"Start spreading the news"

Ruby IronRuby
1

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 :frowning:

2

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 :). 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 :). 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 :slight_smile:

I understand that this is sad, and for some, expected :(, but I hope
that people still continue doing the awesome things people have been
doing :slight_smile:

JD

From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Orion E.
Sent: Sunday, August 08, 2010 2:43 PM
To: [email protected]
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 :frowning:

3

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 D. [email protected]
wrote:

anymore. I also had a wonderful time on the team, and I will really miss

“farewell Microsoft” blog post posted to the list, so here it is if anyone
of view, it’s happy days.

http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/ironruby-core

–
Michael L.
IronRuby MVP
http://blog.prokrams.com

4

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 G.
http://hotgazpacho.org/

5

Is there anybody who decided not to submit a patch based upon the
limitations/requirements of the current process and who would contribute
otherwise?
Is anybody willing to run a continuous integration server that guards
the repo from erroneous patches? A canonical repo needs to have such a
gatekeeper. Our internal SNAP system has provided this functionality for
the internal TFS repo.

BTW, “Sync to TFS” was an artifact of lack of automated sync tool. We
now have that tool, thanks to Jim, so you should see less of these. Code
review emails has been sent for most of the changes that were made to
Ruby repo anyways. So if you watched the mailing list you could easily
track what’s going on. Only comments to changesets that included some
internal infrastructure changes weren’t sent to the mailing list.

Tomas

6

On Sun, Aug 8, 2010 at 4:13 AM, Tomas M.
[email protected] wrote:

Is there anybody who decided not to submit a patch based upon the limitations/requirements of the current process and who would contribute otherwise?

Certainly.

I was interested from day one in contributing to the core part or IR
and to the DLR. I never bothered to do so knowing the limitations of
the current process.

7

what about the code better teamcity server?
http://teamcity.codebetter.com/

On Sat, Aug 7, 2010 at 7:34 PM, Michael L.
<[email protected]

wrote:

entry and a hassle. Don’t misunderstand, the work gone into them IS
otherwise?
infrastructure changes weren’t sent to the mailing list.

I agree with Michael here. As long as the canonical source for IronRuby
the project. If we want IronRuby, we’re going to have to make it happen, on

I understand that this is sad, and for some, expected L, but I hope
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Orion
is if anyone hasn’t read it
NYC. From that point of view, it’s happy days.

does).

their behalf after they’ve just done that?"
[email protected]

http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/ironruby-core
[email protected]
http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/ironruby-core

–
“The explanation requiring the fewest assumptions is most likely to be
correct.”

8

Ok, I like to propose a pause in action.

Here’s what we know. Jimmy has moved on, as has Jim. Tomas is the main
person left, and from the emails we’ve received, he’s only working on it
part-time. I don’t know the politics of this specific org, but being an
ex-softie I do have an idea, and that hunch is that the politics that
caused the reshuffle were not a conspiracy theory against IronRuby, but
just normal organization dysfunction and quarterly reorganization.

We also know thay we have a community of people who are passionate about
IronRuby, and a secondary wave of people driven into action by the
events of the past day or so. It stands to reason, from work I’ve done
in other communties, that one or two will end up being long term
participants because of the new awareness.

That said, I don’t think that what we should do right now is fork it,
since IronRuby relies heavily on the DLR which wouldn’t be controlled.
This is not to say that we take it off the table. Rather we need to ask
ourselves what holes have now opened up that we need to fill:

  1. Jimmy provided leadership and vision for the project. We’ve now lost
    that, and either Tomas will pick this up internally, or we will need an
    external person to run with the vision. Regardless, the person will have
    to interface with and understand the vision from the Microsoft side.

  2. Tomas already mentioned needs like a CI and gatekeeper. I bet there
    are lots of other needs, and if this is truly a community-owned
    movement, we need to engage with Tomas and the remaining team to
    understand what else we’re missing.

  3. IronRuby has likely taken a huge blow of credibility from the
    enterprise adoption side, because if it isn’t supported by Microsoft
    PSS, they will be unlikely to use it internally or in their products.

All three of these are vital points that we need to think about as a
community. Someone is going to have to step up to take charge of this -
and it’s not going to come from the Mono side. Tomas may be willing to
take charge as much as possible - no one has asked him, and that’s a
shame.

IronRuby has not had a heart attack which requires CPR. That means we
need to take a measured, levelheaded response as a community and work to
understand how we can help and how we can respond in a way that makes
sense. We already know from Jimmy’s tweets that he’s planning an email
for the group - how can we take advantage of the knowledge Jim and Jimmy
have, and support the work Tomas is doing?

