[MacRuby-devel] The future of MacRuby

2012-04-05 Thread Matt Aimonetti 
*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/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

Re: [MacRuby-devel] The future of MacRuby

2012-04-05 Thread Scott Ribe 
On Apr 5, 2012, at 4:06 PM, Matt Aimonetti wrote:

>   • the target platform (OS X) isn't the one we all really want to target 
> (iOS)

The target platform is only 1 of 2 that many of us really want to target?

-- 
Scott Ribe
[email protected]
http://www.elevated-dev.com/
(303) 722-0567 voice




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Re: [MacRuby-devel] The future of MacRuby

2012-04-05 Thread Matt Aimonetti 
Absolutely, thanks for clarifying my poorly worded statement.

- Matt

On Fri, Apr 6, 2012 at 12:12 AM, Scott Ribe wrote:

> On Apr 5, 2012, at 4:06 PM, Matt Aimonetti wrote:
>
> >   • the target platform (OS X) isn't the one we all really want to
> target (iOS)
>
> The target platform is only 1 of 2 that many of us really want to target?
>
> --
> Scott Ribe
> [email protected]
> http://www.elevated-dev.com/
> (303) 722-0567 voice
>
>
>
>
> ___
> MacRuby-devel mailing list
> [email protected]
> http://lists.macosforge.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/macruby-devel
>
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[MacRuby-devel] Re The Future of MacRuby

2012-04-05 Thread Dan Farrand 
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.  Without 
commitment and support from Apple, it will be a never ending scramble to just 
keep up with niggling changes to xcode, cocoa and the build process.  Every new 
release of anything by Apple will break stuff.  By offering no comment and no 
hook into the apple labyrinth the message from Apple is that, "it is not 
strategic to us".  

The broader message may also be that computing in general is less and less 
strategic to Apple.  

So sad to say,  I think it is goodby MacRuby.  Very sad, because if Apple does 
care about the computing side of the business, they are going to need to 
provide an alternative to ObjectiveC and the aging development approach they 
have been living off of for the last 10 years.I had hopped that MacRuby 
might have pointed the way, but apparently not.

danf


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Re: [MacRuby-devel] The future of MacRuby

2012-04-05 Thread Mark Rada 
Opening the flood gates to new contributors sounds great. I have been having 
less and less free time as of late and haven't been able to keep up with the 
few things I do to contribute. Watson has been carrying the project almost 
entirely by himself for the last few months. MacRuby is a large project with 
lots to do, so I think becoming more open can only help.

It's also great to hear that Evan has agreed to help out as an advisor!

The two things I'd like to see in the near future:

1) Release MacRuby 0.12 (or rename it to 0.11 since there has not been a 0.11 
release)

The things holding back a new release are not the release itself. I know it'd 
be nice to have a new website up, but I think holding back the release is doing 
far more damage.

2) Move the bug tracker to github issues

I don't think this needs any explanation.




On 2012-04-05, at 6:06 PM, Matt Aimonetti 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.html 
> announcing 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/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 d

Re: [MacRuby-devel] The future of MacRuby

2012-04-05 Thread Daniel Westendorf 
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 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
> 
> 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 th

Re: [MacRuby-devel] The future of MacRuby

2012-04-05 Thread Douglas Tykocki 
Personally, I want to see this project succeed like Rubinus and JRuby has,
but is it possible without some support from Apple? That said, I would love
to help out with building sample apps, docs, and building some gems. What
helped me the most when learning to develop on iOS was the availability of
sample code from Apple. And +1 on moving everything onto github.

Doug

On Thu, Apr 5, 2012 at 6:44 PM, Daniel Westendorf wrote:

> 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 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
>> 
>> 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 su

Re: [MacRuby-devel] The future of MacRuby

2012-04-05 Thread [email protected] 
Thanks for the update Matt.

I haven't actually used MacRuby since my last app, although would love to see 
it for iOS (as well as keeping OS X support). I guess that would get a lot more 
people interested too, given the success and popularity of the iOS platform. I 
think most of your other suggestions are spot on too - and it's great to see 
Evan willing to help guide the project.

Re helping out, I know I mentioned starting a ruby forum before (MetaRuby.com) 
with a feature to allow any Ruby project to host their forum on it (by means of 
a dedicated section, with their own moderators etc) but I just haven't got 
around to it - however I do have a unused forum license that I could use to set 
up MetaRuby pretty soon, if you guys need somewhere to get together/discuss 
things/stick important threads etc I'm happy to do it - so long as nobody minds 
the default forum skin for now - I'll get around to doing a custom skin 
eventually, just don't have the time for it yet.

