> When Ruby Together first launched in 2015, the website suggested donations went to pay "our team" (...) This resulted in a nonzero number of donors believing they were funding the work of people like Steve Klabnik, Aaron Patterson, and Sarah Mei, when in fact only Andre was being paid at the time.
This a fact. By this alone I don't think Andre Arko is an honest person.
Back in the day, nobody ever had said to me that they believed I was earning money from Ruby Together. This whole thing was speculation at best. And regardless, once it was suggested that this may be a possibility, it was immediately changed to be unambiguous.
André is absolutely a standup individual.
I have tried to stay in good terms with the other people involved in this (except DHH), but this claim was always ridiculous.
This absolutely happened and is not speculation. I can't find the emails from the individuals that emailed me, but I did find my email to the board of directors asking that the website language be changed because people had pinged me thinking I would be getting money, or that the money would go to fund rubygems.org.
At the time I'd sent the email I was unaware Ruby Together was on HN front page (and that's why people were pinging me)
I think you may have misread it. The original claim is:
> This resulted in a nonzero number of donors believing they were funding the work of people like Steve Klabnik, Aaron Patterson, and Sarah Mei, when in fact only Andre was being paid at the time.
Steve said "that didn't happen to me" and then Aaron said "that definitely did happen to me". Seems pretty relevant. I don't think he was claiming steve was wrong in not having heard that, but Aaron was saying it did happen to him, so the claim is true.
(and in terms of evidence, do you want him to share the emails he got? A first hand account seems enough evidence to me)
Seems pretty unambiguous, and a good reason to chime in.
I was misremembering it. Now that I've checked, it's clear that the claim was that the money was for paying "the team" [1], which consisted of André Arko and David Radcliffe [2]
Altogether, it demonstrates how Andre misled his audience on who was getting the money. IMO, I see a distinct pattern of him crossing boundaries and then covering it up using his social skills & friend group.
TBH the whole thing is pretty opaque. There are a lot of accusations floating around. It's pretty easily to capitalize on "Big evil shopify is making a takeover", but I suspect there's a lot more happening behind the scenes.
