Tekin Suleyman, a software developer, writes about Git workflows and Ruby tooling, and about the Ruby community's relationship with DHH.
HN commenters repeatedly link his 2025 post on DHH's political statements as a summary of why some Ruby developers object to him.
> This takes as axiomatic that people with incompatible beliefs in one area cannot work together in a different area.
"Beliefs" are when you think The Strokes are superior to The White Stripes, or that Giordano's deep dish pizza is superior to Lou Malnati's, or that IPAs are better than lagers. I'll happily work with people who espouse those beliefs, despite my beliefs to the contrary.
I won't work with people who describe a Tommy Robinson march as "heartwarming", or who use terms like "demographic nightmare" [1] to describe immigration, or who amplify repeatedly-debunked [2] claims of "Pakistani rape gangs", all of which DHH did. That's bigotry, not beliefs.
British culture isn't being eroded by immigration. It's being shaped by it, just like it has been for thousands of years. Where do you think your culture came from- thin air?!?
- Romans gave Britain roads, baths, and Christianity.
- Anglo-Saxons gave Britain Old English.
- Vikings gave Britain laws and half its place names.
- Normans made French the language of power and fused it with English.
- The Crusades brought new foods, science, and art.
And so on and so on.
It's the height of ignorance to look at that incredibly diverse history, and then say "OK, but right now is the moment in time where we 'lock in' our culture for the rest of time." Culture has never stood still, and no one, not even DHH, gets to freeze it in place. Well, they can try, but they'll be pissing in the wind, just like the Tommy…
Shouldn’t that be enough? Lots of people worked together to build Rails before DHH revealed his extreme political views. It’s only natural that many of them want to go back to the way things were when they could just focus on Rails and not have to think about their contributions supporting someone hateful.
If you haven’t, read this post by someone who has been in the community for a while and targeted by DHH’s rhetoric about how Britain should only be for white people – they can’t thrive together as long he’s opposed to that!
> As a non-white British citizen born and raised in London, I can’t explain just how painful it is to hear this sort of toxic rhetoric being promoted by one of the most prominent and visible leaders of the Ruby community. I experienced my fair share of racism growing up in London in the eighties and nineties from the very people that DHH is lionising in his post. White men who questioned my right to exist. Places and spaces where I didn’t feel welcome or safe because of my ethnic origin. And despite the recent rise in far-right politics, for the most part things are much better today. Anyone who has spent even the smallest amount of time in the great city of London knows that it is precisely its rich multiculturalism that makes it great. The migration issue in Britain is complicated and multi-layered and DHH wades into it with all the subtlety and nuance of a bull in china shop, sharing the same old and tired xenophobic…
> Because we all have to get along regardless of what you believe
False. Freedom of association is a human right. And nobody is obligated to donate their money to a cause or organization they do not support.
Refusing to associate with someone who would like to "Make Britain White Again" (among many other things) is a completely reasonable stance.
https://tekin.co.uk/2025/09/the-ruby-community-has-a-dhh-problem
https://davidcel.is/articles/rails-needs-new-governance
People are free to say whatever they want. And others are free to respond in a variety of ways, including choosing to not provide support.
> It's interesting what political issues people make paramount.
The related political issue here is people's right to exist.
- See: https://tekin.co.uk/2025/09/the-ruby-community-has-a-dhh-problem
- See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_Rights
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Are you suggesting this issue should not be the most important issue?
If this is the most important issue: what's the point of bringing up your following sentence?
If this is not the most important issue: what in your mind would be a more important issue?
Yeah, you're right. I did a little investigation before posting that and it seemed to handle some movement within the file but after looking at it more closely I see it is not fully robust (even within the same file it misses some earlier changes).
This page provides some other techniques: https://tekin.co.uk/2020/11/patterns-for-searching-git-revision-histories but I think they have their own limitations.
It sucks that DHH is getting so much attention on what is basically his personal rice in Omarchy, to the point that he's becoming a sort of face for "Linux with nicish defaults". He is a bigot who regularly engages in reactionary politics on his personal blog (https://tekin.co.uk/2025/09/the-ruby-community-has-a-dhh-problem). I don't want this man representing the Linux community writ large.