I am an independent developer and OSCP-certified penetration tester.
I focus on penetration testing, code auditing, Ruby and Ruby on Rails development, and exploit development.
There will be Rails World in Amsterdam this fall, so finally we can go to a big Rails conference without crossing the Atlantic!
If you look at the contributing members of the Rails Foundation, it is obvious there are more companies who are willing to pledge money to improve the Rails ecosystem, so I don't see where is this idea of Shopify being the single biggest weakness of the community coming from.
I will get some hate for this probably, but I think RubyCentral is probably trying to get sponsorship, because bringing politics into the community and trying to force their ideology to others in the community kinda backfired and RailsConf wasn't a sell-out(with the high priced tickets they still made some profit probably though).
What I said is that Shopify and a small subset of companies are contributing to either, which is a problem, because if any of them fail and especially if Shopify fails the community will be in a very bad position. That's the weakness, not that I somehow dislike them, but that if they're ever not here we have a problem.
Insofar as politics? I'm not biting on that, and it's a core reason I have you blocked on Twitter. I've seen how you treat people, and will not engage after this reply.
Comment hidden by post author - thread only visible in this permalink
I am an independent developer and OSCP-certified penetration tester.
I focus on penetration testing, code auditing, Ruby and Ruby on Rails development, and exploit development.
Insofar as politics? I'm not biting on that, and it's a core reason I have you blocked on Twitter. I've seen how you treat people, and will not engage after this reply.
So if I tell someone I don't agree with them, that's mistreatment? :) Fair enough.
because if any of them fail and especially if Shopify fails the community will be in a very bad position
I don't think that's true. What you are doing is scaremongering and asking for money so we can be safe from the dangers you are inventing. The only danger here is that there is an alternative to RubyCentral now, welcoming everyone not just the folks thinking the way they think and that puts RubyCentral into a tough spot.
But still, I wish that they will make through this and they will change their attitude and act on being inclusive not just talking about it.
Don't take me wrong, I think Shopify does an amazing job for the community to pay many Ruby and Rails contributors to work on open-source, but if Shopify would go bust tomorrow, we would still carry on pretty much as before. Just look at history, before Shopify became this successful, the progress in Ruby and Rails were kinda the same.
That is a fair point RE: affordability and US centricism, and something I've brought up with folks as a core concern at the conference even before this post was written.
Trust me when I say I've been plenty critical of those gaps myself, which is why I'm excited to see them engaging on those finally.
There are some plans in motion on that already, and since talk is cheap I'm also directly rebooting the SF Ruby meetup soon and will network with others in the meetup scene to create a guide book on how to do the same.
Personally I would like to see more direct investment in areas which do not have coverage already, and Europe is one of those areas where we could be increasing presence. We're not just the US.
The way I see it though is that we need to partition out how we deal with areas. Something along the lines of local (city like SF), regional (area like Pacific Northwest), country (US), continental (Europe, SA, etc), and global (moving around).
To do that we need to create leaders capable of 800+ person conferences, prove out interest levels, and set a foundation. Without those it becomes hard to invest, but I see those efforts starting to take root and will be driving towards seeing them land.
Some comments have been hidden by the post's author - find out more
For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse
We're a place where coders share, stay up-to-date and grow their careers.
There will be Rails World in Amsterdam this fall, so finally we can go to a big Rails conference without crossing the Atlantic!
If you look at the contributing members of the Rails Foundation, it is obvious there are more companies who are willing to pledge money to improve the Rails ecosystem, so I don't see where is this idea of Shopify being the single biggest weakness of the community coming from.
I will get some hate for this probably, but I think RubyCentral is probably trying to get sponsorship, because bringing politics into the community and trying to force their ideology to others in the community kinda backfired and RailsConf wasn't a sell-out(with the high priced tickets they still made some profit probably though).
What I said is that Shopify and a small subset of companies are contributing to either, which is a problem, because if any of them fail and especially if Shopify fails the community will be in a very bad position. That's the weakness, not that I somehow dislike them, but that if they're ever not here we have a problem.
Insofar as politics? I'm not biting on that, and it's a core reason I have you blocked on Twitter. I've seen how you treat people, and will not engage after this reply.
So if I tell someone I don't agree with them, that's mistreatment? :) Fair enough.
I don't think that's true. What you are doing is scaremongering and asking for money so we can be safe from the dangers you are inventing. The only danger here is that there is an alternative to RubyCentral now, welcoming everyone not just the folks thinking the way they think and that puts RubyCentral into a tough spot.
But still, I wish that they will make through this and they will change their attitude and act on being inclusive not just talking about it.
Don't take me wrong, I think Shopify does an amazing job for the community to pay many Ruby and Rails contributors to work on open-source, but if Shopify would go bust tomorrow, we would still carry on pretty much as before. Just look at history, before Shopify became this successful, the progress in Ruby and Rails were kinda the same.
That is a fair point RE: affordability and US centricism, and something I've brought up with folks as a core concern at the conference even before this post was written.
Trust me when I say I've been plenty critical of those gaps myself, which is why I'm excited to see them engaging on those finally.
There are some plans in motion on that already, and since talk is cheap I'm also directly rebooting the SF Ruby meetup soon and will network with others in the meetup scene to create a guide book on how to do the same.
Personally I would like to see more direct investment in areas which do not have coverage already, and Europe is one of those areas where we could be increasing presence. We're not just the US.
The way I see it though is that we need to partition out how we deal with areas. Something along the lines of local (city like SF), regional (area like Pacific Northwest), country (US), continental (Europe, SA, etc), and global (moving around).
To do that we need to create leaders capable of 800+ person conferences, prove out interest levels, and set a foundation. Without those it becomes hard to invest, but I see those efforts starting to take root and will be driving towards seeing them land.