RubyGems started with a single marshaled file called Marshal.4.8.gz containing the array of every Gem::Specification object for every gem that has been uploaded to RubyGems directory. Since then we have new indexes for RubyGems to speed things up, but good old Marshal.4.8.gz is still around carrying important information about gems from RubyGems.org. Are you interested to know what is and what is not there and finally understand why gem specification rails -r does not give you the information on licensing even though it’s part of rails’ gemspec file? Read more