[Ironruby-core] Public versus private discussion and community momentum

[Charles Oliver Nutter]

It seems like although there's some discussion on the RubyForge list 
about IronRuby progress, challenges, things to work on, and the rest, 
there's not as much discussion as a project might like, and practically 
none from the Microsoft-based principals. That seems to hinder progress 
and make it look like things are moving a bit slowly.

So this email is mostly for John, but I'd like to hear others weigh in...

Are there development discussions happening on private lists, say inside 
Microsoft within the IronRuby or DLR team? If so, you should really 
think about moving as much of those discussions as possible into the 
open. They will help show that progress is being made, allow community 
members to see the process and design moving forward, and most 
importantly help the community feel like they're really a part of the 
project.

I know there's always thoughts about secrecy and springing the next big 
software surprise on the world when working at Microsoft, but secrecy is 
poison to an OSS community. If you want to get people excited about 
helping out and getting involved, you can't keep them in the dark about 
portions of the development process.

I think there's also a lot to be gained from sharing compiler/runtime 
design discussions with a broader audience; there's a lot of strategy we 
could share across implementations, to the benefit of all in the Ruby world.

- Charlie