Bundler belongs to the Ruby community André Arko reflects on his 15-year journey working on Bundler, a key Ruby tool for managing libraries (gems). Although he did not create Bundler initially—that was Yehuda Katz, along with Carl Lerche—André joined early in 2010 and helped shape the version 1.0 release, which still forms the foundation of Bundler today. History and Contributions Bundler was originally prototyped by Carl and Yehuda, who were vital to modularizing Rails 3. André became involved in February 2010, during the critical rewrite of Bundler to prepare for version 1.0. He gave early conference talks, including the first RailsConf Bundler talk in 2010. After Carl and Yehuda stepped back, André co-maintained Bundler with Terence Lee, focusing on performance improvements and maintenance. In 2013, André acquired the bundler.io domain to improve documentation accessibility for all Bundler versions. By 2014, with few maintainers left, André moved to secure ownership of the Bundler trademark and logo, and explored funding models. He founded Ruby Together in 2015 to fund maintenance for Bundler, RubyGems, and RubyGems.org without demanding project governance or control. Organizational Developments and Merger Ruby Together raised funds for maintainers, supported the ecosystem scrappily but effectively. By 2021, Ruby Together and Ruby Central planned a merger to unify funding and organizational goals. A merger agreement outlined Ruby Central’s new role to focus on paying maintainers and adopt Ruby Together's Vision, Mission, and Values. Core goals include: Empowering project users and maintainers. Paying Ruby open source developers. Ensuring community control, accountability, and transparency. Fostering a positive collaborative space. Establishing clear funding processes. Trademark and Ownership Issues Recently, Ruby Central claimed sole ownership of Bundler, which André disputes. To protect the maintainer team and project name, André registered the trademark "Bundler." Trademark registration: Does not affect copyright (remains with original contributors). Does not alter the MIT license terms. Limits who may use the project name "Bundler" commercially or officially. André commits to transferring the trademark to a future accountable, community-controlled Ruby organization with a democratically elected board. He will not license the trademark but transfer ownership entirely to ensure Bundler truly belongs to the Ruby community. --- Sponsor note: André’s writing is supported by Spinel, a consultancy specializing in gems, Rails, CI, and developer productivity.