Ruby before Ruby?

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Hi there.

I was searching some stuff about Ruby and found this:

http://www.cooper.com/alan/father_of_vb.html

There was a Ruby before “our” Ruby, and it’s known as Visual Basic
today! Jesus!
Something that worried me was these words:

“Because Microsoft owned exclusive rights to Ruby, they could do with it
as they
pleased.”

Argh! Is the actual “Ruby” name ok, regarding the mark stuff?

Some more links about that:

http://www.forestmoon.com/BIRTHofVB/BIRTHofVB.html
http://www.webword.com/interviews/cooper.html

I saw some messages on the list about that on 2001:

http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/9971

but as Microsoft is buying patents like crazy since then, I’m wondering
if there
could be some danger to the Ruby language nowadays. Seems that there is
nothing
about this on the USA trademark office, but … btw, it only works with
IE. :-p

Best regards,


Eustáquio “TaQ” Rangel

“Computing is not about computers any more. It is about living.”
N. Negroponte
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On 2006-04-03 07:31:04 -0700, “Eustaquio Rangel de Oliveira Jr.”
[email protected] said:

There was a Ruby before “our” Ruby, and it’s known as Visual Basic
today! Jesus!

There’s also a Ruby used for (IIRC) ASIC design. I stumbled upon it
while searching for some Ruby stuff.