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.
Yes, some projects include themselves in the community. Others are involved in the community. Others set out to actively build and maintain a community. There's no one model fits all here.
The ideal community has a power balance. It (can be) hard on a DHH-like figure at conferences because some percentage of folk treat it as a bug-reporting forum, or feature-request session. People don't want to get to know you, they just want your attention.
I've been to "conferences" (community driven, large user groups) where the Supreme leader is there, and where they aren't. Frankly the ones where they are not there are more interesting.
At conferences when they are there, the focus tends to be more on what they said (usually with gross misinterpretations) coupled with a lot of whining about what they're doing wrong.
When we're "alone" it's more about the community, sharing knowledge, more positivity etc.
IMO the ideal community does not centre on the project lead. It works better when the power imbalance is absent. And yes, this sometimes makes the community feel powerless (which they are). But it's still better.
> We were resources to be exploited.
This is uncharitable. DHH have you the gift of Rails. He does not want to give you the gift of participating in the community. That is okay!
I don't know much about Rails, but my guess would be that DHH poured insane amounts of time, effort, and caring into Rails. Is that not enough?
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.
It also wasn’t me running a shadow campaign or something. We were all talking about it and joking about it. At the time it was a “funny because it’s true” joke. I didn’t even mind so much, I felt like if he valued doing other things more, then he’s an adult and can make his decisions. Maybe the feeling is best described as “I’m not mad, just disapointed.”
There’s also a history of Dave doing the opening keynote and Aaron doing the closing one. And it’s mostly filled with jokes about the opening keynote.
I guess the reason I brought up that anecdote is that it was indicative of the culture he built around the development. We didn’t feel free to speak or minds or share our feelings on things that bothered us to him or around him, when those things involved him. Jokes in public were kind of the only commonly used channel. Provided they’re not too harsh and don’t go over some invisible line.
Maybe I was hoping it started a dialog or something. But it didn’t. I hoped to talk to him privately after the basecamp stuff but he didn’t come to RailsConf in Portland in 2022 either, and then he started a whole foundation to kill RailsConf (as I see it). So here we are.
I did want to speak to this though
> gave you rails
As I see it Dave released rails, Yehudah gave us GOOD rails, and Raphael gave us functional, stable rails.
That original release wasn’t in a vaccuum either, he had coders at 37 signals.
My post isn’t about being anti-Dave but being pro the-people-who-bleed-rails the ACTUAL maintainers. I would say something like “it’s the difference between a general and boots on the ground soldiers” but, that would imply much more involvement then I actually saw.
It’s like he never gave them (enough) credit, and continued to not give them credit or recognition. That is, until things got so bad with his PR that he felt compelled to make some token gestures. And he’s struggled at those.
The exploitation comment isn’t about the work we did. We did that gladly. The community was better. We didn’t do it for pay, but we did it for something. And it’s not that Dave didn’t want to give us whatever it is we wanted, it’s that he never really cared enough to find out.
Again, it’s hard to convey the feeling through words. I’m grateful for him for the things he’s given me. I’m also wanting to recognize what he’s done to others who have also given me things. I can hold onto both at the same time.
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?
If you want to give someone feedback, adult instead of playing passive aggressive games.
Putting jabs at people in the codebase is unprofessional and would result in some tough conversations in a professional environment.
I came here to share my raw story of what it’s like working with Dave in open source. To that end, I just want to be heard. Did you hear me?
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?
You had/have expectations around his behavior he's never agreed to and quite probably doesn't know you had. It's fair to be bummed he doesn't want the same things as you.
What's not fair is to be mad at someone for not doing something he never agreed to to or offered to do. His obligation to you is not to lie about what he's interested in doing which he seems to have met.
Additionally, your anecdote about putting jabs at him in the codebase makes me believe engaging with people who do that is not healthy for him.
None of this makes you a victim except of your own expectations.