Microsoft and IronRuby
31. May, 2007 
23 Comments
As many of you know, I recently moved my family to Redmond so that I can work on
IronRuby. I was very happy with my life in Toronto, and wouldn’t have made this move if
I wasn’t sure that I had excellent management support for our Ruby effort.
Scott Guthrie was the last guy in my
interview loop. He also runs the .NET Developer Platform organization that my team (the
DLR team) sits in. Scott is responsible for virtually all things related to the .NET
platform, including the CLR, IIS, ASP.NET, WPF, Silverlight (and some others that escape
me at this moment). Scott convinced me that Microsoft was serious about making a first
class implementation of Ruby on the .NET platform when he sketched out the demo that we
ultimately presented at MIX – 7 months later.
Our announcement of Silverlight at MIX is really quite significant. It makes it possible
for us to deliver IronRuby to an enormous number of computers, and on many platforms
(Windows, Mac OS, and Linux via
for Ruby programmers to use their favorite language in many more scenarios than they can
today.
However, since our announcements at MIX, there’s been much speculation both publicly and
privately about what our IronRuby plans are. Recently, Martin Fowler posted a
well-written post that, among other things,
compatibility:
The big question for Microsoft’s “Iron Ruby” is how compatible will it be?
Will it be a full implementation on the CLR?
From where I sit, I know that I have excellent air cover from my management chain, that
includes Jason Zander who runs the .NET
Frameworks group at Microsoft. These guys are serious about building a first-class
implementation of Ruby that runs on both CoreCLR in Silverlight, as well as the
desktop/server flavors of CLR 2.0 that are shipping today. They’re committed to making
sure that we have what we need to get the job done.
We will ship IronRuby under the
(our BSD-style license). If we fail to live up to your expectations, or if you don’t
like what we’re doing, you can
think that our track record with
the Python community serves as an example of what you can expect from our IronRuby
effort.
Martin finishes off his post with a challenge to us to do the right thing:
So what I see for Ruby and Microsoft is an opportunity. The Ruby community
seems eager to work with Microsoft. This provides an opportunity for Redmond to figure
out how to deal with the problems of working with open source and for this effort to
serve as an exemplar for future collaboration. A first class implementation of the full
Ruby platform on .NET would be a wonderful product of this collaboration. Perhaps an
even better result would be for this work to serve as an example of how Microsoft can
collaborate with a community that’s centered on openness and agility; an example that
can be a springboard for further spreading of attitudes that can further help
programmers and their customers throughout the Microsoft world.
I’m eager to work with the community to figure out how we can work together. An
excellent opportunity to do so is at our Lang.net symposium that we will hold on campus
sometime in September/October of this year. If you’re interested in helping to figure
out how we can collaborate better with the community I’d like to extend to you an
invitation to come out to meet with us then.
In the end, I think that it’s important to judge our effort based on the code that we
ship. We’re going to ship our first CodePlex release
of IronRuby at OSCON this year.
I’m looking forward to getting your feedback on that code (particularly on what we got
wrong) when we ship it so that we can work together to deliver the right solution for
everyone.
Can anyone come to Lang.net? I’d be interested in this.
On a related note, can you pass this up the chain to JasonZ and ScottGu?
http://weblogs.asp.net/nunitaddin/archive/2007/05/31/microsoft-vs-testdriven-net-31-may-2007.aspx
Thanks.
Meanwhile Microsoft threatens the open source community with litigation over patents that they refuse to identify. As long as that continues, who cares what MS does with Ruby?
IronRubyとマイクロソフト
John Lam on Software: Microsoft and Iron…
IronRubyとマイクロソフト
John Lam on Software: Microsoft and IronRuby Lohn LamがIronRubyとマイクロソフトの関係についてまとめています。 まとめるとこんな感じです。 IronRubyはマイクロソフトのプロジェクトである
@AN:
I will be posting a link to our registration site for Lang.net once we finish figuring out the logistics.
@Oran:
Will do.
Well, IronPython is already forked (although slightly), and I am very grateful for the license that allowed me to fork.
http://fepy.sourceforge.net/patches.html
Really looking forward to using IronRuby. However, why have Microsoft got there own version of the BSD license, instead of just using the standard BSD license?
Thanks a bunch John!
I forgot to mention that I think the work you’re doing and the role you’re playing are very valuable, and I can’t wait to use Ruby as a first-class citizen in the .NET world.
Hey,
I’m glad you finally mentioned IronRuby running on a “regular” CLR (2.0 or newer, I don’t care). All we’ve heard up to now was Silverlight based IronRuby etc.
Could you please elaborate a bit more on the availability of DLR/IronRuby *independently* of Silverlight? It’s quite obvious running Ruby on Rails on the server side on a “regular” CLR is a killer feature for the IronRuby.
John Lam on Software:Microsoft and IronRuby
RubyCLRの開発者で、今年１月にMicrosoftに加わり、MIXで正式発表されたIronRubyの開発を担当しているJohn Lam氏が、MicrosoftのRubyへのコミットメントについてブログに書いています。 Microsoft and IronRu
Points of interest #10 – Ajax, Silverlight, WPF, P&P, Firefox and SharePoint
A slight change this week. POI titles will now include the main topics covered in each post (“Other”
Points of interest #10 – Ajax, Silverlight, WPF, P&P, Firefox and SharePoint
A slight change this week. POI titles will now include the main topics covered in each post (“Other”
Good news all in all, John.
There is one point which is the main problem in the whole IronRuby story, though: the fact that yes, you can fork, but you can’t contribute back to the code. If something doesn’t get fixed by your group, there is NO way for an independent person to fix it, except forking and maintaining and redistributing his own version from that point on. There is a very good reason that forking is considered exceedingly bad for the open source community: it splinters effort instead of pooling it. That said, the possibility to fork is better than nothing at all.
IronRuby release (extending DLR support)
Ruby is a dynamic language from Japan (mid 90’s). The framework gain popularity (with help of rails)
Good job,dude:)!
Hey John – what do you say to the rumour which Martin Fowler started – that you are not allowed to look at the Ruby source code?
Lots of people are commenting on it, is it true?
Microsoft and Ruby
Martin Fowlers post on Microsoft and Ruby reflects some of my recent thoughts on MS closely. As he points out, MS is a large company made up of individuals rather than single-minded giant; and as such, there are bound to be differences of opinio…
Ruby no .Net Framework
Ruby no .Net Framework
John Lam on Software: Microsoft and IronRuby
You’ve been kicked (a good thing) – Trackback from DotNetKicks.com
Dynamic Languageについて(MD3)
MD3に向けて、Dynamic Languageに取り組んでいます。可能であれば、IronRubyなどもお見せできたら良いなぁと考えていますが、無理そうです( John Lamのブログ に7月の予定とありました)。このためASP.NET…
I am very much interested in getting my hands dirty with IronRuby, when and where can I get alpha/beta?
Any more info about lang.net 2007, the site still only shows info for ‘06.