That's a good point, and in this case requiring rubygems does make sense, but I really doubt that's the most common use case.

Stuff like this: http://github.com/mojombo/jekyll/blob/2f2e45bedf67dedb8d1dc0... or that: http://github.com/mwunsch/weary/blob/cd7b35ccee66757c5efb0a0... is probably the kind of stuff Ryan rages against in his rant (though you'd have to ask him if that's that, and how he'd see you use case)