[MacRuby-devel] Re The Future of MacRuby

Fri Apr 6 00:15:06 PDT 2012

I hear you Tim, but such is the reality. On the other hand, Apple
initiated, funded and released the project as open source.
Deprecating the GC is certainly unfortunate in the sense that it means more
work for the project, but the decision wasn't sudden, technically makes a
lot of sense and we have at the very minimum 2 OS release cycles to upgrade.

So while, we could regret Apple's disengagement in MacRuby, I think it's
time to reflect, as a community on what we really want MacRuby to be.
My personal take is that MacRuby will become much better than it ever was
because it will be driven by a strong and active community.
If on the other hand, the community has little interest in MR, then the
project will slowly die off. I don't believe it will be the case, but if
that was to happen, we could only blame ourselves for not making MacRuby
into a product that serves a real purpose and meets a concrete demand.

- Matt

On Fri, Apr 6, 2012 at 8:21 AM, Tim Rand <timrandg at gmail.com> wrote:

> I am surprised to hear Laurent has left Apple. I don't know what motivated
> the change, but I am sure that he is working on something great. Good luck
> Laurent!!!
>
> While I have a lot of faith in the open source community and think growing
> a larger pool of contributors is critical for the long-term viability of
> macruby, the libauto issue is a simple example of how internal decisions at
> Apple can have profound effects on macruby's future. That worries me.
> Without anyone promoting macruby from inside Apple, they can shut
> compatibility with x-code off with an update, add months of work to remove
> libauto-dependency because they decide to deprecate GC or otherwise alter
> the programming universe in some unforeseen way. Since Apple is an
> unapologetic, iron-curtain of secrecy, with a propensity to stop short and
> change direction (remember when it seemed like macruby would be on iOS?), I
> can only imagine how many hacker years the macruby community will burn
> while trying to hit an ever-moving target.
>
> Apple, think different--don't be evil!
> --Tim
>
>
>
> On Thu, Apr 5, 2012 at 9:02 PM, <
> macruby-devel-request at lists.macosforge.org> wrote:
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>> Today's Topics:
>>
>>   1. Re: Re The Future of MacRuby (Jordan K. Hubbard)
>>   2. Re: The future of MacRuby (Chong Francis)
>>
>>
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Message: 1
>> Date: Thu, 05 Apr 2012 17:45:48 -0700
>> From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh at apple.com>
>> To: "MacRuby development discussions."
>>        <macruby-devel at lists.macosforge.org>
>> Subject: Re: [MacRuby-devel] Re The Future of MacRuby
>> Message-ID: <F0B5203E-88F8-4897-A68B-DF292DAF428D at apple.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>>
>>
>> On Apr 5, 2012, at 3:34 PM, Dan Farrand <danf at greenRiverComputing.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> > I am not a a contributor to MacRuby, but I have been interested in
>> using it. Without Apple sponsorship, I have very little interest in MacRuby.
>>
>> I think Matt has already said all that needs to be said on that subject.
>>  There are many application environments, both commercial (like Unity3D)
>> and open source (like Mono), that have enjoyed a healthy and robust
>> existence without Apple's help.  Apple is a wonderful company that makes
>> many fine things (and I'm obviously biased), but it would be frankly silly
>> to suggest or even imagine that no one else is capable of making fine
>> things on their own.  One also need look no further than the MacPorts
>> project to see one that was started by Apple but became FAR more successful
>> and motivated once the community became seriously involved with and took
>> over the development process, so there's a counter-point to your somewhat
>> pessimistic viewpoint right there.
>>
>> I personally wish Matt and anyone who wishes to join him in charting
>> MacRuby's future course the very best of luck.  As he notes, it's already a
>> fairly stable platform and a lot of good work has already gone into it:
>>  It's hardly starting from scratch with just a few gossamer dreams and
>> ill-defined notions to hang its future on!  You have some great stuff to
>> start with.
>>
>> Even better, it's open source and the doors are therefore open to anyone
>> who wishes to participate.  No hosting situation is perfect, of course, and
>> should there be any impediments to such participation then I'm sure they
>> will rapidly resolve themselves given the plethora of alternatives for
>> hosting the bits, the bug reports, the community discussion portals, and so