I did do a very quick mock up ages ago (although the logo has since changed - 
it was just to give some of my friends an idea (who were all very keen to see 
it)) http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v160/a/MR.jpg

Anyway, let me know what you think.

Cheers,

Aston




On 5 Apr 2012, at 23:06, Matt Aimonetti 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.html 
> announcing 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/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)
>

Re: [MacRuby-devel] The future of MacRuby

2012-04-05 Thread Marcos Villacampa 
Thanks for all the info Matt.

As a very new member of the MacRuby community, I don't feel like I have the 
right to decide about it's future, but here are some of the things that I think 
would help MacRuby create enough "hype" and get a lot more attention from 
developers:

- Add the necessary modifications (remove dependency on libauto, etc) to allow 
the development of iOS applications. We would be targeting more than 315 
million devices out there. That is VERY tempting for developers.

- Improve documentation and code samples. Code samples are the best resource to 
learn a new technology, since you get to see use cases. Maybe a fork of cocoa's 
documentation site with MacRuby samples? (I don't know if Apple policies allow 
this).  

- If apps written in MacRuby become popular, that will also attract more 
developers. That is one of the aims of the Open Source alternative to Rails.app 
that Jeremy McAnally and a group of people are building.

- Build a new website. The frontage still says Matt is "working on" a book. 
That speaks for itself.

- There is a MacRuby IRC channel on Freenode, with almost no activity. It would 
be nice if we got together in there and discuss about MacRuby.

- Two books about MacRuby are already published, Matt's one and MacRuby in 
Action which has just been published (http://www.manning.com/lim/) That is very 
good news and will surely bring more people to the community.

I think where more help is needed is in the implementation itself, and even 
more if we plan to support iOS.

Personally, I could help with the new website, as well as documenting and 
creating sample codes.

The addition of Evan Phoenix as advisor to the project is very good news!

I don't really think direct Apple support is needed in order to MacRuby to be 
successful. Think of all the other Open Source projects that depend directly on 
Apple future plans, and are still successful and actively developed.  

-

Marcos Villacampa
Twitter: @MarkVillacampa


El viernes 6 de abril de 2012 a las 01:25, [email protected] escribió:

> Thanks for the update Matt.
>  
> I haven't actually used MacRuby since my last app, although would love to see 
> it for iOS (as well as keeping OS X support). I guess that would get a lot 
> more people interested too, given the success and popularity of the iOS 
> platform. I think most of your other suggestions are spot on too - and it's 
> great to see Evan willing to help guide the project.
>  
> Re helping out, I know I mentioned starting a ruby forum before (MetaRuby.com 
> (http://MetaRuby.com)) with a feature to allow any Ruby project to host their 
> forum on it (by means of a dedicated section, with their own moderators etc) 
> but I just haven't got around to it - however I do have a unused forum 
> license that I could use to set up MetaRuby pretty soon, if you guys need 
> somewhere to get together/discuss things/stick important threads etc I'm 
> happy to do it - so long as nobody minds the default forum skin for now - 
> I'll get around to doing a custom skin eventually, just don't have the time 
> for it yet.
>  
> I did do a very quick mock up ages ago (although the logo has since changed - 
> it was just to give some of my friends an idea (who were all very keen to see 
> it)) http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v160/a/MR.jpg
>  
> Anyway, let me know what you think.
>  
> Cheers,
>  
> Aston
>  
>  
>  
>  
> On 5 Apr 2012, at 23:06, Matt Aimonetti 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.html
> >  announcing 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/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 
> > projec

Re: [MacRuby-devel] Re The Future of MacRuby

2012-04-05 Thread Jordan K. Hubbard 

On Apr 5, 2012, at 3:34 PM, Dan Farrand  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



___
MacRuby-devel m

Re: [MacRuby-devel] The future of MacRuby

2012-04-05 Thread Chong Francis 
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 於 2012年4月6日 上午6:06 寫道：

> 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.html 
> announcing 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/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

[MacRuby-devel] Re The Future of MacRuby

2012-04-05 Thread Tim Rand 
e 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
>
>
>
> -- next part --
> An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
> URL: <
> http://lists.macosforge.org/pipermail/macruby-devel/attachments/20120405/8b685d20/attachment-0001.html
> >
>
> --
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2012 12:02:30 +0800
> From: Chong Francis 
> To: "MacRuby development discussions."
>
> Subject: Re: [MacRuby-devel] The future of MacRuby
> Message-ID: 
> 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/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
> do