Honest question: What's the issue with DHH here? What did he do that caused them to pull support because he was platformed at RailsConf?
https://tekin.co.uk/2025/09/the-ruby-community-has-a-dhh-pro...
DHH has been going off the deep end with his rhetoric for years, the current political environment has made it so that he can't be ignored anymore.
But Shopify is also right wing in its executive team, and via these move they appear to be support DHH:
https://pressprogress.ca/shopify-executives-right-wing-media...
https://disconnect.blog/the-conservative-tech-alliance-is-co...
And yeah, Shopify is going to protect DHH because DHH is on Shopify's board:
Also, people opposing it (Sidekiq, the guys starting "rv", etc...) have a vested financial interest in opposing Rails and rubygems...
It's not just about his politics. DHH is reactionary, mean, dismissive of others' opinions. He acts more like a high school bully than a leader.
Since then, DHH has gone off the deep end with xenophobic, racist, and transphobic comments. I was drawn to the Ruby community because of its kindness and creativity, with people like why the lucky stiff and Jim Weirich. It is a lot less welcoming when DHH repeatedly uses his platform to say that I shouldn't exist or have equal rights.
Can you point to any of his blog posts that says this ?
I guess I’m so old that I remember not paying much attention to personal lives and looking at code contributions and collaboration behavior. I think that being a sensitive collaborator who builds changes was more relevant than swearing at people or saying rude things.
I once worked for a company where one developer hit another in the face with a keyboard. Was it wrong, yes of course. But we still delivered a pretty decent product.
I don’t really care if you, or others feel I should exist or not. Or whether they think I should or shouldn’t have rights, unless you mean permissions to change and maintain code.
I follow him on Twitter and guy is a bully and has opinions about stuff he has 0 knowledge about.
https://world.hey.com/dhh/the-social-media-censorship-era-is...
Update: To be fair, I haven't followed DHH/Rails/Ruby community for the past decade (was very involved ~15 yrs ago), so my views may be outdated. Still I think pulling the funding doesn't help Ruby.
Yes, but you don't really need to worry, because those things aren't a real threat to you. Imagine if you were a member of a minority group making up 1% of the population, with a government actively persecuting you.
https://world.hey.com/dhh/the-waning-days-of-dei-s-dominance...
I missed all this drama, it does seem like there is an echo chamber forming over on Bluesky…
I don't think he's a white supremacist, but it is understandable that some people don't like his ideas.
https://tekin.co.uk/2025/09/the-ruby-community-has-a-dhh-pro...
https://www.rubyevents.org/talks/panel-the-past-present-and-...
We assume it's linked to DHH because he's an asshole, but that's just our own theories.
- do not turn away from debate - do not turn to or espouse violence[1] - and their contributions were of merit
Since DHH has done none of that then the answer is "yes, it's okay to put him on a stage to talk about tech".
[1] I thank Karl Popper for showing the way here with his Paradox of tolerance.
[2] Bob was the master of self-deprecating jokes, I hope he would appreciate that one.
In other words, it can be read more charitably as a lamentation about the loss / changing of a culture.
I aspired to be like Jim. We all should.
He made time for anyone who wanted to engage him in a sincere discussion. He helped a lot of newer people. He wrote beautiful tools that we still use.
He embodied MINASWAN. That has been the core of Ruby's community.
DHH has been pretty damn far from that.
Did many of us find Ruby through Rails? Sure. Does that mean that Ruby should be stewarded by someone who is intolerant and therefore exclusionary? No.
That's the opposite of MINASWAN.
Then he goes on about 'Pakistani rape gangs' and 'abuse of British girls'–oh look, the classic trope of the nasty browns and blacks preying on our precious white children.
Then take this: 'There's absolutely nothing racist or xenophobic in saying that Denmark is primarily a country for the Danes, Britain primarily a united kingdom for the Brits, and Japan primarily a set of islands for the Japanese.'
These words would not be out of place in 1066 Britain ie 'this is a country of the Saxons, not the Normans'. Britain has seen this exact brand of xenophobia for millennia, in fact they even had periods of bigotry against Danes! If dhh had gone to London at the wrong point in history, he might have experienced racial prejudice.
Interesting, right?
It might just sound like something off TV Tropes to you, but even the Labor government's own inquiry [1] on the matter shows that hundreds if not thousands of children were actually molested by such gangs. It even has a chapter on "Denial", which brings your comment to another light:
> Instead, flawed data is used repeatedly to dismiss claims about ‘Asian grooming gangs’ as sensationalised, biased or untrue. This does a disservice to victims and indeed all law-abiding people in Asian communities.
For your reading:
[1] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/685559d05225e...
> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.