TL;DR: Today, we’re launching a sustainable and community-driven funding model for RubyGems.org infrastructure, maintenance, and security.

If you build with Ruby, join us in keeping RubyGems.org, RubyGems, and Bundler secure and sustainable for years to come. Contribute here or share this with your company leadership.

At Baltic Ruby in June, I delivered a keynote on building sustainable open source through the lens of RubyGems.org.

What struck me most was how many attendees didn’t realize that Ruby Central, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting the Ruby ecosystem, is responsible for maintaining RubyGems.

RubyGems.org powers over 1,500 gem requests per second, supports billions of downloads per month, and underpins nearly every Ruby application in the world, from one-person startups to large enterprises like GitHub.

While many developers assume RubyGems is part of the Ruby language or maintained by a single company, the reality is that it’s a community-run service, supported by a coalition of contributors and sponsors, and maintained by the team at Ruby Central.

Because the platform has been so reliable, with no full outages since 2013, it’s easy to forget about the ongoing work required to keep it running securely and efficiently. We also have ambitious goals for improving our infrastructure, tooling, and security in the coming years. 

That’s why we’re launching a new funding program to ensure RubyGems remains reliable, secure, and community-driven for years to come.

RubyGems Funding Model

RubyGems was created in 2004, and the RubyGems.org service, where gems are hosted and served, has been running under that domain since the mid-2000s.

For much of its history, RubyGems was maintained by volunteers and companies contributing developer time. In 2015, a nonprofit called Ruby Together was founded to provide more formal, community-backed support. In 2022, Ruby Together merged with Ruby Central, consolidating all funding and maintenance of RubyGems.org, RubyGems, and Bundler under a single umbrella.

RubyGems today is made possible by a combination of infrastructure donations, community memberships, corporate sponsorships, and grants to Ruby Central. 

Our core infrastructure is provided by:

These in-kind contributions enable us to maintain a lean operations budget.

Ongoing work, including maintenance, upgrades, on-call rotations, customer support, and security reviews, is funded primarily through donations and sponsorships. 

In 2024:

  • Support came from long-term corporate sponsors like Shopify (via Ruby Shield) and Sidekiq
  • ~60% of our budget came from grants (AWS, Alpha-Omega, Sovereign Tech Agency)

However, grant funding is typically allocated for specific projects and is not always a renewable funding source. 

To ensure the long-term health and stability of this critical infrastructure, we would like to diversify our funding sources and provide an easier path for community members and businesses to support us long-term. 

Why Ongoing Support Matters

RubyGems.org has quietly delivered over a decade of nearly uninterrupted service. Behind that is a dedicated team and continuous maintenance. 

In 2024, we completed a third-party security audit and outlined several goals for strengthening our infrastructure in 2025 and beyond. These include:

  • Improving software supply chain security
  • Creating a formal disaster recovery (DR) plan so we’re better prepared for outages
  • Improving the performance and usability of our existing tools

Bringing in additional funding from the community will allow us to expedite moving these initiatives forward.

Community Funding Program

We believe that open source infrastructure like RubyGems should be funded by the community it serves.

To support that, we’re launching a new, lightweight support program that makes this possible, where businesses and developers can contribute $2,500 or $5,000 annually to directly fund RubyGems operations and maintenance costs.

We’ve designed the program to be easy to participate in, with a contribution amount that’s small enough to avoid lengthy procurement processes, but meaningful enough to make a real impact.

With roughly 110 supporters, we would be able to fully fund our annual goals for operations and maintenance. In addition to our other funding sources, such as corporate sponsors, this level of community funding would enable us to expand beyond maintenance and focus on new features and enhancements that will benefit developers and gem creators.

Where Community OSS Funding Fits In

This new program works in tandem with our existing corporate sponsorship program and individual membership program (note: we are currently working to overhaul our individual membership program, which we plan to relaunch in Q3). 

Here’s how these pieces fit together:

Program

Who it’s for

Amount

Benefits

Individual membership

Ruby community members

Low dollar amount – like what you might pay for a SaaS subscription

TBA – but think exclusive access to content, community spaces, & discounts on Ruby Central events

Open source supporter

Individuals like consultants, agency owners, & businesses that rely on RubyGems

$2,500 or $5,000 annually

Fund the operation and maintenance of RubyGems.org


Name on RubyGems.org supporter page

Corporate sponsorship

Companies seeking greater visibility in the Ruby ecosystem while supporting our broader organizational & open source work

$10K+ annually

Marketing & PR opportunities based on sponsorship amount

One-time donation

Everyone!

Any amount

Flexible, no-strings-attached support for Ruby Central

While individual membership and corporate sponsorship funds go toward funding the organization as a whole, the open source supporter program is unique in that the funds are targeted to supporting our work on RubyGems, RubyGems.org, and Bundler. We will also be launching a supporter page on RubyGems.org in August to recognize all our community supporters. 

If you're interested in corporate sponsorship opportunities, you can reach out to sponsorships@rubycentral.org.

Whether you’re an individual, a startup, or a large company, there’s a way to get involved and support Ruby Central!

Join Us in Supporting the Security & Growth of Ruby’s Core Infrastructure

RubyGems.org isn’t owned by a corporation. It’s a shared foundation that helps all of us build and run great software, and it belongs to the community.

Our goal isn’t just to keep things running, but to create a model that will keep RubyGems strong, evolving, and community-driven for the next decade and beyond.

If you rely on RubyGems and believe in our vision, now is the time to support us. You can contribute here.

If you’re a tech or business leader whose company uses Ruby and relies on RubyGems, you can support us in reaching our goals by becoming a financial supporter of our crucial open source work. 

If you’re an engineer within an organization that builds with RubyGems, you can support us by talking with your company leadership about how your organization can contribute to the growth and security of Ruby’s core infrastructure.

We deeply appreciate your support and look forward to keeping RubyGems.org, RubyGems, and Bundler secure and sustainable for years to come. 

- Marty Haught, Director of Open Source, Ruby Central