What happened to RubyGems and what can we learn?

In September and October 2025, RubyGems and Bundler maintainers were removed by RubyCentral; some repos moved to the Ruby organization and former maintainers created gem.coo p. I share lessons for non-Ruby projects on non-profits, governance, money and access in open source, drawn from mediating the dispute and helping gem.coop bootstrap governance, without taking sides.

Transcript

1. What Happened to RubyGems and What Can We Learn? 💎 🎇 🧐 Mike McQuaid
7. framing 🖼
8. this is not a trial ⚖
9. certainty is a red flag 🚩
10. incentives are everything 🌍
11. learning over drama 🧑🏫
12. FOSS infrastructure 🏗
13. invisible when it works 🫥
14. critical when it fails ☢
15. this story is about that 📚
16. who? 👋
17. Project Leader of Homebrew (Homebrew Maintainer 2009 – Present)
18. Principal Engineer at GitHub (GitHub Engineer 2013 – 2023)
19. Rubyist (2005 - Present)
20. CTPO at Administrate (2025 - Present)
21. not a RubyGems maintainer 🚫
22. not a RubyCentral person 🚫
23. asked to mediate 🕊
24. failed to mediate 😩
25. September - October 2025 📆
26. helped gem.coop governance 🧑⚖
27. learned some things 📚
28. what? 💎
29. RubyGems 💎
30. Founded 2004 📆
31. Millions of applications 📦
32. Not a "side project" 🕹
33. money? 🤑
34. servers: cost money 💸
35. on-call: costs money 📟
36. incidents: costs money 🚒
37. not everything: costs money 🆓
38. comparison 🍻
39. Homebrew 🍺
40. hosting: provided freely 🆓
41. trade-off: independence ⚖
42. trade-off: dependence 🔗
43. timeline ⏳
44. RubyCentral founded: 2001 💎
45. RubyCentral founded: 2001 💎
46. RubyGems released: Mar 2004 💎
47. RubyTogether founded: 2015 💎
48. RubyTogether/RubyCentral merged: 2022 💎
49. timeline ⏳
50. September 2025 📆
51. access removed 🔒
52. no notice 🚫
53. no governance 🧑⚖
54. recovery attempt ❤🩹
55. Mid September 2025 📆
56. governance proposed 🧑⚖
57. access restored 🔓
58. https://github.com/rubygems/rfcs/pull/61
59. mediation attempted 🕊
60. access removed (again) 🔒
61. security invoked 🚓
62. Late September 2025 📆
63. root access: active 🦷
64. RubyGems/Bundler move to Ruby Core team 💎
65. https://rubycentral.org/news/rubygems-org-aws-root-access-event-september-2025/
66. public disclosure 📣
67. https://www.404media.co/how-ruby-went-off-the-rails/
68. confidence collapses 📉
69. lawsuits begin 🧑⚖
70. consequences ⛓💥
71. talk fails 📣
72. maintainers exit 🚪
73. October 2025 📆
74. gem.coop 💎
75. https://gem.coop
76. professional FOSS 👔
77. hard FOSS ⛑
78. volunteer limits 🪫
79. structural burnout 📉
80. careers 🧑🏭
81. FOSS is not a career 🙅
82. plan for your exit 🚪
83. one size doesn't fit all 👠
84. lessons 👩🏫
85. this is not about blame ⚖
86. if you're 100% sure 🚩
87. governance is boring 🥱
88. governance is boring (until it isn't) 🥱
89. money makes things complicated 🤑
90. ask better questions 🙋
91. ask what broke and why 🙋
92. questions? 🌐 mike@mikemcquaid.com https://mikemcquaid.com