From: Chad Fowler <chadfowler@...>
Date: 2003-02-26T01:40:45+09:00
Subject: Re: [ANN] Happy Birthday, Ruby, and an announcement....


----- Original Message -----
From: "Daniel Berger" <djberge@qwest.com>
To: "ruby-talk ML" <ruby-talk@ruby-lang.org>
Sent: Tuesday, February 25, 2003 9:54 PM
Subject: Re: [ANN] Happy Birthday, Ruby, and an announcement....


> Chad Fowler wrote:
>
> > Personally, something I'd love to see *not* happen anymore is for Perl
to
> > come up every time we talk about Ruby's needs.  Ruby isn't Perl.  It may
> > have started out as a kind of Perl replacement, but it's grown to be
much
> > more.  I don't mean it's much more than Perl, of course.  It's just
> > different.  Though it *can* play in the same space, I don't believe its
> > primary strengths are there.
> >
> > I think the question for the comunity here is, "Do we want to play
catchup
> > with Perl, or do we want to find the space where Ruby can *really*
> > differentiate itself and focus on that?"  I'm voting for the latter.
It's
> > easy to copy--it's more challenging to innovate.
> >
> > Chad
>
> In this instance, I referred toPerl mainly because I couldn't think of any
> other open-source project that had setup a tax-exempt foundation (i.e. The
Perl
> Foundation) which took donations, then used those funds to pay individuals
to
> work on specific tasks for the benefit of the language.  Does Linux,
Python or
> Apache have something like this?  I don't know.  I don't *think* so, but I
> could very well be wrong.
>
> I didn't mean for this to turn into a Ruby vs. Perl discussion.  I was
just
> interested in seeing what the Perl Foundation had done right (and what it
had
> done wrong, if anything), and seeing if we should model ourselves after
the
> Perl community *in that respect*, or if we should go a different route.
> Nothing to do with the language itself, per se.
>
> Regards,
>
> Dan
>

Sorry, Dan.  I see that this looked like I was specifically referring to you
in this case.  I didn't mean it to seem that way at all.  Long day at the
office. ;)

The Perl comparison has been a general theme around here (I don't have to
tell you that).  I also don't mean to say that the Ruby community is at all
unique in its following of another more proven/accepted product.  I'd say
(regretfully) that this is a rampant problem in open source in general.

BTW,
http://www.apache.org/foundation/
http://www.python.org/psf/

Regards,
Chad