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Ruby Central Assumes Temporary Administrative Control of RubyGems and Bundler

Ruby Central says the shift follows legal advice after a recent security audit to tighten administrative permissions.

Overview

  • Ruby Central announced it will temporarily hold administrative access to RubyGems.org, RubyGems, and Bundler while new governance and security policies are finalized.
  • Only engineers employed or contracted by Ruby Central will retain administrative permissions under the interim model to reduce supply‑chain risk, according to the nonprofit.
  • Maintainers and community figures describe the move as a hostile takeover and warn that removing long‑time independent stewards could weaken incident response.
  • Key steps included a September 9 renaming of the GitHub enterprise to Ruby Central with maintainers removed, followed by a September 18 revocation of organization access for admins.
  • Ruby Central board member Freedom Dumlao acknowledged poor communication and limited PR capacity, while separate community reports allege funding pressures that have not been independently confirmed.