From: ptkwt@... (Phil Tomson)
Date: 2006-03-18T16:58:52+09:00
Subject: Re: The Borg Are At It Again!

In article <1142601002.12470.256868598@webmail.messagingengine.com>,
thoran@thoran.com <thoran@thoran.com> wrote:
>Howdy Good Ruby Folk,
>
>Is this a good thing?...  
>
>Queensland Univerity of Technology is reimplementing Ruby for
>Microsoft's Common Language Runtime and for use with .NET.  See
>http://www.plas.fit.qut.edu.au/rubynet/.  
>
>And this *ain't* being done for pure research neither.  If you take a
>look at the very bottom, you'll see who's funding it.  You guessed it:
>those mischevious miscreants from Redmond.  

Believe me, I am no fan of that company from Redmond.
However, if they are funding Ruby development on their .NET platform (which 
they apparently are not using much themselves for the next version of Windows  
- I forget what they're calling it) then more power to them.  If it 
means that Ruby runs better on Windows then that's great (sometimes I end up having 
to use Windows in a work situation). 

>
>So, does anyone reckon that the Redmond Cube isn't scheming away at
>their usual borgification approach of adopting, breaking, dividing, and
>conquering?  It might be an old tactic, but it's a goodie!  
>
>Or, is Ruby and the community up to the challenge?  Or, is there nothing
>to worry about?  And as I posed above, perhaps it is a good thing that
>Ruby gets first class access to .NET, since it is mooted as being
>released as Open Source.  And let's give them the benefit of the doubt
>for now that it really will be a true FOSS licence.  
>

I don't think there's anything to worry about if it's going to be under a true 
FOSS license.  If they tried to take Ruby and, say, fork it and change it in 
subtle ways so that it's incompatible with the Ruby that everyone else is 
using then the community could certainly make it's collective voice 
heard.  

>And while I realise that YARV will be better than CLR, if, as it appears
>that it will, that Ruby.NET is released before Ruby 2.0, then what is
>the
>significance of this project beating Original Ruby to the punch with a
>VM?  

Not much, I suspect, other than Ruby might run faster on Windows than it does 
on other platforms for a while until YARV comes out.

>
>I really don't know what to make of it.  But I feel pretty comfortable
>with being hyper-suspicious though...  

Certainly there are lots of historical reasons for being 'hyper-suspicious' of 
Micro$oft, but I don't think this is one of those occasions where there is 
much reason for worry.

>
>So, does anyone have any interesting analyses of what it might all mean?
>

I don't see anything sinister afoot.  If Redmond ends up encouraging wider use 
of Ruby because of this then it's a great thing.  Personally, I don't generally 
use their products and I don't really understand much about .NET & CLR other 
than the marketing we've all seen.  Mostly their products are irrelevant to my 
day-to-day work, however, occasionally I get a contract job where I have to use 
Windows and if they're able to make Ruby run faster on Windows because of this 
work then that's fine by me.  If it leads to greater Ruby use among 
developers who live & breath in that .NET world (which is like a foreign land 
to many of us) that's certainly not a bad thing as far as I can tell. 

Phil