The year I got my Ruby Hero award was the year that I (partially) convinced core team members to name the RC release of Rails “race car” because Dave ditched us to play Max Verstappen. He didn’t come to RailsConf because of a race.
The years he did come, he usually will come be there for his keynote, maybe see him at dinner, and then he’s gone. Everyone else is pumped to be there. Core and contributors show up, actually go to talks for all the days, conduct birds of a feather sessions and hack and chat.
On the day that 1/3 of basecamp quit I had a realization that he really just didn’t care about us. We were resources to be exploited.
I still really like the rails community, but it keeps feeling like Dave wants that to be exclusively defined around him. Which doesn’t feel like a community.
I can't get past "snide" on this one.
Social commitments are purely voluntary. If someone's burned out and introverted for whatever reason, then only the legal commitments matter, irrespective of wishes we harbor.
Which is more or less impossible at scale.