From: "M. Edward (Ed) Borasky" <znmeb@...>
Date: 2007-09-28T22:42:39+09:00
Subject: Re: Anyone interested In IronRuby

Lloyd Linklater wrote:
> I agree with Rikard in that MS has a bad track record.  Still I would 
> like to think that they would be willing to work and play well with the 
> other children.  The last time this thread arose here, it was thought 
> that MS would make all the source available as in other gems.  I asked 
> the MS guy that was posting in that thread to confirm that and got no 
> reply.  Hopefully someone can answer that.

It's not necessarily a matter of "willing to work and play well with the 
other children." Have you ever heard the phrase, "Don't sue anybody with 
more money that you have?" It really doesn't matter to me whether or not 
anything Microsoft does is licensed one way or another -- I use it when 
I have to and I don't use it when I have a viable alternative.

A year or so ago -- Curt, Austin, correct me if I'm wrong here -- Curt 
Hibbs and Austin Ziegler tried to get a sensible behavior from Microsoft 
so a "One-Click Installer" Ruby user could build gems containing C 
source using the no-cost-but-non-free Microsoft C compilers, along with 
building Ruby itself that way. It never happened, and I wonder if 
IronRuby is the reason. Perhaps Microsoft doesn't see the need for the 
regular open source MRI interpreter now that there's IronRuby on the 
CLR. No matter how "willing" Microsoft is to do things, there are always 
going to be things they don't do