Recently there has been a bit of an uproar about Microsoft's dwindling commitment to some of its dynamic languages, particularly IronRuby. Many blog entries and news reports are lamenting the demise of Microsoft's commitment to these languages and to open source projects, and that Microsoft is killing off IronRuby and IronPython. Although Microsoft is indeed slackening its support and funding for IronRuby and other projects, the reality is not quite so dire. It's not good, but it's not the end of the line.
Whither IronRuby?
The brouhaha began with this blog post from Jimmy Schementi, announcing his departure from Microsoft and the IronRuby team, going so far as to move back to New York from Washington to be close to his roots and family while taking a job in the financial industry. The cause of his untimely departure from Microsoft, after doing so much to make IronRuby a reality and so close to being a first-class language in Visual Studio, was that "the team shrunk by half and our agility was severely limited. I'm omitting the internal reasons for this, as they are the typical big-company middle-management issues every software developer has. In short, the team is now very limited to do anything new…. Overall, I see a serious lack of commitment to IronRuby, and dynamic language on .NET in general."
At the time of Schementi's departure, the IronRuby team was down to just two people: Schementi and Tomáš Matoušek. Matoušek will now be just part time. Schementi will remain on as a member of the IronRuby core team, "ironically making me the first non-Microsoft core contributor." Bloggers and pundits are calling this the "unfunding" of IronRuby, as Microsoft seems to be ending its commitment to the language and its integration with Visual Studio. Bad news indeed for the admittedly small but dedicated set of IronRuby users.
One of the more interesting analyses of the situation is in this blog post by Simone Chiaretta, a Microsoft MVP and ASP Insider. In it he raises the issue that Microsoft has recently introduced products to help non-professional developers (hobbyists, people learning code, etc.), such as WebMatrix and LightSwitch. Together with the unfunding of IronRuby, does this suggest that Microsoft is "back in the business of building tools to help people that have no/little background build applications 'quick and dirty'"? Chiaretta goes on to muse about open source software, and how this move by Microsoft could reinforce a perception that OSS is untrustworthy because there is no profit motive behind it to keep the project alive.