オープンソース運動の立役者、Eric RaymondがRubyについて
ふれています。
(http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/taoup/chapter3.html)

> No new language has emerged to seriously challenge those
> I've described here. Non-Emacs LISP dialects, a once-promising
> area that seemed headed for a renaissance in the mid-1990s, 
> have continued to fade. Recent efforts such as Ruby (a sort of
> Python-Perl-Smalltalk cross developed in Japan) and Squeak
> (an open-source Smalltalk port) have so far neither attracted
> hackers far outside their development groups nor demonstrated
> staying power.