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# Ruby Central's OSS Changelog: May 2025
- URL: https://rubycentral.org/news/ruby-centrals-oss-changelog-may-2025/
- Published: 2025-05-19T15:00:39.000Z
- Updated: 2025-05-19T15:00:38.000Z
- Author: Rhiannon Payne
- Tags: Open Source

Hello, and welcome to the May newsletter. Read on for announcements about our Open Source Program and a report of the OSS work we’ve done over the past month.

As mentioned in our previous newsletters, we will now be sending out separate updates for the Open Source Program and general Ruby Central organization and community news.

**You can expect our general Ruby Central newsletter (the Ruby Central README) in your inbox later this month.**

# Open Source Program Announcements

### **RubyKaigi 2025**

Ruby Central OSS team members Marty Haught, Samuel Giddins, and Colby Swandale joined over 1,500 other attendees last month in Matsuyama, Japan for [RubyKaigi](https://rubykaigi.org/2025/?ref=rubycentral.org). The popular, deeply technical Ruby conference with a uniquely Japanese spirit provided an inspiring atmosphere for team to connect with Rubyists from around the world.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/17/0a/170a5cb5-5524-4ba0-93b6-f17fc9bacca6/content/images/2025/05/team.jpeg)

Marketing Director Rhiannon Payne at the RubyKaigi "campfire" with Marty Haught, Samuel Giddins, and Colby Swandale

Our Security Engineer in Residence, Samuel Giddins, delivered a talk on the challenges of building the [sigstore-ruby](https://github.com/sigstore/sigstore-ruby?ref=rubycentral.org) sigstore client and, most importantly, have crucial in-person discussions with the folks building Ruby, including:

- The JRuby team: what is the path forward for JRuby’s crypto primitives, and how can we help get JRuby to parity with MRI?
- Ruby Core: the [state of ruby release build reproducibility](https://traveling.engineer/posts/ruby-release-reproducibility/?ref=rubycentral.org). The core team accepted, in principle, our proposed improvements. We will be testing and making the archive build reproducible as our immediate next steps. Future reproducibility of built and installed binaries is planned as a follow-up.
- Gem developers: other projects intersecting with the ongoing "wheels" work, and what a more declarative build system could look like for extensions. Our eventual goals include an improved replacement for `extconf.rb` and `mkmf`, which are hard to understand, slow due to serial execution, and duplicate work across different extensions.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/17/0a/170a5cb5-5524-4ba0-93b6-f17fc9bacca6/content/images/2025/05/sam-.jpeg)

The team also participated in the in-person Ruby Developer Meeting, where other Ruby committers met to discuss regular Ruby Core business. 

"It was refreshing to see how our community extends far beyond the familiar North American context," said Marty, Ruby Central's Director of Open Source. "I look forward to finding more ways to build bridges with the global Ruby community in the year ahead."

### [**RubyGems.org**](http://rubygems.org/?ref=rubycentral.org) **Policies**

We will conclude the review-and-comment period for the new policies for Ruby Central and [RubyGems.org](http://rubygems.org/?ref=rubycentral.org) on May 20th. As a reminder, you can send your feedback to [legal@rubycentral.org](mailto:legal@rubycentral.org) or join the conversation in the #oss-program-ruby-central channel on the Ruby Central Community Slack.

## RubyGems News

In April, we released RubyGems [**3.6.7**](https://github.com/rubygems/rubygems/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md?ref=rubycentral.org#367--2025-04-03), [**3.6.8**](https://github.com/rubygems/rubygems/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md?ref=rubycentral.org#368--2025-04-13) and Bundler [**2.6.7**](https://github.com/rubygems/rubygems/blob/master/bundler/CHANGELOG.md?ref=rubycentral.org#267-april-3-2025), [**2.6.8**](https://github.com/rubygems/rubygems/blob/master/bundler/CHANGELOG.md?ref=rubycentral.org#268-april-13-2025). These releases bring a series of enhancements and bug fixes designed to improve the overall developer experience with RubyGems.

Notable improvements include [defaulting to a SOURCE\_DATE\_EPOCH of 315619200](https://github.com/rubygems/rubygems/pull/8568?ref=rubycentral.org) to simplify reproducible builds, [sorting gemspec metadata fields](https://github.com/rubygems/rubygems/pull/8569?ref=rubycentral.org) to support consistent build outputs, [fixing a crash when the compact index API only listed versions](https://github.com/rubygems/rubygems/pull/8594?ref=rubycentral.org), and [speeding up Gem::Version#<=> comparisons by 20–50%](https://github.com/rubygems/rubygems/pull/8565?ref=rubycentral.org) when version lengths differ.

Some other important accomplishments from the team this month include:

**Progress on gems with precompiled binaries**

- Following community interest and questions about the initial **“wheels” proposal**, We opened a [GitHub discussion](https://github.com/rubygems/rubygems/discussions/8645?ref=rubycentral.org) to gather feedback and facilitate conversation. We also invited input from members of the **OpenSSF Securing Software Repositories Working Group** to help align Ruby’s approach with best practices from other language ecosystems.
- We are now focused on collecting \*\*\*\*this feedback into a concrete list of features that will make it easier to use and develop gems with precompiled binaries, guiding the future of RubyGems in this space.

**Development of a Bundler 4 roadmap**

- [The Bundler 4 roadmap has been drafted](https://github.com/rubygems/rubygems/issues/8650?ref=rubycentral.org), aiming to consolidate over a decade of unreleased improvements and breaking changes into a major release.

