fine print
In a previous life before I was invested in the Ruby community, and before my life as a Java Enterprise Consultant I was a Linux and Free Software activist moonlighting as a Unix System Administrator. After seeing the same arguments on IRC channels recycled ad infinitum I may have become as jaded as Statler or Waldorf, but I still believe.
Ruby makes me giddy after a stint as the Senior Portal Developer for Conde Nast. Ruby has a culture and community that embrases self sufficiency in a way that cannot fathom a corporate sysadmin unable to install a local internal Tomcat server within a two week framework.
But yes it does have the trappings and handicaps of an isolated subculture. My experience prior to 2007 was outside of the rails word, and I have to admit to my being as disturbed as a pythonist to my rejection of whitespace rules when I first looked at rubys server and system offerrings. Things are way better on that front but we do seem to have a blind spot to the legal side of software.
Generally I do care about licensing. There Linux and GNU tools that were added to the GNU toolset in 1988 and having reliable mature native C or lisp code is a godsend. This is a sharp contrast to the web application market. Even the government and banking applications I have done in Java have around a 5 year lifecycle.
Ruby’s embrace of Rapid application development methodologies, never mind its core tool and framework incredibly short cycles make a decision to completely refactor a Ruby Application
Not to worry I’ll not reject bathing and shaving completely, but I’ll pay my FSF and EFF dues. I’ll make more effort to use the freeist code within a lean pragmatic workcycle.
Unfortunately there are plenty of times that there is more money then time
So I’m annoyed that the community still fails to produce products that are GPLd that have anything but a suggested market value. So because of that one of my new years resolutions is to produce at least one non-gratis free product.