Finally, we may have a burst of energy right now, but no form of
sprinting is going to help solve this. This is not a “we have to take
action now before we lose the opportunity!” moment. The code is there.
Many of the contributors are there, and know what is going on
internally. Let’s collaborate and find a way to make this project a real
success.

Cory

9

We’ve had a CI server set up on CJ’s hardware for a while, it’s
actually worked from time to time as well :slight_smile:
http://twitter.com/IronRubyCI

I’m more then willing to get that up and running again, it wasn’t a
general CI server though, it was mostly for mine and Ivan’s changes
for compilation under Linux.

And Code review emails are just one extra step that’s not needed, it’s
just bureaucracy added on by the current situation, it’s a barrier to
entry and a hassle. Don’t misunderstand, the work gone into them IS
appreciated, but it’s just another groan.

And I find it hard to believe that the only reason for an internal
canonical repo was lack of external CI… that’s not what’s being
implied, is it?

On Sat, Aug 7, 2010 at 10:13 PM, Tomas M.
[email protected] wrote:

To: [email protected]
Will G.

of leaving. I will still be working with IronRuby, it just won’t be
that people want to use in their .NET applications, because it shows
JD

IronRuby in general. If there’s now only 2 part-time developers
I personally also perceive somewhat of a problem, in that (again,

time and skill than I don’t end up feeling this way too :frowning:
–
http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/ironruby-core

Ironruby-core mailing list
[email protected]
http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/ironruby-core

–
Michael L.
IronRuby MVP
http://blog.prokrams.com

10

Contributing to IR core should not be an issue anymore.

DLR is still off limits due to a possibility that parts of it might be
productized and become part of .NET Framework.

Tomas

11

Re CI server: cool, let’s get one up and running then. Ideally we would
have 2 - one running on Windows and other on Linux to make sure that
IronRuby works well on both platforms.
Both should run the same test-suite (irtests script). The harness might
need some tweaks for Linux and you’re welcome to submit patches.

Re “Code review emails are just one extra step that’s not needed”:
Code reviews are absolutely needed! It’s not a bureaucracy, it’s a
quality gateway. Nobody should commit anything without a code review
from the code owner. For now, that would be mostly me (core, libraries,
csproj files), Jim (test harness, infrastructure) and Jimmy
(Silverlight, ironRack). If anybody’s interesting in owning some part of
IronRuby let know the current owner.

Actually, what do you mean by “canonical” repo? What would make GIT repo
canonical?

Tomas

12

I could take a stab at getting a codebetter CI build up. Im pretty
familiar
with TeamCity, we use it at work. Not sure how CI friendly the current
build
script is, but hey ill give it a shot if your interested.

On Sat, Aug 7, 2010 at 8:26 PM, Tomas M.
<[email protected]

wrote:

(test harness, infrastructure) and Jimmy (Silverlight, ironRack). If
[email protected]] On Behalf Of Michael L.

[email protected]> wrote:
emails has been sent for most of the changes that were made to Ruby repo

Sent: Saturday, August 07, 2010 5:36 PM
had accepted contribution. (this may already be in place, I don’t

wrote:

just won’t be my primary function anymore. I also had a wonderful
it shows people Ruby J

IronRuby in general. If there’s now only 2 part-time developers
I personally also perceive somewhat of a problem, in that (again,
benefit of Microsoft Corporation.
largely irrelevant, I just hope that other potential committers with

[email protected]
Michael L.
http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/ironruby-core

–
“The explanation requiring the fewest assumptions is most likely to be
correct.”

13

+1

Sent from my iPhone

14

Thanks Cory for the levelheadedness. It’s all too easy to get upset and
overreact (as I well know)

Re Tomas’ question about what would it take to make the github repo
canonical. To me, it would need several things

  1. The release builds need to be built directly from this repo

  2. All the official project webpages need to refer to this repo as the
    main one

15

If you can get me access I’d be happy to help you out with that.
Especially if we can get access to a linux and win box in there.

From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Bobby J.
Sent: Saturday, August 07, 2010 8:43 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [Ironruby-core] “Start spreading the news”

I could take a stab at getting a codebetter CI build up. Im pretty
familiar with TeamCity, we use it at work. Not sure how CI friendly the
current build script is, but hey ill give it a shot if your interested.
On Sat, Aug 7, 2010 at 8:26 PM, Tomas M.
<[email protected]mailto:[email protected]>
wrote:
Re CI server: cool, let’s get one up and running then. Ideally we would
have 2 - one running on Windows and other on Linux to make sure that
IronRuby works well on both platforms.
Both should run the same test-suite (irtests script). The harness might
need some tweaks for Linux and you’re welcome to submit patches.

