now, given the success of Rails World and everything else, but it actually took guts to sign on back then.
I approached quite a few companies at that time who could see the value, but couldn’t find the courage to support our work, as our industry was still held hostage to a band of bad ideas and terrible ideologies.
All that nonsense is thankfully now long gone in the Rails world. We’re enjoying a period of peak unity, excitement, progress, and determination to continue to push for end-to-end problem solving, open source, and freedom.
Think about it. DHH fully admits that it was hard to gain public support back in 2022 for a new Rails Foundation due to his reputation at the time and companies’ hesitancy to associate with him. But now, everything’s all good! “All that nonsense” (AGAIN linking back to the news he wouldn’t be at RailsConf 2022) is “thankfully now long gone in the Rails world.” Aaaarrgghh.
Anyway, I finally got a reply back from Shan Cureton, which I will include in a moment.
- September 1: Also around this same time, Rhiannon Payne stepped down as Marketing Director of Ruby Central, and only now having read her post, I’m struck by her phrasing here: “My decision to step down as Ruby Central’s Marketing Director was a challenging one to make and came with a lot of inner conflict for me. Ultimately, a lot of it came down to incompatibility with my bandwidth and the org’s needs as it prepares for significant growth, as well as strategic changes as Ruby Central reinvents itself and looks ahead to what’s next.” I’m curious: what significant growth is Ruby Central preparing for? What strategic changes this month of September 2025? Reinventing itself? Why? And for whom? 🤔
- September 16: I finally hear back from Ruby Central Executive Director Shan Cureton. It largely sounds like a PR script to me, but I will include it anyway:
Hi Jared,
Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts and concerns with us. We value hearing different perspectives from across the Ruby community, and your voice has been heard. Ruby Central is a small organization with a small staff, and while we’re not always able to respond quickly or engage in every social conversation, we do take feedback seriously and reflect on it as part of our ongoing work.
Ruby Central’s mission and work are rooted in supporting the Ruby community, sustaining open source, and creating inclusive, welcoming spaces. We strive to show up in ways that reinforce our values in everything that we do. While we can’t always respond in the moment to everything that happens in external channels, we remain committed to fostering unity, equity, and respect within the ecosystem.
We know that perspectives within the community may differ on how we prioritize and balance these responsibilities. Our hope is that, over time, the work we do will demonstrate where we stand and may help shift how you view Ruby Central’s role in the community.
Please know that our door is always open to thoughtful discussion around these topics. Thank you again for your email and for all the ways you’ve contributed to the Ruby community.
Best Regards,
Shan
And here is my final reply back:
Thanks Shan for the reply back. I am eagerly awaiting something, anything, that seems to push back on the false narrative that all of the “nonsense” DHH is constantly talking about is long in the past and everyone’s totally on board his weird political train and it’s all cool bro. There is no “creating inclusive, welcoming spaces” in the Ruby on Rails community as long as that man is at the top of the food chain.
I will continue to monitor the situation.
All the best,
Jared - September 19: and now you are all caught up to where the latest Ruby Central drama unfolds, and this is now where I will link to this incredible article by Ruby programmer Joel Drapper that goes in-depth into the latest debacle based in part on his private conversations (Drapper I’ll note worked at Shopify, aka Ruby Central’s principal corporate sponsor, from 2017 and 2022). I’m glad he did this work so I don’t need to keep writing out this already lengthy timeline. 😅
I will conclude with some brief thoughts, because while I have a lot more to say about Ruby Central in particular and the state of the Ruby programming language ecosystem in general, I will save most of that for future work I do in community building.
I watched the nearly 10 minute video put out this morning by Shan Cureton of Ruby Central, on the pretense that they realized it is the holiday of Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year) and thus not a good time to host a previously-scheduled community Zoom meeting. (Stay tuned for some future rescheduled date, apparently.) I am amazed that in this 10 minutes, none of my concerns were addressed. None. Good job everybody! 😂
I am done. I am done with this drama.
I believe the time to mourn what we could have had is now over and it is time—to quote DHH himself—to “route around the nonsense” by building a new Ruby ecosystem from the ground up, grassroots, that clearly and unequivocally does not associate with fascists and is centered around organizations & communities who are accountable to the people and to the principles of good-faith, transparent, and democratic open source governance. We as Rubyists deserve better. And I will dedicate every ounce of joy I still feel at programming in Ruby, a language I have loved for nearly 20 years now, towards helping to build this new ecosystem—an ecosystem that is not dependent on Ruby Central, Rails Foundation, and their bedfellows in complicity.
–Jared White
September 23, 2025
P.S. This exchange on Mastodon between previous Ruby Central Director Adarsh Pandit and Mike Perham of Sidekiq is also extremely illuminating. I’ll mention I am on good personal terms with Adarsh and offer my sincere appreciation for everything he accomplished while at Ruby Central.