As we head toward the end of the year, this will be our final weekly update before we return to our monthly newsletter cadence. This change allows our small but mighty team to focus time and attention on producing more in-depth, thoughtfully prepared communications.
A reminder that Board of Directors applications remain open through November 21, 2025. We encourage community members from all backgrounds to apply and take part in shaping Ruby Central’s future.
As a U.S.-based organization serving a global Ruby community, we welcome board applicants from anywhere in the world. Three of our six current board members are internationally based, and we remain committed to global representation.
Open Source Update
We’re excited to welcome Cloud Security Partners to the Open Source team!
They will be conducting a security consulting engagement focused on assessing the security posture of our AWS environment, evaluating current configurations, access controls, and operational practices to identify potential risks, misconfigurations, and areas for improvement.
We’re excited to have their expertise and will share updates on the outcomes of this assessment in the coming weeks.
Asynchronous Q&A
While this week’s update is shorter, we wanted to share a few final clarifications before our next full newsletter. The majority of recent Q&A submissions have come from a single individual, and include a number of repetitive or highly detailed questions not suitable for this quick update format. As previously noted, each weekly update highlights and answers only a few questions to ensure the responses remain clear and constructive.
We appreciate the time and thought put into those questions, most community concerns raised over the past several weeks have now been addressed. We’ll continue responding to new submissions monthly through the newsletter.
Question 1: If transparency is a core tenet for community trust, why doesn't Ruby Central release its bylaws publicly? Python Foundation, Linux Foundation, Apache Foundation and Rust Foundation all have public bylaws.
A: While it is not required by law for 501(c)(3)s to make their bylaws public, it is a pretty standard practice that many organizations show these publicly for transparency and trust with the communities they represent.
We completely agree, and we would like to make these documents public on our homepage. We are currently working on rebuilding our entire Ruby Central website from the ground up. We would like to include spaces that would not only explain clearly our mission and values, what programs we facilitate and organize, how people can get involved, but also provide these structural documents that would make it clear our organization functions as a whole.
For historical context, the website was made very quickly some years ago, so that we would have an online presence. There was little to no effort put into actually building out the site into a proper institutional website where anyone can navigate and find the who, what, where, when, why, and hows. There isn’t a single person who had “expertise” in building, designing, or coding our current website which also has added additional challenges and blockers, but we are now working through. A lot of those structures should have been in place and unfortunately nothing was done until very recently.
With yours and other community members’ input on what you’d like to see on our public facing site in regard to transparency, we are actively working on this. We ask the community for patience and grace as we try to get this done as soon as we can, knowing our limitations.
Question 2: In your Nov 7 update, you announced that Richard Schneeman (/u/schneems) has joined the Open Source Committee for Ruby Central.
In my view, this is a positive step forward given Richard's track record both within OSS development and in his community involvement.
Because he is a moderator of both /r/ruby and /r/rails on Reddit, and Reddit is one of the largest and most visible open conversation forums related to Ruby, it's important to address any potential conflicts of interest that may arise there.
The most simple way to do that would be for Richard to recuse himself from any moderation activities related to discussions of Ruby Central, of which he has historically participated actively and constructively in. And from here on out, it'd be wise for him to disclose his affiliation in any of these related threads.
What if any agreements, formally or informally, have been made to address these overlapping responsibilities? Seeing some thought put into this and some commitments put on public record would go a long way towards showing that Ruby Central is actively gaining an increased awareness of power dynamics in open source communities as well as a willingness to structurally address potential conflicts of interest beyond minimum legal compliance to focus on what's truly in the interest of the community you serve.
A: Richard responded, in the most Reddit way possible, via a Reddit comment. He’s also in talks with other Reddit moderators to bring on more help from long-term /r/ruby contributors to balance out the load.
Question 3: I recognize that the specific details of individual Ruby Central board members' conflict of interest disclosures may not be shared on public record for privacy reasons.
But in the interest of transparency and to give the Ruby community a clearer picture of the recent composition of Ruby Central, can you provide the following information?
A:
Closing & Next Steps
This concludes our weekly update series. Thank you for following along, engaging thoughtfully, and helping shape a stronger, more transparent Ruby Central. We look forward to continuing these conversations through our monthly newsletter, where we’ll share updates on governance, programs, and upcoming community events.
This was a collaborative effort from all of the Ruby Central Board and Staff.