

IronRuby Nears its 1.0 Release - silkodyssey
http://www.infoq.com/news/2009/10/IronRuby-Update

======
jballanc
_"CRuby is licensed under the GPL"_

Somebody didn't do their fact checking! From the Ruby Source
([http://svn.ruby-lang.org/cgi-
bin/viewvc.cgi/trunk/COPYING?re...](http://svn.ruby-lang.org/cgi-
bin/viewvc.cgi/trunk/COPYING?revision=25184&view=markup)):

 _Ruby is copyrighted free software by Yukihiro Matsumoto <matz@netlab.jp>.
You can redistribute it and/or modify it under either the terms of the GPL
version 2 (see the file GPL), or the conditions below_

...where it then goes on to describe the conditions commonly referred to as
the "Ruby License" (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_License>), which is
half-way between a MIT/BSD style and something with explicit copyleft.

Probably the reason Microsoft didn't go directly to the MRI implementation has
more to do with them wanting it to run on the CLR.

------
ZeroGravitas
Even if the stuff about not being able to look at the source was true, they're
testing against RubySpec tests which are written by people who can and do look
at the source, so this post seems nonsensical.

edit: on a reread I notice the author actually disses RubySpec as being a
"long way from completion" and then praises IronRuby for meeting 97% of the
same (allegedly limited) tests.

------
sid0
> Most teams trying to implementation a Ruby compiler simply look at the CRuby
> source code, but this isn’t an option for Microsoft. CRuby is licensed under
> the GPL, which Microsoft is afraid of for numerous legal reasons. This means
> they have to reverse engineer it, a daunting feat.

Interesting. If the reference implementation of a spec is GPL licensed, can
the spec reasonably be called open? (I'm not claiming that the Ruby spec is
open.)

