IronRuby

Ruby
1

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?

2

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.

The IronRuby license:
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/sharedsource/licensingbasics/permissivelicense.mspx

That link can be found on IronRuby’s Rubyforge project page
(ironruby.rubyforge.org).

In short: No. MS even submitted the Permissive License for review by the
OSI (self-appointed watchdog over OSS licenses).

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#.

Seems somebody misunderstood something a long the line (or listened to
FUD spread by Google): IronRuby will do the same thing for .NET as JRuby
does for Java: include an interface to the runtime/VM used.

In a sense, you’ll be locked into a runtime. But only if you use the
code of that runtime.

You can go ahead, and grab IronRuby from Rubyforge and build it
yourself, and take a look.

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?

Huh? Will JRuby and Matz’ Ruby suddenly disappear when IronRuby is
finalized?

Has anyone else been reading these things?

Not me.

3

On Thu, Sep 13, 2007 at 12:15:19AM +0900, Lloyd L. 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.

Blah blah blah. If you don’t like it, don’t use it.

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#.

Oh noes! You mean I might be able to integrate with the entire .NET
platform in which IronRuby runs? I could make calls to various .NET
libraries that aren’t available on other (read: non-.NET rather than
non-Windows, given that various .NET VMs/runtimes are available for
various
operating systems) platforms? Truly, that would be a tragedy. Oh, yeah,
unless that’s what I was trying to do in the first place. And if it
isn’t,
I don’t have to use IronRuby.

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?

What are you smoking? No one’s forcing you to do anything. There are
several implementations of Ruby compilers/VMs/interpreters/runtimes,
including YARV, MRI, Rubinius, Cardinal, JRuby, and IronRuby. Some are
more
mature than others. Some perform better than others. Some provide
integration with platform-specific libraries (i.e. JRuby and IronRuby
providing Java and .NET integration, respectively). None of them are
standards-compliant because no standard exists (no, a test suite is not
a
standard, and neither is a reference implementation).

Has anyone else been reading these things?

We’ve all seen it, but no one is depending on Microsoft’s goodwill so no
one is particularly worried.

–Greg

4

On Sep 12, 2007, at 10:15 AM, Lloyd L. wrote:

that

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.

5

On Thu, 13 Sep 2007, Lloyd L. 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.

M$ simply doesn’t understand open source. They think they can make
their own version of everything when really they should just
contribute to the existing software project like other not-so-large
contributers do.

To have so much money and still be so clueless…

6

Phil wrote:

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.

The IronRuby license:
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/sharedsource/licensingbasics/permissivelicense.mspx

That link can be found on IronRuby’s Rubyforge project page
(ironruby.rubyforge.org).

In short: No. MS even submitted the Permissive License for review by the
OSI (self-appointed watchdog over OSS licenses).

In short, yes. From your link and I read and referenced:

  1. Conditions and Limitations
    (C) If you distribute any portion of the software, you must retain all
    copyright, patent, trademark, and attribution notices that are present
    in the software.

“ANY portion of the software”
“you must retain ALL…”

Gregory S. wrote:

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?

What are you smoking? No one’s forcing you to do anything.

I was just asking about things I read. No need to ask what I am
smoking. The things I have been reading seem alarmist and I wanted to
ask in a place where I had hoped I could get a more reasoned and
reasonable response.

7

Greg D.
Cyberfusion Consulting
http://cyberfusionconsulting.com/

Clueless about what? Making money? Running a business? Dominating entire
market segments? Being incredibly fast at playing catch-up in market
segments they did not innovate in (and they aren’t very good at
innovation,
so that’s an important one)?

Those may not be goals important to you, but they are goals important to
Microsoft. And they most certainly excel at the skills necessary to
achieve
those goals.

Felix

8

Can someone clarify for me the state of the various Ruby
implementations under .NET?
Here are the ones I’ve heard of.

  1. Gardens Point Ruby.NET from Queensland University of Technology in
    Australia (funded by Microsoft)
  2. RubyCLR from John L.
  3. IronRuby from Microsoft which hired John L. who now runs the project

Did I omit any?
Which of these are still being actively developed?

On Sep 12, 2007, at 1:19 PM, John L. (CLR) wrote:

there are. I heard that they want to change the rules for open

You really should judge my team based on our actions as opposed to
These things are a good indication of positive progress in the
company. Sure, not everyone shares our worldview, but change rarely
comes about by throwing rocks.

