Ruby Central, the non-profit that recently seized some Ruby open source tools from maintainers, is transferring the repository ownership of RubyGems and Bundler to the Ruby core team. The move appears to be an attempt to mollify the Ruby community following a divisive power grab, but it does not restore the control of those tools to the maintainers who previously oversaw them.
In a blog post on Friday, Ruby creator Yukihiro Matsumoto, a.k.a. Matz, announced that the Ruby core team – the group responsible for the Ruby language – will take over the repository ownership of RubyGems and Bundler. These are essential Ruby tools that, unlike other important components, were developed outside the Ruby organization on GitHub.
“To provide the community with long-term stability and continuity, the Ruby core team, led by Matz, has decided to assume stewardship of these projects from Ruby Central,” Matsumoto wrote. “We will continue their development in close collaboration with Ruby Central and the broader community.”
The kerfuffle started last month when Hiroshi Shibata, a member of the Ruby core team and maintainer of RubyGems, renamed the RubyGems GitHub enterprise “Ruby Central” – the name of a non-profit that oversees Ruby conferences and sponsors projects. He also added Ruby Central’s director of open source Marty Haught as a RubyGems owner. And the admin rights of other maintainers were revoked.
Debate and backtracking followed, but when the smoke cleared, Haught and Ruby Central had ousted the admins on the RubyGems and Bundler teams from the GitHub organization where those projects were based.
Ruby Central defended the takeover as an effort to improve the Ruby governance process. “To strengthen supply chain security, we are taking important steps to ensure that administrative access to the RubyGems.org, RubyGems, and Bundler is securely managed,” the organization said.
But software developer Joel Drapper challenged that narrative in a lengthy blog post, saying that Ruby Central overstepped its bounds because it never owned the RubyGems GitHub repositories.
Drapper claims Ruby Central was short on funds after losing a $250,000 sponsorship because it had included politically polarizing Rails creator David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH) at RailsConf 2025. According to Drapper, Ruby Central became financially dependent upon Shopify, which uses the Rails framework. He claims that Shopify – where DHH is a board member – made demands.
“Shopify,” Drapper wrote, “demanded that Ruby Central take full control of the RubyGems GitHub repositories and the bundler and rubygems-update gems, threatening to withdraw funding if Ruby Central did not comply.”
Shopify did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Since the schism, RubyGems maintainer Ellen Dash has resigned from Ruby Central, some community members have called to fork Rails, and there’s now an alternative source of Ruby gems (packages) known as gem.coop.
- Framework flame war erupts over support of politically polarizing Linux projects
- Kicked from RubyGems, maintainers forge new home at Gem Cooperative
- Open source to closed doors: RubyGems control fight erupts
- RubyGems maintainer quits after Ruby Central takes control of project
In his Friday blog post, Matsumoto said that the Ruby core team will manage the disputed repos for the sake of stability, but Ruby Central will play a joint management role. The software licenses of RubyGems and Bundler will remain unchanged and contributors will retain their copyright and authorship of contributed code.
Ruby Central published a similar statement: “This decision reflects our shared commitment to the long-term stability and growth of the Ruby ecosystem.”
A hostile takeover
While some in the Ruby community have welcomed Ruby Central’s partial delegation of authority to Ruby core, the move still doesn’t address how Ruby Central came to cont