[MacRuby-devel] The future of MacRuby

Thu Apr 5 15:44:59 PDT 2012

Wow, lots of news there. Thanks for the explanation Matt.

I created a quick survey to help quantify and gauge how the community
feels. Please fill it out.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/J5JLMFT

Daniel

On Thu, Apr 5, 2012 at 4:06 PM, Matt Aimonetti <mattaimonetti at gmail.com>wrote:

> *Many of you have been wondering what is going on with the MacRuby
> project given the lack of up-to-date releases and overall communication.
> I feel we owe you some explanation.
>
> As a lot of you have noticed, our de-facto project leader Laurent
> Sansonetti has been M.I.A since October 2011, his last post to this mailing
> list being
>
> http://lists.macosforge.org/pipermail/macruby-devel/2011-October/008168.htmlannouncing MacRuby 0.11 really soon.
> His last commit was a change of license back in October:
> https://github.com/MacRuby/MacRuby/commit/ac2a7a8e678d19e44d3c64a9508a8370d082dca2
> <https://github.com/MacRuby/MacRuby/commit/ac2a7a8e678d19e44d3c64a9508a8370d082dca2>
> Laurent is fine. As described on his twitter http://twitter.com/lrz and
> LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/in/sansonetti accounts, Laurent is no
> longer with Apple and is clearly also no longer directly involved with the
> MacRuby project on a day-to-day basis.
> Laurent is currently busy with another project and and hopes to someday be
> able to contribute to the MacRuby project again.
>
> While no one on this list can speak for Apple, and Apple as a company does
> not tend to comment on its future plans or intentions, I think it's
> reasonable to imagine that Apple would be more than happy to have the
> MacRuby project decide for itself what its destiny is and how to achieve
> it.  If they did not want the community to be involved or drive such a
> process, they would not have released MacRuby as open source or created the
> project infrastructure to facilitate it.   It is time for us to stop
> looking to Apple to provide guidance, leadership and coding for the
> project, in other words, and take on those challenges for ourselves!
>   MacRuby is already very powerful and comparatively stable as a
> development platform, now it's time for us to take things to the next level.
>
> I personally think it will finally allow us to communicate and collaborate
> on the actual process of development as it occurs, rather than the previous
> practice of simply seeing code appear from some hidden, internal branch
> which was driven almost exclusively by a single person
>
> Doing all of this in the open should lead to far more people being
> interested in the project, not just as users but as developers and leaders.
>  No one rushes to fill a position that is occupied by someone else, but now
> we have a vacuum to fill, and that can be a good thing in terms of
> encouraging more people to step forward.
>
> Here is how I see things and I would love to hear more about what you guys
> think.
> MacRuby is a great project, but:
>
>    - the target audience & projects aren't clear
>    - the target platform (OS X) isn't the one we all really want to
>    target (iOS)
>    - Cocoa's API is awesome but not user friendly/easy to grasp
>
>
> What I'd like to suggest is the following:
>
> 1. Define clear goals for MacRuby that we can easily evaluate:
>
>    - Focus primarily on making MacRuby the tool to use for quickly
>    prototyping OS X and iOS applications.
>    - Remove dependency on libauto so MacRuby can run post Mountain Lion
>    and on iOS.
>
> 2. Increase the number of contributors:
>
>    - Define areas of contribution:
>       - implementation itself (mainly requires C, C++ knowledge)
>       - prototyping focus (templates, wrapper APIs, modules, tools: a
>       full ecosystem aimed at being more productive)
>       - documentation (getting started, guides, FAQs, wiki, demos, hacker
>       guides)
>       - support
>
>
>    - empower contributors:
>       - move the website to github for easier contribution
>       - better release process and roadmap
>       - better process to review pull requests & give commit rights
>
> 3. Improve communication:
>
>    - start an active and official chat room (IRC, campfire like or
>    something else)
>    - open discussions about plans for the project and progress made
>    - better collaboration with other Ruby implementation teams (Rubinius,
>    JRuby, MagLev and of course Matz/C Ruby)
>
>
> Let's not forget that MacRuby is and will remain a free Open Source
> project and that means we need your help and support.
> Without you, this project doesn't mean much so please voice your opinion
> and if you decide to do so, become an active participant to MacRuby's
> success.
>
> I would like to thank Apple for their historical support and Laurent for
> starting this project and all his work so far. Without those contributions,
> MacRuby would never have existed and the project will more than welcome any
> future participation by either Apple or Laurent.
> At the same time, I don't think the future of this project can or should
> rest on the shoulders of a single corporate entity, or that of a single
> individual.  That does not encourage the kind of broad participation, or
> the kind of overall longevity (in the form of future generations of
> contributors) that Open Source projects really need to survive over the
> long term.
> Finally, I'd like to make clear that I see myself more in a role of a
> facilitator than a technical leader on the order of what Laurent was. This
> role has been left vacant for more than 6 months now and needs to be filled
> by a group of people with greater technical skills than mine. Additional
> contributors are therefore more than welcome to join the team, and their
> support will be as much appreciated as it is needed.
>
> Finally, in addition to the already numerous great MacRuby contributors
> and soon to become contributors, Evan Phoenix (Rubinius) agreed to act as
> an advisor for the project.
>
> So, MacRuby community what do you think?*
> *
> *
> *- Matt*
>
> _______________________________________________
> MacRuby-devel mailing list
> MacRuby-devel at lists.macosforge.org
> http://lists.macosforge.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/macruby-devel
>
>
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