On 8/17/06, Francis Cianfrocca <garbagecat10@[...].com>  wrote:
> 
>  How does Ruby help any of these players (or others) achieve their
>  business goals? (I'm not questioning that there may be a good answer
>  to this question, nor am I trying to start a flamewar. I do think it
>  could be helpful if we come up with the answers rather than waiting
>  for them to come from someone else.)
> 

I think there's a short answer that would please almost everyone: Ruby makes
development cheaper, more fun, and more compelling than it has been since
the late 90s.

Folks seem to so quickly forget that before Java came on the scene, most web
development was based on CGI, usually using Perl. The reason Java managed to
almost completely take over that space in a very short time is simple: it
was far, far more consumable than your average large-scale mid-90s
Perl-based web application. I had to maintain a few of those applications,
and man was it a boon to web development and Java (and others like PHP) came
along. Suddenly building web applications wasn't an exercise in pain (or at
least, not as much pain) and the explosion of applications going into 1999
and 2000 demonstrates that others felt the same way.

I believe that we're right at the cusp of a renassaince for web application
development. The whole Web 2.0 nonsense is part of it, but has really only
enabled richer UIs on already-available thin clients (i.e. browsers). The
real revolution is on the server side, and that's where Ruby and Rails come
in.

Ruby in general makes all sorts of applications easier to build, maintain,
and evolve. Rails specifically makes web application development far easier
and more consumable than practically anything else, despite naysayer's
claims. Easier development and more powerful abstractions lead to faster and
greater innovation, and innovation will spur another IT boom (hopefully
without such a painful crash this time).

I think the business motivation for these big players to buy into Ruby is
simple: backing Ruby, funding Ruby projects, and building Ruby domain
expertise will help further the language that is (in my opinion) most likely
to increase demand for the software, hardware, and services that come along
with a really smashing development boom. If any one of those companies could
claim expertise in Ruby, support for running Ruby in concert with their
software and hardware solutions, and services for helping advance Ruby,
build Ruby applications, and support Ruby development work...they'd be
betting on a pretty solid horse.

Beyond that, assuming this whole Ruby thing pans out, there's the spoils of
early adoption to be reaped. In 3 years, if Ruby is truly the big ticket
that Java has become, and if (for example) Sun can claim they've been a Ruby
backer all that time, people are going to be much more likely to trust that
Sun software, Sun services, and Sun hardware are the most Ruby-friendly on
the market. Google has captured mindshare these days because of that exact
situation: they figured shit out first, and now everyone else is playing
catch-up. All the other companies you listed are suffering from a serious
"boring" complex, afraid to bank on anything but their tried-and-true
stand-bys. If one of them were to break ranks and bet on Ruby...things would
get seriously interesting.

There's also a business motivation for us Rubyists: big-time backing for
Ruby would help convince employers and development shops that Ruby has
arrived...and the peripheral effects of such a move would make convincing
all those PHBs to use Ruby or Rails for some application far easier.

-- 
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Charles Oliver Nutter @ headius.blogspot.com
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