[LRUG] DHH, Rails, and London

[Jon Rowe]

Thanks for the letter James it's good to see people standing up for the Ruby community against this sort of divisiveness. For me the power of Ruby has always been its community and not individual libraries and frameworks.

As an aside (and ok maybe a little bit of a thread hijack) but if people are interested in learning Elixir / Phoenix the London Elixir meetup was recently ressurected and in fact is meeting tonight:
 https://www.meetup.com/elixir-london/events/311105000/

Cheers
Jon

On Thu, 25 Sep 2025, at 1:56 PM, jds via Chat wrote:
> Hi James
> 
> I've added my name to the list and put up a PR. 
> 
> It's sad that DHH has caught the anti-empathy mind virus going round the rich techies in America. Maybe someone should remind him that he is an immigrant into America and ICE (aka, the Gestapo) could come knocking at any moment. 
> 
> We have to take a stand against the rising tide of fascism because "First they came for... etc"
> 
> I'm moving away from Rails to Elixir/Phoenix anyway. Which is an interesting journey. 
> 
> Thanks
> 
> John Small
> 
> 
> On Thu, 25 Sept 2025 at 13:14, Todd Neale via Chat <chat at lists.lrug.org> wrote:
>> Hi James,
>> 
>> I am certainly one that sits and believes that one shouldn’t mix code and politics. I am disappointed that DHH feels it is necessary to comment on political issues that he seemingly does not understand fully.
>> 
>> Do you not find it all a bit ironic that he is a foreigner himself living abroad in the US? Do you think he considers himself a migrant degrading the culture of the city he has chosen to call home?
>> 
>> Personally I believe in the Ruby community to be a diverse community and we will not be deterred or divided by divisive politics and hate speech. Therefore I think it it’s important for the community to communicate with DHH that expressing such views as he his is not welcome.
>> 
>> Thanks
>> 
>> Todd
>> 
>> On Thu, 25 Sep 2025 at 10:52, James Smith via Chat <chat at lists.lrug.org> wrote:
>>> Hi folks,
>>> 
>>> I recently read DHH’s take on London, how it’s “no longer British” and his support for Tommy Robinson and the far right, and quite frankly it made me sick, having been a Rails dev since 1.2, and a Brit since 1976.
>>> 
>>> If it did the same for you, you might want to co-sign this open letter I’ve started calling for the Rails Core team to cut ties with him and remove his influence: https://github.com/Plan-Vert/open-letter.
>>> 
>>> If this doesn't bother you, or you just don’t want to mix politics and code, then fine, please just delete this email and move on. Rest assured I’ve had all the standard abuse already, there’s no need to repeat it.
>>> 
>>> Yes, forking Rails it would be almost impossible. Yes, the attempt will probably fail, I knew that on day one. But I had to try something, I love this language, framework and place too much to let them be tarnished like this.
>>> 
>>> cheers,
>>> James Smith
>>> 
>>> PS I did check with the organisers before posting “political” content to the list.
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