Thanks,
-John

Mark V.

9

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf
Of Lloyd L.
Sent: Wednesday, September 12, 2007 8:15 AM
To: ruby-talk ML
Subject: IronRuby

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.

Since I’m the guy that runs the IronRuby project at Microsoft. You can
direct any and all questions directly to me. Just because it’s written
on the Internet doesn’t mean that it’s true :slight_smile:

We’re building a Ruby implementation because there are lots of folks on
our platform who want us to do exactly this. I built RubyCLR before
coming to Microsoft, and it was after folks could see what was possible
via a bridge that they wanted something more.

IronRuby integrates very well with the .NET platform, and is also a
driving changes in the direction of the Dynamic Language Runtime which
provides much of the runtime services used by the IronRuby compiler.
We’re also building several other languages on top of DLR, namely
IronPython from my team as well as VBX and JSX from some Microsoft
partner teams. There are external folks who are building a Lisp
(http://www.codeplex.com/IronLisp) implementation, a Smalltalk
(http://vistasmalltalk.wordpress.com/) implementation among others.

You really should judge my team based on our actions as opposed to
random comments by folks with blogs / email readers. We’re doing a lot
of things which are unprecedented at Microsoft to push the envelope in
our interactions with the open source community. Much of my leadership
really gets this and we’re bending over backwards to do the right thing.

A couple of recent things that we’ve done is: a) submit Ms-PL for OSI
certification, and b) release the IronRuby source code on Rubyforge
and accept contributions back from the community.

These things are a good indication of positive progress in the company.
Sure, not everyone shares our worldview, but change rarely comes about
by throwing rocks.

Thanks,
-John

10

On Thu, 13 Sep 2007, Felix W. wrote:

Clueless about what?

Clueless about how to participate in a productive way with open source.
Making one’s own version of an open source project is not participating,
it’s forking. Forking, except in a very few rare cases, hurts a project
more than it helps.

Making money? Running a business? Dominating entire
market segments? Being incredibly fast at playing catch-up in market
segments they did not innovate in (and they aren’t very good at innovation,
so that’s an important one)?

It’s no disgrace to not be good at everything. Just because Ruby is
awesome and they didn’t make it they feel the need to go and copy it?
Why can’t they just send patches in to Matz and the Ruby dev guys like
other contributors? What’s to be gained by making another version of
the same thing? Do they think there’s a gob of would-be Ruby users out
there who would love to start up Ruby if it only came packaged from M$?

Those may not be goals important to you, but they are goals important to
Microsoft. And they most certainly excel at the skills necessary to achieve
those goals.

That’s exactly my point in a nutshell. Their goals are very different
from most open source project goals so why are they trying to feign
active participation when anyone with a brain knows their intentions are
not genuinely friendly.

11

From: “Greg D.” [email protected]

Why can’t they just send patches in to Matz and the Ruby dev guys like
other contributors? What’s to be gained by making another version of
the same thing?

I presumed it was a situation similar to JRuby?

That is, providing the ruby language tightly integrated with and
running on a different platform.

If I ever had to program on the Java platform again, I’d be
grateful for the existence of JRuby. Similarly, if I ever had
to program on .NET, I imagine I’d be grateful for the existence
of IronRuby.

Their goals are very different
from most open source project goals so why are they trying to feign
active participation when anyone with a brain knows their intentions are
not genuinely friendly.

So long as they are using a genuine open source license–which
it sounds like they are–I’m hard pressed to imagine any
catastrophic consequences from their efforts?

Regards,

Bill

12

On Thu, 13 Sep 2007, Bill K. wrote:

So long as they are using a genuine open source license–which
it sounds like they are–I’m hard pressed to imagine any
catastrophic consequences from their efforts?

I wouldn’t trust a free or open source software license from M$ if it
was approved by RMS himself.

And that’s what it comes down to with me, trust. Sure they can
deliver a product under an open source license for a time, but nothing
would keep them from changing the license later if it’s their own
project. Then anyone who wanted to keep going with said project would
have to rely on another group to continue with a still-open, forked
version. No one really wins in that scenario except M$. I refuse to
play a part in helping them hurt the open source community.

