In September 2025, Ruby Central faced a major incident when attempting to offboard two engineers from RubyGems.org access. The dispute centered on GitHub permissions within the Business/Enterprise account, where maintainers claimed Ruby Central lacked rightful administrative control. This led to access changes between September 10-18 that triggered a walkout of six paid contributors, including key figures like André Arko and Samuel Giddins.

Ruby Central lacked direct admin controls on the GitHub Business/Enterprise account, creating a drawn-out offboarding process that was poorly communicated internally and publicly. The incident exposed structural gaps in policies and procedures, as no documented offboarding checklists existed at the time. The company has since begun implementing runbooks and operational documents to prevent similar situations.

The fallout highlighted deeper issues around access management in open source projects. Ruby Central has since implemented several improvements including reaching out to affected developers about inactivity removals, suggesting platforms add messaging options for access changes, and proposing preview features for permission modifications. The incident underscores how technical access decisions can have significant human impacts, particularly when tied to perceived status and compensation in open source communities.