Gem.coop is a community-driven hosting service for Ruby gems, designed for speed and compatibility with Bundler, established by former maintainers of RubyGems.org. It aims to provide transparent, sustainable, and secure gem hosting, welcoming contributions from the Ruby community. Users can switch their Gemfile source to Gem.coop for real-time updates on all gems.

A group of maintainers removed from the RubyGems.org project has established the Gem Cooperative and launched a new gem server, gem.coop, to ensure continuity for Ruby developers. The cooperative's governance is still being developed, and the move comes amid tensions with Ruby Central, which recently took control of key Ruby repositories, prompting an open letter calling for a fork of the Rails framework due to concerns over its creator's views.

The article discusses the recent contentious actions taken by Ruby Central, which removed long-standing maintainers of Bundler and RubyGems without proper communication or justification. In response, former maintainers are prepared to transfer their interests in these projects to Matz, aiming to unify the codebase and legal rights while focusing on improving the Ruby community.