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.
What, because he prioritizes his hobbies like race matches? Or because he elects not to spend an entire day at an event?
Does an OSS maintainer not allowed to have a life?
It’s upsetting because I’m trying to advocate for treating open source contributors and maintainers well, and either you’re not understanding that deliberately or I’ve not spoken well enough.
What I would love right now is for you go find out who Rafael Mendonça França is. I want you to find out about him and the wonderful things he’s done for the community.
I want you to find some thread online one day where his name comes up and I want you to defend him or any of the other contributors who have given so much and asked for so little.
Do it with the passion you’ve go here. Can you do that? Will you try?