Open letter with ~300 signatures calling for a hard fork to remove DHH's influence. No fork was ever created. The entire Rails core team was selected by DHH.
Ruby on Rails is a full-stack web application framework written in Ruby, powering major applications like Shopify, GitHub, and Basecamp. It popularized convention-over-configuration and MVC architecture for web development. Its massive scope (hundreds of gems, complex test suites, extensive documentation) makes forking extraordinarily difficult.
In September 2025, David Heinemeier Hansson — the creator of Ruby on Rails and one of tech's most polarizing figures — published a blog post titled "As I remember London" that many readers interpreted as xenophobic commentary on the city's changing demographics. This was not DHH's first controversy by a long shot, but it proved to be the straw that broke the camel's back for a significant chunk of the Rails community.
A group of Rails developers published an open letter under the name "Plan Vert" — a reference to a French WWII sabotage group that targeted railway infrastructure (get it? Rails?). The letter cited the London post and another questioning Gender and Sexuality Alliance programs in primary schools — a position more aligned with mainstream Scandinavian policy than the letter's characterization of it as "transphobic" suggested. The letter called for three things: cutting ties with DHH, hard-forking Rails under a new name, and adopting a modern Code of Conduct with proper community governance.
The letter gathered roughly 300 signatures, including some notable Ruby community members like Thomas Fuchs (former Rails Core). But the initiative ran headlong into a brutal reality: Rails is enormous. It likely costs over $10 million per year to maintain, and every member of the Rails Core team was hand-selected by DHH. You don't just fork that over a weekend.
DHH responded dismissively, noting that "every few years the same contingent of Ruby malcontents tries to cancel me from Rails," pointing out that the previous attempt in 2022 resulted in RailsConf dying while his Rails World conference thrived. Critics of Plan Vert, including developer Joel Drapper, argued that a fork without critical mass would simply die on the vine.
No actual fork was ever created. The GitHub organization has no public members, and the open letter repository went quiet. Plan Vert remains a fascinating case study in how even widespread discontent can't overcome the gravitational pull of a massive, complex framework when the controversial figure controls all the levers.
Ruby Central uninvites DHH from RailsConf keynote amid earlier controversy
DHH publishes blog posts on London demographics and school GSAs, drawing widespread criticism
Plan Vert open letter published on GitHub calling for a Rails hard fork
Letter gathers ~300 signatures from Ruby community members
No fork materializes; GitHub organization remains empty of public members
“Every few years the same contingent of Ruby malcontents tries to cancel me from Rails.”
“With a gem the size of Rails, you need a critical mass from day one.”
Plan Vert's lasting impact is more cultural than technical. It exposed the fundamental power asymmetry in Rails governance — DHH selects the entire Core team, controls the conference circuit, and effectively owns the project's direction. The letter made visible what many had quietly grumbled about for years.
However, the failure to produce an actual fork also demonstrated that outrage alone cannot sustain a project of Rails' scale. The episode may have accelerated some companies' drift toward other frameworks, but Rails itself continues largely unaffected.