M$ has a different agenda than most open source software I know and
love.
I would never trust them to come in a be a part of that world and not
have
other monetary motivation. They have shareholders to answer to after
all.

13

Can someone clarify for me the state of the various Ruby
implementations under .NET?
Here are the ones I’ve heard of.

  1. Gardens Point Ruby.NET from Queensland University of Technology in
    Australia (funded by Microsoft)
  2. RubyCLR from John L.
  3. IronRuby from Microsoft which hired John L. who now runs the
    project
  1. and 3) are both being actively developed. There are folks who have
    commit privileges to 2), but I don’t really have cycles now to
    contribute to 2) and 3) :frowning:

-John

14

On Thu, 2007-13-09 at 00:15 +0900, Lloyd L. wrote:

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.

And this is different from the viral portions of the GPL suite how,
precisely? If I make a program with over a million lines of code and
add a hundred lines from a GPLed source, suddenly all of my millions of
lines of code are under the GPL. Or is this different because it’s
Microsoft?

15

On Sep 12, 2007, at 11:15 AM, Lloyd L. wrote:

I may be bashed as a MS hater… but long live the penguin.

Apparently, what MS will do is enter a field and provide everything
the competitors provide, except more.

The catch is they insert all sorts of trips, like the software will
only work when applied to .NET productions.
An example is a piece of network software they wrote which would only
talk to Windoze machines.

So…
I really want to get my hands on that ruby compiler sooooooo baaaaaaaad

~ Ari
English is like a pseudo-random number generator - there are a
bajillion rules to it, but nobody cares.

16

On Thu, 2007-13-09 at 10:01 +0900, Phil wrote:

And this is different from the viral portions of the GPL suite how,
precisely? If I make a program with over a million lines of code
and add a hundred lines from a GPLed source, suddenly all of my
millions of lines of code are under the GPL.
Or is this different because it’s Microsoft?

Actually, the old BSD license with attribution clause is a closer fit. The
MS-PL doesn’t require you to publish your code with the same license, as the GPL does.

Well, fair enough. The point I was trying to establish was that it’s
not unusual for licenses to say “we encompass any work you do” –
whether the “encompassing” involves attribution (old-style BSD or
current MS-PL) or viral infection (GPL). The secondary point is that
people really need to stop “MS is evil, therefore anything from MS is
evil”-style reasoning. (And I say this as a person who switched
permanently away from MS technologies in 2004.)

17

On Thu, 2007-09-13 at 00:15 +0900, Lloyd L. wrote:

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?

I can’t really speak to the IronRuby situation, but I have been keeping
track of the progress Microsoft has been making with IronPython, and so
far that has been a good project. In particular, the IronPython folks
make it a big priority to make IronPython 100% faithful to the Python
language description (IIRC they even run the mainstream CPython
regression tests).

If IronRuby ends up like IronPython, the community should be pleased; a
new implementation can only draw more people to the language (especially
if it creates an easy way for C# developers to transition to the
language). Of course it could be devastating if Microsoft ends up
embarking on an embrace and extend type of strategy (as they did with
Java), but so far I don’t see any nefarious actions on their part.

18

language description (IIRC they even run the mainstream CPython
regression tests).

The folks who created IronPython are on my team as well. FWIW they were
treated with skepticism at start but eventually earned the respect of
the community. We’re in the same boat - we need to earn your respect by
doing the right things as well. And we fully expect the community to
call us on our mistakes.

-John

19

From: Michael T. Richter [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2007 1:16 AM
To: ruby-talk ML
Subject: Re: IronRuby

And this is different from the viral portions of the GPL suite how,
precisely? If I make a program with over a million lines of code
and add a hundred lines from a GPLed source, suddenly all of my
millions of lines of code are under the GPL.
Or is this different because it’s Microsoft?

Actually, the old BSD license with attribution clause is a closer fit.
The MS-PL doesn’t require you to publish your code with the same
license, as the GPL does.

20

John L. (CLR) wrote:

A couple of recent things that we’ve done is: a) submit Ms-PL for OSI certification, and b) release the IronRuby source code on Rubyforge and accept contributions back from the community.

You just released the core classes, yes? Or is what’s on RubyForge all
someone needs to run IronRuby? Could what’s on RubyForge be forked and
run on an arbitrary CLR? I’m a little confused on these points.

  • Charlie