**`bundle doctor` now troubleshoots SSL issues**

- The `bundle doctor` command [now includes a new \--ssl flag](https://github.com/rubygems/rubygems/pull/8624?ref=rubycentral.org) to help users diagnose SSL-related issues. This improvement brings the functionality of the previously separate [ruby-ssl-check script](https://github.com/rubygems/ruby-ssl-check?ref=rubycentral.org) directly into Bundler, making it easier to maintain and more accessible to users.
- Thanks to [@Edouard-chin](https://github.com/Edouard-chin?ref=rubycentral.org) for contributing this enhancement by porting the script and integrating it into `bundle doctor`.
- The plan is to review and discuss all pending changes, allow users to opt-in and provide feedback, and prepare for a big release in December. This marks an important step toward modernizing Bundler while giving the community a clear path forward.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/17/0a/170a5cb5-5524-4ba0-93b6-f17fc9bacca6/content/images/2025/05/Screenshot-2025-05-19-at-2.46.25-PM.png)

bundle doctor SSL diagnosis output (successful!)

## [RubyGems.org](http://rubygems.org/?ref=rubycentral.org) News

The updates made this month to [RubyGems.org](http://rubygems.org/?ref=rubycentral.org) reflect a strong commitment to improving user experience, enhancing security, and modernizing the platform. Sponsored hosting for [RubyGems.org](http://rubygems.org/?ref=rubycentral.org) in April was provided by [AWS](https://aws.amazon.com/?ref=rubycentral.org), [Fastly](https://www.fastly.com/?ref=rubycentral.org) and [Datadog](https://www.datadoghq.com/?ref=rubycentral.org).

**April 2025 RubyGems stats**

In April 2025, [RubyGems.org](http://rubygems.org/?ref=rubycentral.org) recorded over **4.15 billion total gem downloads**, a **51% increase** from 2.74 billion in April 2024\. This marks the first time in history that monthly gem downloads surpassed the **4 billion mark**, highlighting the continued momentum and growing impact of the Ruby ecosystem. Thanks to all of our partners and sponsors for helping this to happen!

Looking at Bundler gem downloads trends, usage data shows a clear shift towards modern Ruby versions:

- **Ruby 3.4**, released in December 2024, already accounts for **13.1%** of Bundler downloads.
- **Ruby 3.3** rose from **10.4% to 27.9%**, making it the most widely used version.
- **Ruby 3.2** declined from **28.1% to 21.8%**, while **Ruby 3.1,** which reached EOL in March 2025, fell from **24.8% to 14.1%**.
- **Ruby 2.7**, EOL since March 2023, dropped from **20.4% to 16.1%**.
- Older versions (2.6 and below) continued their gradual decline.

These trends reflect a strong migration toward actively maintained, supported Ruby versions. Analytics were powered by [Clickhouse](https://clickhouse.com/?ref=rubycentral.org).

The following are highlights of what the team worked on this month:

**Progress update on organizations**

- Work has resumed on the long-anticipated **Organizations feature** in [RubyGems.org](http://rubygems.org/?ref=rubycentral.org), led by [Colby Swandale](https://github.com/colby-swandale?ref=rubycentral.org). After identifying the remaining functionality a few months ago, we’ve now secured budget to complete the work.
- The feature is currently being demoed to a small group of beta testers, with plans to open it to the broader community in the future. We’re looking forward to gathering feedback once Organizations becomes publicly available.

## Thank you

A huge thank you to all the contributors to RubyGems and [RubyGems.org](http://rubygems.org/?ref=rubycentral.org) this month! We deeply appreciate your support and dedication.

### Contributors to RubyGems:

- [@deivid-rodriguez](https://github.com/deivid-rodriguez?ref=rubycentral.org) David Rodríguez
- [@Edouard-chin](https://github.com/Edouard-chin?ref=rubycentral.org) Edouard Chin
- [@hsbt](https://github.com/hsbt?ref=rubycentral.org) Hiroshi Shibata
- [@jeremyevans](https://github.com/jeremyevans?ref=rubycentral.org) Jeremy Evans
- [@martinemde](https://github.com/martinemde?ref=rubycentral.org) Martin Emde
- [@mperham](https://github.com/mperham?ref=rubycentral.org) Mike Perham
- [@nobu](https://github.com/nobu?ref=rubycentral.org) Nobuyoshi Nakada
- [@thatrobotdev](https://github.com/thatrobotdev?ref=rubycentral.org) James Kerrane
- [@segiddins](https://github.com/segiddins?ref=rubycentral.org) Samuel Giddins
- [@simi](https://github.com/simi?ref=rubycentral.org) Josef Šimánek
- [@skipkayhil](https://github.com/skipkayhil?ref=rubycentral.org) Hartley McGuire

### Contributors to [RubyGems.org](http://rubygems.org/?ref=rubycentral.org):

- [@colby-swandale](https://github.com/colby-swandale?ref=rubycentral.org) Colby Swandale
- [@gingerwizard](https://github.com/gingerwizard?ref=rubycentral.org) Dale McDiarmid
- [@hsbt](https://github.com/hsbt?ref=rubycentral.org) Hiroshi Shibata
- [@indirect](https://github.com/indirect?ref=rubycentral.org) André Arko
- [@marcoroth](https://github.com/marcoroth?ref=rubycentral.org) Marco Roth
- [@martinemde](https://github.com/martinemde?ref=rubycentral.org) Martin Emde
- [@segiddins](https://github.com/segiddins?ref=rubycentral.org) Samuel Giddins
- [@simi](https://github.com/simi?ref=rubycentral.org) Josef Šimánek
- [@skipkayhil](https://github.com/skipkayhil?ref=rubycentral.org) Hartley McGuire

*If we missed you, please let us know so we can include you in our shout-out*for *!*