post about RubyGems coup

Author: knzai

_posts/2025-09-24-coup-profit-motive-.md

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+---
+layout: post
+title: "A possible profit motive in the RubyGems coup"
+description: >
+  I propose a possible profit motive for Shopify's supposed involvement in the RubyGems coup.
+---
+
+I've been wondering at the possibility of a profit motive for Shopify in the [latest rubygems coup](https://bsky.app/profile/joel.drapper.me/post/3lzj7bi4ohk2s]).
+
+Personal spite and philosphical and political differences only take you so far, even if you are racecar driving buddies with the CEO. Company boards much, much prefer profit.
+
+A spot of background: there are companies that provide private gems to their paid members. This requires them to run gem servers and handle the auth and payments etc. This is not particularly arduos, but it does mean staying on top of rubygems updates and being on-call, which is often outside of the core business of people providing a paid gem for something else. This is a thing some would like to hand off, and it would possibly become more widely used as an approach if there was well supported service for this.
+
+It's been discussed before if the RubyCentral/RubyGems team might maintain a paid rubygems server as a service for companies like this. Some cut of the sales could help maintain RubyGems and rubygems.org. At least some of the maintainers felt this shouldn't be connected to RubyGems.org itself and it never went anywhere as a RubyCentral initiative... yet.
+
+I remembered how frustrated DHH got with the Apple Store's cut and wondered... did he seem like the sort that might take that frustration as a motivation to get on the other side of such a platform deal. (Hint: to me? yes!). Other important context is that DHH is on the Shopify Board. I do not know if or how much he may own, but there are certainly close ties there and I beleive he is more than smart enough and successful enough capiitalist to make this sort of play pay somehow.
+
+Even if the paid gem store wasn't directly associated with rubygems.org itself, having nearly exclusive sway over how that packaging system worked sure would be convenient for an ecommerce platform if it decided to start branching out into new markets. Rubygems just by themselves may or may not be a huge market, but it might make a good jumping off point. Reasonable sized VC deals have been landed at the idea of such a thing for just one language (NPM), much less if one parlayed it into other ecosystems.
+
+I'm not actually opposed to the idea in general, particularly if it went entirely into maintaining the Rubygems ecosystem itself. I'm just not sure a singular corporate backer should be able to takeover Rubygems in pursuit of such a thing. Do I have any idea if Shopify is thinking about doing this? Not a clue. It's merely an example of the sort of thing one *could* be thinking about when trying to gain sway over core infra such as rubygems and why it's not great to have any corporate interest allowed to do so.
+
+Either way, I do not think how RubyCentral has managed this has gone well or should be allowed to proceed. It seems like everyone is hunkered down right now waiting for it to blow over and they history says they might be right that it will. That's sort of on you/us.
+
+If Shopify is the backer behind this move, they may be the best lever point. Look at how quickly Disney backed down on the Kimmel thing. While consumers or even most compananies using Shopify may never hear about it, I wonder how long the Board would be interested in things proceeding as they are if prominent Rubyists or Ruby using companies started swearing off of Shopify, stopped making add-ons for Shopify, stopped recommending it to our clients, etc. I'm grateful of all they have contributed, and would go back to happily recommending them... if they were currently potentially using that contribution in unseemly ways.
+
+Idk, what do you think?