From: Josef 'Jupp' SCHUGT <jupp@...>
Date: 2006-03-18T20:51:15+09:00
Subject: Re: The Borg Are At It Again!

Hi!

At Fri, 17 Mar 2006 22:10:23 +0900, thoran@thoran.com wrote:

> 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/.

Borg no Matsumoto Yukihiro desu

> And this *ain't* being done for pure research neither.

"pure research" is fiction. Research is always done for profit. Often
that profit is be measured in [insert currency name here] but it can
also be reputation or the great feeling of having done something that
no human has done before.

> 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!

The three commandments of interoperable software development are to
implement

 1. the standard
 2. the full standard and
 3. nothing but the standard.

To my understanding "breaking" requires that someone (on purpose)
violates commandment 1 or 2 or both. What Microsoft actually does is
violating commandment 3. In other words: They "extend" the standard.

Of course extending a standard is a natural process but in order to
guarantee interoperability it is necessary to share the extensions one
makes (with the aim of incoporating them into a new revision of the
standard)

Josef 'Jupp' Schugt
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