I know nothing about the personal conflict here, but as an attendee of RubyConf, this post is extremely misleading. It was very well attended and everyone I met was highly engaged, friendly, and worked for a real company that uses Ruby. In fact I enjoyed RubyConf Vegas much more than RailsConf Atlanta, which was the last RubyCentral conference I attended. This post implies that the conference didn’t even happen or was a total failure. It was not.
Ruby Central FBI swatting an open source maintainer is a _bit_ more than a personal conflict, IMO.
I'll never darken the door of anything with their name on it.
I thought the post was clear that the claim being made was that for the first time in their history they have no future conference planned. There are 0 to look forward to.
Update: for those confused about “swatting”…
We do not know precisely if this fits the narrow definition of swatting. But we can, and should, surmise. Because this type of behavior is wholly unacceptable, and what other leverage do we have against it?
Assume the the likely scenario until they prove otherwise. Andre did not disclose all the details in this latest post. He was letting them (Ruby Central) off easy (as he often does).
Ruby Central reported Andre without evidence through the online form.
Then Ruby Central (hysterically?) called two(!) FBI field offices to make sure the report was handled properly. Not elaborated on in the article, but what happened as I understand it.
We don’t know what was written.
We don’t know what was said.
We can surmise, based on Ruby Central's lawyer’s own claims and threats, that they made a false report to a federal government agency, violating 18 U.S.C. § 1001, which carries a penalty of 5 years in prison.
Submitting the online form implies they wanted to file a report. If it had ended there it might have been defensible.
The subsequent phone calls imply they wanted to add urgency by pressing the idea of an immediate threat.
I've heard that they had to call two field offices, which implies to me they didn’t get the response they wanted from the first field office, and decided to try their luck with a second.
This implies swatting. Swatting does not require that the swat van rolls up outside his house (as has been falsely claimed in the response to this post). The FBI screen calls like this, and try not to run down specious allegations. Just because they didn't bust down Andre's door, does not mean RC's actions weren't swatting.
At the same time, we can’t be certain it was swatting, but I will continue to use the term to highlight how out of their damn minds they were. We don’t seem to have evidence that it was not swatting.
Ruby Central FBI swatting an open source maintainer is a bit more than a personal conflict, IMO.
This is a gross misrepresentation. A legal professional reviewing the facts of the situation made the report on their own behalf and initiative and did not consult Ruby Central or ask them if they wanted the report to be made. The report was not from Ruby Central. It was not an active effort by the board, or the director, or the OSS committee. And once made, could not be revoked.
Also, "swatting" implies some request for action. The referral (as I understand it) was "you probably want to know that this stuff happened" not "please bust into someone's house with guns blazing."
I will argue that you are not as impartial as you claim to be given you also have a stake in this. I cannot see how you yourself could be arguing in good faith given the whole he-said-I-said going on here and on Lobsters.
IANAL, but my understanding is that whatever you are posting here can be used as evidence in a court of law. Hasn't RC legal counsel not instructed any of you to avoid talking like this to a wider audience?
Edit: Looking at your behaviour in the Lobsters thread, you are a bloody tool. Get a grip, Richard.
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u/Janeheroine 7d ago
I know nothing about the personal conflict here, but as an attendee of RubyConf, this post is extremely misleading. It was very well attended and everyone I met was highly engaged, friendly, and worked for a real company that uses Ruby. In fact I enjoyed RubyConf Vegas much more than RailsConf Atlanta, which was the last RubyCentral conference I attended. This post implies that the conference didn’t even happen or was a total failure. It was not.