Every community has its dramas. Ruby just likes to make ours really really public :P
Ruby folks like to talk about passion for coding, so unsurprisingly controversies in Ruby are equally passionate.
One thing that is very much worth noting about the Ruby community is that when controversies happen, things change. Sometimes they're things like Zed Shaw flaming out of the community (which i'm still kinda bummed about), sometimes it means organizations like Railsbridge (http://workshops.railsbridge.org/ ) are formed.
But these are not needless controversies with no results. This stuff matters.
Passion is great, but why couldn't this have happened in e-mail instead of Twitter, perhaps the OP could have e-mailed the conference organizers with some names of some great Rubyists that had been overlooked, but would give a great speech. Win-win. Instead, the conference is canceled, and no one wins. :(
http://rubydramas.com/
http://web.archive.org/web/20080102040259/http://www.zedshaw...
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2012/03/...
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4487963
http://martinfowler.com/bliki/SmutOnRails.html
http://www.flickr.com/photos/planetargon/127984254/
It feels like an abusive relationship.