Bootstrapping gem.coop Governance
gem.coop was announced on Monday. As part of that announcement it was mentioned that I was helping gem.coop set up a governance process, continuing the work I’d first started helping with on RubyGems.
I think it speaks well of the gem.coop maintainers that they brought me on board given I’ve:
- never contributed to RubyGems (or even created my own gem)
- been publicly critical of André’s leadership
- previously tried to act as a neutral mediator between RubyCentral and RubyGems maintainers
Unfortunately, how things went down initially with RubyCentral signalled the need for two things:
- a written, democratic and formal governance process (to provide a clear decision-making framework)
- financial transparency (to provide accountability on where money comes from and goes to)
To help ensure decisions are community-led and finances transparent, gem.coop now has gem.coop/governance and gem.coop’s OpenCollective. I was an administrator on both to bootstrap these structures and have now stepped back.
I had planned to stay involved through the first round of community voting, but given the wider situation I felt it was best to withdraw earlier.
I remain proud of the governance work completed so far. More community-driven governance and financial transparency in open source can only be a good thing.
I wish everyone involved the best in finding a constructive path forward for, and this time with, the wider Ruby community.
