From: John Joyce Date: 2007-09-13T00:48:21+09:00 Subject: Re: IronRuby On Sep 12, 2007, at 10:15 AM, Lloyd Linklater wrote: > I have heard disturbing things about IronRuby. The short version is > that MS wants to get into the open source arena as that seems to be > their biggest competition, but not in the way that those already there > are. I heard that they want to change the rules for open source to > insinuate themselves everywhere. I read their new version of the open > source agreement that says that if you copy the smallest bit from > their > code that you MUST include the entire MS disclaimer and sundry stuff. > > Also, I heard that they are going to add windows specific calls so > that > the user could "optimize" his program with the "optional" calls. This > is what they did with java and Sun was outraged, sued and won. > Now, MS > came out with a more or less windows specific java in the form of C#. > > Are they going to do this with ruby? If so, will we be forced to > write > windows ruby just to have it cross platform compatible? > > Has anyone else been reading these things? > -- > Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/. > This is also what they did with C++ in the form of Visual C++ they tried to do it with HTML and Javascript too. Anything they touch really. They just try to use it as a business tactic. But every platform has stuff like that. You think Silverlight is just out of the goodness of their hearts? why are you shocked? This has long been one of their strategies. Sometimes it is simply an engineer introducing legitimate features, but tech companies have long known that features can also be platform lock-ins! If it's a legitimately useful/cool feature, others implement it as well and it becomes a defacto standard like the xml remote procedure call that led to AJAX. The irony is, Microsoft is probably setting themselves up to have more malware written in more languages that are easier to write code in.