[Ironruby-core] "Start spreading the news"

William Green
2010-08-08T00:36:13Z

I agree with Michael here. As long as the canonical source for
IronRuby lives in TFS behind the big blue firewall, with only MSFT
employees as core committers, there is a problem.

What I propose is that we, as a community, designate the github repo
as the canonical one, and that whoever controls it opens up commit
access beyond the MSFT core team, perhaps to those that have already
had accepted contribution. (this may already be in place, I don''t
know)

Bottom line is that MSFT has decided they no longer desire to invest
in the project. If we want IronRuby, we''re going to have to make it
happen, on our own.

--
Will Green
http://hotgazpacho.org/



On Aug 7, 2010, at 8:00 PM, Michael Letterle <michael.letterle at
gmail.com> wrote:

> If Microsoft was simply sponsoring development and putting its stamp
> on it, it wouldn''t be a problem.. but the fact that MS
"owns" it IS a
> bottleneck, as been from the start.  "Sync to TFS" commits make
me
> cringe everytime I see them.
>
> On Sat, Aug 7, 2010 at 7:07 PM, Jim Deville <jdeville at
microsoft.com> wrote:
>> I guess I never really sent the mail that I meant to send about my
>> progression.
>>
>>
>>
>> Similar to Jimmy, I?ve also made the incredibly hard decision to move
on as
>> well. I?ve been working on the JavaScript team now for about 2 weeks.
I?ve
>> made this decision for many of the same reasons as Jimmy, but for
various
>> personal reasons, I decided to remain with MS instead of leaving. I
will
>> still be working with IronRuby, it just won?t be my primary function
>> anymore.  I also had a wonderful time on the team, and I will really
miss
>> working directly with them.
>>
>>
>>
>> I agree that IronRuby is not a big community, but I don?t know that it
is a
>> problem unless we let it be one J. I also feel that MS owning the code
isn?t
>> a problem. It?s not like it really benefits anyone inside of MS, it
benefits
>> us, the users J. It also benefits the Ruby community at large if we
continue
>> to make IronRuby a great product that people want to use in their .NET
>> applications, because it shows people Ruby J
>>
>>
>>
>> I understand that this is sad, and for some, expected L, but I hope
that
>> people still continue doing the awesome things people have been doing J
>>
>>
>>
>> JD
>>
>>
>>
>> From: ironruby-core-bounces at rubyforge.org
>> [mailto:ironruby-core-bounces at rubyforge.org] On Behalf Of Orion
Edwards
>> Sent: Sunday, August 08, 2010 2:43 PM
>>
>> To: ironruby-core at rubyforge.org
>> Subject: [Ironruby-core] "Start spreading the news"
>>
>>
>>
>> I''m sure most of you have seen this already, but I
hadn''t seen Jimmy''s
>> "farewell Microsoft" blog post posted to the list, so here it
is if anyone
>> hasn''t read it
>>
>>
>>
>>
http://blog.jimmy.schementi.com/2010/08/start-spreading-news-future-of-jimmy.html
>>
>>
>>
>> I''d like to thank Jimmy for his work thus far on IronRuby, and
certainly
>> wish you the best of luck at your new job and living in NYC. From that
point
>> of view, it''s happy days.
>>
>>
>>
>> The news about Microsoft''s internal handling of IronRuby
however makes me
>> rather sad, and frankly a bit worried about the future of IronRuby in
>> general. If there''s now only 2 part-time developers working on
IR inside
>> Microsoft, and they''ve been told not to develop any new
features, then where
>> does that leave us?
>>
>>
>>
>> While IronRuby is open source (yay), It unfortunately hasn''t
seem to have
>> become quite big enough (unlike JRuby) to be self sustaining.
>>
>>
>>
>> I personally also perceive somewhat of a problem, in that (again,
unlike
>> with JRuby) Microsoft "owns" IronRuby. Last I knew,
committers still had to
>> sign a copyright assignment form to MS, and MS controls all the
repositories
>> and other assorted stuff. (AFAIK Charles has personally controlled all
the
>> JRuby repos since day one and still does).
>>
>> This provides a LARGE (to me at least) disincentive to contribute to
>> IronRuby in the future. Because MS owns IronRuby, I feel like if I were
to
>> commit code, it would not be for the benefit of a nice friendly
>> community-driven open source group, it would be for the benefit of
Microsoft
>> Corporation.
>>
>> I was happy to accept this when MS were putting a lot of work into
IronRuby,
>> but now that they''re not, my feeling is "So Microsoft
have bailed and left
>> us hanging, why on earth would I want to do work on their behalf after
>> they''ve just done that?"
>>
>>
>>
>> At any rate, I''ve not committed any code to IronRuby
(I''ve come close
>> several times, but never just had the time) so my opinion is largely
>> irrelevant, I just hope that other potential committers with more time
and
>> skill than I don''t end up feeling this way too :-(
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Ironruby-core mailing list
>> Ironruby-core at rubyforge.org
>> http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/ironruby-core
>>
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Michael Letterle
> IronRuby MVP
> http://blog.prokrams.com