>> on.  Those are mere implementation details, however, and it's far more
>> important that the project have some clearly defined goals and people
>> willing to drive those goals since, as I can personally attest, the heart
>> and soul of any open source project is the people involved with it on a day
>> to day basis!  Not the source code.  Not where the sources are hosted.  The
>> people.
>>
>> There simply has to be some collection of people who constitute an actual
>> community since it is communities, and the essential need that humans have
>> for creating them, that binds any project together and leads to its
>> longer-term success.  Individuals themselves may come and go, just as I
>> left the FreeBSD project after many years of involvement with it, but as
>> long as there is a strong community of like-minded individuals remaining
>> then the project will live on and continue to prosper (I like to think that
>> FreeBSD is far more successful today than it was when I left it).
>> Focusing on the past merely leads to pointless navel-gazing.  Think about
>> the future you want to create, as Matt says, and you'll be on the right
>> track.
>>
>>
>> Finally, I also think that integration with Xcode, while certainly not a
>> bad thing to maintain going forward, should also not be held up as such a
>> holy grail that it proves an impediment to thinking up new and even more
>> exciting ways to rapidly prototype applications in an interactive,
>> interpreted development environment.
>>
>> MacRuby is not Objective-C.  It can be compiled, and that's great, but it
>> also lends itself particularly well to Smalltalk-style interactive
>> development environments that, I believe at least, have been sadly lost in
>> time as IDEs like Visual Studio and Eclipse rose to prominence and became
>> the new norm.  What about seeing software more as connectable ICs, with
>> lines and arrows denoting control flow, for example?  What about dragging
>> and dropping stuff from palettes of code templates rather than writing
>> endless amounts of boilerplate?   These are the sorts of concepts that a
>> project like MacRuby could easily explore, should it choose to do so,
>> rather than simply trying to clone or track existing development metaphors.
>>
>> The Rails developers certainly proved the notion, and proved it with
>> rather spectacular success, that you could start with a flexible and easily
>> learned language like Ruby and then create a de-facto DSL on top of it,
>> making things that were formerly somewhat complex almost absurdly simple.
>>  Whether you like Rails or hate it, you cannot argue the fact that this
>> essential idea struck a strongly responsive chord with a lot of web
>> developers, so why not seek to create something similar for app developers?
>>   Both individually and collectively, the readers of this list are in
>> charge of where MacRuby goes next.  If you like the vision that Matt is
>> proposing, by all means follow him.  If you don't, github also supports any
>> number of possible forks, the word "fork" no longer having the somewhat
>> pejorative meaning it once had, either, but rather representing the
>> opportunity for one or more individuals to demonstrate another possible
>> vision of the future the old fashioned way - by creat
>>  ing it!
>>
>> - Jordan
>>
>>
>>
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>> ------------------------------
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>> Message: 2
>> Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2012 12:02:30 +0800
>> From: Chong Francis <francis at ignition.hk>
>> To: "MacRuby development discussions."
>>        <macruby-devel at lists.macosforge.org>
>> Subject: Re: [MacRuby-devel] The future of MacRuby
>> Message-ID: <F1865A0E-F52D-466E-BE74-ECC255AAF290 at ignition.hk>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="big5"
>>
>> Thank you for your update. It's sad that Apple seems abandon the MacRuby
>> project, but this is also a chance to bring MacRuby closer to what we (as
>> developers and users) need instead of what Apple want.
>>
>> I certainly agree that removing libauto is a primary goal, as OSX and iOS
>> are both going to a place with no GC. I afraid my C/C++ skills is not quite
>> helpful on developing core MacRuby, but i would definitely like to help on
>> wrapping API, integration and documentation.
>>
>> Francis
>>
>> Matt Aimonetti ? 2012?4?6? ??6:06 ???
>>
>> > 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
>> >
>> > Laurent is fine. As described on his twitter http://twitter.com/lrzand 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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