From: Lyle Johnson <lyle.johnson@...>
Date: 2005-03-04T03:56:41+09:00
Subject: Re: RAA Status & The Problem with Ruby

On Thu, 3 Mar 2005 21:21:03 +0900, Alexander Kellett
<ruby-lists@lypanov.net> wrote:

> this issue comes up every few months.
> yet the last real answer (rpa) basically
> disappeared into the mist because people
> are far more interested in talking about
> the problems than actually taking some
> action.

In my opinion, the lack of support for the RPA had a lot to do with,
for lack of a better phrase, poor public relations.

A certain person attached himself to the RPA project and proceeded to
make enemies of pretty much everyone in the Ruby community. If you
were hanging out on ruby-talk and/or the #ruby-lang IRC channel during
that unfortunate period, you know who I'm talking about. He seems to
have moved on, to troll in browner pastures, and for that reason it
might be a good idea for us as a community to reconsider the merits of
RPA.

A related problem, which I think had a lot to do with that person, was
that there was this "rivalry" of sorts set up between the RubyGems
packaging system and RPA, and although I never saw them as competing
efforts, it seemed to be the case that one of them had to "win". My
understanding of the RPA effort was that it had a lot to do with
quality control issues and was not quite so hung up on the packaging
approach (as long as the packaging approach was consistent).