Re “Code review emails are just one extra step that’s not needed”:
Code reviews are absolutely needed! It’s not a bureaucracy, it’s a
quality gateway. Nobody should commit anything without a code review
from the code owner. For now, that would be mostly me (core, libraries,
csproj files), Jim (test harness, infrastructure) and Jimmy
(Silverlight, ironRack). If anybody’s interesting in owning some part of
IronRuby let know the current owner.

Actually, what do you mean by “canonical” repo? What would make GIT repo
canonical?

Tomas

16

I agree with Cory, too, but on the other hand it would be very helpful
if Microsoft (I mean someone who can speak for Microsoft) clearly say
what are they intentions with IronRuby (and maybe IronPython, too) for
the future.

Are they “releasing IronRuby to the community”? Is Microsoft like to
(officially) participate in future in IronRuby development? If so, in
what way? As a project owner? And so on…

Only knowing in what situation we really are we can make our decisions
about what to do.

More clarity will also help with using the technology, for example, I
am considering using IronRuby for one project and now I do not know
what to expect from future (questions like - will development of
IronRuby continue, what about Silverlight and Azure support, what
about v1.9 compatibility, …) and it is now became problematic to
make some of decisions.

thanks,
Slavo.

17

I agree 100% with Cory, we just need to calm down, regroup, give support
to Tomas, make our opinions heard and continue using the technology that
helps us become way more productive in our jobs.

On the other hand Jimmy will still be around, he just moved to another
job.

Regards,

Eduardo B.

Cory F. wrote:

Ok, I like to propose a pause in action.

Here’s what we know. Jimmy has moved on, as has Jim. Tomas is the main
person left, and from the emails we’ve received, he’s only working on it
part-time. I don’t know the politics of this specific org, but being an
ex-softie I do have an idea, and that hunch is that the politics that
caused the reshuffle were not a conspiracy theory against IronRuby, but
just normal organization dysfunction and quarterly reorganization.

We also know thay we have a community of people who are passionate about
IronRuby, and a secondary wave of people driven into action by the
events of the past day or so. It stands to reason, from work I’ve done
in other communties, that one or two will end up being long term
participants because of the new awareness.

That said, I don’t think that what we should do right now is fork it,
since IronRuby relies heavily on the DLR which wouldn’t be controlled.
This is not to say that we take it off the table. Rather we need to ask
ourselves what holes have now opened up that we need to fill:

  1. Jimmy provided leadership and vision for the project. We’ve now lost
    that, and either Tomas will pick this up internally, or we will need an
    external person to run with the vision. Regardless, the person will have
    to interface with and understand the vision from the Microsoft side.

  2. Tomas already mentioned needs like a CI and gatekeeper. I bet there
    are lots of other needs, and if this is truly a community-owned
    movement, we need to engage with Tomas and the remaining team to
    understand what else we’re missing.

  3. IronRuby has likely taken a huge blow of credibility from the
    enterprise adoption side, because if it isn’t supported by Microsoft
    PSS, they will be unlikely to use it internally or in their products.

All three of these are vital points that we need to think about as a
community. Someone is going to have to step up to take charge of this -
and it’s not going to come from the Mono side. Tomas may be willing to
take charge as much as possible - no one has asked him, and that’s a
shame.

IronRuby has not had a heart attack which requires CPR. That means we
need to take a measured, levelheaded response as a community and work to
understand how we can help and how we can respond in a way that makes
sense. We already know from Jimmy’s tweets that he’s planning an email
for the group - how can we take advantage of the knowledge Jim and Jimmy
have, and support the work Tomas is doing?

Finally, we may have a burst of energy right now, but no form of
sprinting is going to help solve this. This is not a “we have to take
action now before we lose the opportunity!” moment. The code is there.
Many of the contributors are there, and know what is going on
internally. Let’s collaborate and find a way to make this project a real
success.

Cory

18

To Cory’s point about IronRuby’s credibility in the Enterprise:

I think its certainly true that if IronRuby is not a MS supported tool,
there will be shops that will not be able to use it. On the other hand,
there are still plenty of other shops that could use it, if only they
understand what they could use it for and how.

To date, the story of what IronRuby is “for” has been rather weak. I
know
it’s a language, and so it’s possibilities are just about endless, but
what
are the main areas we think people can derive significant benefit from
using
it?

