[Ironruby-core] "Start spreading the news"

Michael Letterle
2010-08-08T00:00:23Z

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