It’s worth noting the weren’t the only ones signaled out. At least one maintainer who had worked closely with them, but not been involved in RV also got tarred with the “too involved with André or too politically similar”

It’s also worth nothing that DHH has moved against André before, via organizing a letter to his Board. In addition to any personal dispute and radically different politics (André is about as left as DHH is right in labor issues) there is how that’s played out in funding open source. André founded RubyTogether as a trade guild and DHH seemed to disapprove of rubygems/bundler maintainers getting paid directly by community support like that. I do not know if a black trans woman getting paid was part of what DHH was against or if she was collateral damage in his move.

André annd another maintainer worked (and a designer), together through my company on rubygems stuff for RC, at a great discount. Mostly we tried to structure it so they kept getting paid enough for to cover health insurance for their families, etc, while mostly rolling our company down.

It’s hard not to read it as “people who worked closely with André, whether or not they were going to work on RV, were targeted”. I think the fact that I am also a trans woman is bores coincidental, even given DHH’s politics. I don’t think he even remembers who I am and I don’t we mostly a tangential factor in any of this.