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I do not hold DHH in high regard, and do not have faith in him as a responsible leader.
These are not new opinions, and have been formed from years of observing his behaviors. Actions speak louder than words, and his actions are very concerning.
This feels retaliatory.
This last RailsConf he was asked to share the stage, and then proceeded to throw a childish tantrum decrying "cancel culture."
This is not the tact of a leader, it is the behavior of a child.
To turn around and affiliate with CMW and other right-wing figures after?
It does not inspire confidence in the least.
I respect many on the Rails core team and the work they do, as well as what Rails has done for so many people.
I do not respect DHH.
CMW, for those unaware, is the host of Ruby Rogues and an absolutely toxic human being:
https://avdi.codes/on-gatekeeping-complicity-and-arrival/
These are the figures pining for leadership, and I will absolutely highlight their bad behaviors.
@baweaver Didn't think of it that way, but I'd be sort of surprised if folks from Shopify et all were on board to fuel a power trip over Ruby Central.
@olivierlacan My thinking is that the timing feels suspect to me, especially given that Ruby Central has a 501 charity designation and foundation as well.
Perhaps I'm being paranoid, and I certainly hope you're correct there, but something feels off at the moment.
@olivierlacan Perhaps there's precedent in the Django Software Foundation and the Python Software Foundation.
@baweaver @olivierlacan they are completely. Ruby central is heavily focused on non-Rails. Bundled and Rubygems mostly. Hopefully in the future more projects in the ruby community. This new foundation will be Rails specific with first job improving documentation. Of course there is Railsconf and I believe nothing should change in the role Ruby Central plays there. But why not more Rails centric conferences backed by the new foundation in non-USA for example?
@baweaver yep, I don't trust it at all. I mostly see it as a list of companies to avoid. Though I already felt that with Basecamp and Shopify.
@baweaver remember how RailsConf 2022 was the first RailsConf without DHH as the closing keynote? Well, looks like it was the first and will never again because...
> The founding core members are each represented on the
> foundation’s board, which is then chaired by the creator of
> Ruby on Rails, David Heinemeier Hansson.
So, some good things, some not-so good things.
Hope I'm wrong and also not getting myself as unhireable on RoR shops because of what I just posted above.
@baweaver I didn’t see your toot before I wrote mine.
It’s telling that more than one person feels this way.
I also want to call attention to the fact that this is a 501(c)(6), not a (c)(3) like every other software foundation I know of. Also the majority of software foundations that I checked have 100% ownership of their trademarks, not only licenses.
I’m now more sketched out than I was earlier 
@baweaver I wasn’t able to find another foundation with the same “project leader owns trademark which is licensed to the foundation”, but e.g. the Redis IP is not as straightforward as Python.
@ZiggyTheHamster I will grant that 501.3c vs 501.6c is a complicated designations conundrum borne from systemic abuse of 3c, so that I'm not as worried about as DHH retaining trademark.
It very much smells of retaliation to me.
@baweaver the Mozilla pattern of corporation owns trademark -> trademark licensed to foundation -> foundation elects corporation board would be fine IMO.
What I don’t like is that there is no way to democratically oust DHH without a hard fork that cannot easily advertise as being a hard fork, should this ever become necessary. The Presto/Trino situation sucks and we shouldn’t need to do that here.
@baweaver I agree though. This is definitely retaliation. RubyCentral won’t get allowed to call RailsConf RailsConf if DHH can’t throw a temper tantrum on stage if he wants to. Or at least this is the silent threat being made.
@ZiggyTheHamster the fact of the matter is it feels like me that DHH is willing to fracture the Ruby community for his pride, which is the entire reason I have no faith in him as a leader.
I hope to be proven wrong, but I am not optimistic given this wording.
@baweaver totally agree. I can dislike DHH and he still be a good leader, but good leaders share and collaborate. I’ve seen too many “Rails doesn’t accept feature requests but if you want to do the work we might review it” comments on dumb things there should be discussion on (some I’ve filed). If this is a 37signals product, fine, but don’t try to hide that.
@baweaver "let's make a new conference, one where I will always be the keynote and no one will ask me to step aside!"
@baweaver Oof, I sure hope that's not what's going on… 
@baweaver I have been thinking a lot about how to best discuss the more negative...aspects of the rails community. The constant emphasis on positivity is admirable and generally I agree with it, but there are some behaviors that I find unprofessional, disagreeable, or just sort of bro-tech (of the ruby flavor, I guess). But I don't like trash talking people in public. We need a sort of community-wide retro where people are bought in. Like a code of conduct or something.
@dpaola2 This is a fair point, but one that I believe misses an important detail:
We tried that before, they weren't interested, and wrote articles about it blasting everyone involved.
@dpaola2 To be abundantly clear though I go out of my way to avoid this, and take no pleasure in it, but someone needs to say something and it is not a positive for us to bury it and pretend it does not exist.
I would far prefer to celebrate and say things are great, praise people, and have a great time.
I would also be lying if I did so with this, and believe we must hold our leaders to account.
@baweaver I'm of the opinion that tweeting about it isn't going to really move anything forward either, though. But I'm not trying to blame you here - I totally understand where you're coming from. If that's all we do, the exact same thing is just going to happen again. It will blow over.
@baweaver I'm trying to find a good blog post to articulate it, but I feel like DHH holds Rails back from continuing to evolve and continuing to be the thing it was when it came out. My guess is that he regrets not setting up a foundation way back when and his loss of control re: RailsConf was a wake-up call. I think if Rails were to slide into obscurity, it's 100% because of his leadership—both technical and otherwise.
@baweaver this was my first take when I read about it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone set up a revenge charity before but I think we might be seeing it right now.
@baweaver ...wait, what?