Today is the 5th anniversary of the first appearance of RMagick on
RubyForge.
On July 22, 2003, a week after RubyForge started, Tom C. approved
the RMagick project and I uploaded RMagick 1.2.2.
I started RMagick because I wanted to learn Ruby and my wife wanted me
to make a web photo gallery. After working on it for most of 2002 I
decided to share it with the community. RMagick has succeeded beyond my
wildest dreams. In the beginning I thought maybe 10 other people could
get some use out of it. According to RubyForge there has been over
167,000 downloads from the RMagick project. I was thrilled by the first
download and have been thrilled by every download since.
I’d like to thank everybody who has ever used RMagick in an program
(whether it was in a production business application or a solution to a
RubyQuiz), blogged about RMagick, reported a bug, submitted a
patch, sent me an email, commented in the RMagick Forum, posted an
answer to a question about RMagick on ruby-lang, packaged RMagick for a
Linux distro, answered my questions about Ruby, or gave me advice.
Thanks to Kaspar S. and Brett DiFrischia, the guys who put RMagick
on Windows.
Thanks to Hal F., Michael Still, David Berube, and the other writers
who featured RMagick in their Ruby books.
Thanks to John Christy, creator of ImageMagick, and Bob Friesenhahn, who
maintains GraphicsMagick and who helped me get RMagick off the ground.
Thanks to the guy who made a presentation at Google and mentioned
RMagick in passing.
Thanks to RMagick’s critics. To paraphrase an old show business saying,
I don’t care what you write about RMagick as long as you spell the name
right.
Thanks to the handful of people who’ve offered me a job, a thank-you
gift, or a deposit in my (non-existent) “tip jar.” I can’t accept any of
these things but I appreciate the offers nevertheless!
Finally, thanks to Matz, Nobu, Koichi, and the other Ruby maintainers
who have worked so hard so that I could have so much fun with Ruby.
Tim