If IronRuby really does end up being primarily community driven, we need
to
come up with a much better story around what it is for, and helping
people
get started with using it for those things. This could help drive
adoption,
which could in turn help drive contributors.

Some examples of things IronRuby may be 'for":

  1. Unit Testing (
    kwblog: Testing C# with RSpec and Ruby
    )
  2. Embedded Scripting (
    Jimmy Schementi > IronRuby @ RubyConf 2009 – Part 3.5: Embedding IronRuby)
  3. Silverlight (
    Jimmy Schementi > Walk-through: Silverlight Flickr Client in IronRuby
    )
  4. ?

Jimmy talked about #1 and #2 here:
http://blog.jimmy.schementi.com/2010/04/mix10-part-3-using-dynamic-languages-in.html

Thanks,
Kevin Berridge

19
  1. Rails on .NET

I think asp.net mvc took a lot of the wind out of this particular
scenario, but rails is still literally years ahead of MVC in both
maturity and thinking.

If we could get rails under ironruby easily deplorable to iis, I think
this would help a lot

On question I’d REALLY like answered is this:

Does Jimmy still have commit access to the main repos on github now that
he’s left MS? Does anyone else outside MS have this?

Thanks, Orion

20

At this point Jimmy might, but the only one that should be commiting
there directly is the automated account. Once we get official word from
MS on what will happen with everything, I’d be happy to discuss the fate
of the IronRuby organization on Github ☺

From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Orion E.
Sent: Sunday, August 08, 2010 2:07 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [Ironruby-core] “Start spreading the news”

  1. Rails on .NET

I think asp.nethttp://asp.net mvc took a lot of the wind out of this
particular scenario, but rails is still literally years ahead of MVC
in both maturity and thinking.

If we could get rails under ironruby easily deplorable to iis, I think
this would help a lot

On question I’d REALLY like answered is this:

Does Jimmy still have commit access to the main repos on github now that
he’s left MS? Does anyone else outside MS have this?

Thanks, Orion

On 9/08/2010, at 3:36 AM, Kevin Berridge
<[email protected]mailto:[email protected]> wrote:
To Cory’s point about IronRuby’s credibility in the Enterprise:

I think its certainly true that if IronRuby is not a MS supported tool,
there will be shops that will not be able to use it. On the other hand,
there are still plenty of other shops that could use it, if only they
understand what they could use it for and how.

To date, the story of what IronRuby is “for” has been rather weak. I
know it’s a language, and so it’s possibilities are just about endless,
but what are the main areas we think people can derive significant
benefit from using it?

If IronRuby really does end up being primarily community driven, we need
to come up with a much better story around what it is for, and helping
people get started with using it for those things. This could help
drive adoption, which could in turn help drive contributors.

Some examples of things IronRuby may be 'for":

  1. Unit Testing
    (kwblog: Testing C# with RSpec and Ruby)
  2. Embedded Scripting
    (Jimmy Schementi > IronRuby @ RubyConf 2009 – Part 3.5: Embedding IronRuby)
  3. Silverlight
    (Jimmy Schementi > Walk-through: Silverlight Flickr Client in IronRuby)
  4. ?

Jimmy talked about #1 and #2 here:
http://blog.jimmy.schementi.com/2010/04/mix10-part-3-using-dynamic-languages-in.html
Thanks,
Kevin Berridge

On Sun, Aug 8, 2010 at 10:36 AM, Slavo F.
<[email protected]mailto:[email protected]> wrote:
I agree with Cory, too, but on the other hand it would be very helpful
if Microsoft (I mean someone who can speak for Microsoft) clearly say
what are they intentions with IronRuby (and maybe IronPython, too) for
the future.

Are they “releasing IronRuby to the community”? Is Microsoft like to
(officially) participate in future in IronRuby development? If so, in
what way? As a project owner? And so on…

Only knowing in what situation we really are we can make our decisions
about what to do.

More clarity will also help with using the technology, for example, I
am considering using IronRuby for one project and now I do not know
what to expect from future (questions like - will development of
IronRuby continue, what about Silverlight and Azure support, what
about v1.9 compatibility, …) and it is now became problematic to
make some of decisions.

thanks,
Slavo.

On Sun, Aug 8, 2010 at 2:51 PM, Eduardo B.
<[email protected]mailto:[email protected]> wrote:

We also know thay we have a community of people who are passionate about

  1. Jimmy provided leadership and vision for the project. We’ve now lost
    enterprise adoption side, because if it isn’t supported by Microsoft
    understand how we can help and how we can respond in a way that makes

Cory

–
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

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