Informed Licensing

Ruby, the amazing “user-friendly” programming language from Japan, is breaking new ground with the release of version 1.9.3.

A Brief History of Ruby

The Ruby programming language has been around for many years (and many versions), but it hadn’t accomplished significant adoption in the west until version 1.8 with the advent of Ruby on Rails, as well as getting included with Apple’s Mac OS X operating system. Over the past several years, Ruby’s use in the United States has blossomed (and continues to expand). However, one of the many complaints regarding Ruby is its speed. It is an interpreted language, and like many interpreted languages, its not about to break and land speed records.

Still, with various optimizations, Ruby (and its famous framework Ruby on Rails), is widely used for many substantial and large web applications.

When I started using Ruby in earnest, Ruby 1.9 was in its alpha stages, but lured by the prospect of speed, I dove right in. Unfortunately, I found that there are many significant differences between 1.8 and 1.9 besides stability and speed. Much has been done to smooth the differences between the two versions since then, but 1.9 remains a rapidly advancing branch. I use the term advancing because the API has become much more stable, but the branch continues to be refined at an impressive clip.

The Future of Ruby

As of 1.9.2, Ruby 1.9 is an amazing piece of work (as is the next generation of Rails - version 3). There is, however, one part that remains quite slow in version 1.9.x (slower even than 1.8?) - file loading.

For Rails 3, this is a problem! It can take much longer for a development installation of Rails to start on 1.9.1 or 1.9.2 than on Ruby 1.8.

Thankfully, this is reportedly getting repaired in 1.9.3 While I was reading that wonderful news, I also happened upon some other earth shattering new:

Ruby 1.9.3 is licensed under a joint 2-clause BSD license instead of the GPLv2.

That probably won’t mean much to most of its users, but for the Ruby development community - its huge. Why? It means that there will likely be more corporate interest in Ruby. Corporations will now be able to modify Ruby, make distributable, compiled binaries of Ruby, and not be required to release their modifications as would be required under the GPLv2. Will we see more “optimized” versions of Ruby like the Ruby Enterprise Edition? I bet we will. Probably a private version from ActiveState as well.

For a variety of reasons, I believe this bodes well for Ruby as a programming language. It will expand the audience of business consumers, and as such will create demand for more Ruby developers.

The Washington Post has published an interesting article concerning Leisure World, a seniors community in Montgomery County. This is a big place! Apparently it houses around 8,500 residents.

The interesting part is that they are being asked by the developer of the community, RRLH, to pay a licensing fee for the use of the name “Leisure World” forty years after the community was built.

They might have a case, but I doubt Leisure World will agree. Based on some quotes in the article, it sounds like they’ll simply change their name. I have to agree with their sentiments. Besides the fact that they’ve operated freely for forty years, the community is established and is operating successfully, and in all likelihood just doesn’t need to associate itself with any brand.

What do you think?

This is big news! News agencies are reporting that Google / YouTube has won in their fight against Viacom!

Viacom was (perhaps still is through appeals?) suing YouTube for copyright infringement with ginormous liabilities claimed.

Cory Doctorow is publishing a collection of essays about technology, creativity, copyright and the future of the future. The collection is called "Content".

The New York Times is reporting a story about how a judge, Robert W. Sweet, in New York ruled against the validity of a patent on the human genome.

I agree with the ruling, because the fact of the matter is that the intellectual property not only already existed in concept, but existed in reality, as part of the human genome.

Certainly, the company which researched and identified the genes in question have ventured into unchartered territory in the context of research, but they did not invent or create that territory.

Links

• http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/31/nyregion/31about.html