>Just conjecture, though, you
> might have some insight into how prevalent Jython is deployed in the
> corporate world and whether it being written in java had anything to do with
> that.
> 
> Wayne

Jython is pretty widely used as a "glue" language, despite its silly
name. ;-) 

To be perfectly honest, I think that Jython does a phenomenal job of
marrying the Python idioms with the Java runtime... it makes Java code
look clean and Python code more powerful (eg, real thread support,
access to a GUI that *isn't* based on Tcl). 

Python is also used much more widely than one would think, though. A
good portion of Yahoo's backend was (maybe still is) written in Python.
Ditto for Google and Infospace. So, I think that there was already some
acceptance of the language in the corporate world and adding the Java
factor just made it that much more acceptable.

I have no idea what Ruby's installation base is in the corporate world.
I know that it is vastly more popular in Japan than in the US, and that
might have something to do with the fact that per capita there are less
Java programmers in Japan than in the US (and, of course, that Ruby is
a kickass language and every Japanese developer uses it instead... ;-) )

A Ruby implementation in Java would go a very long way, IMO, towards
"legitimizing" Ruby in the corporate world.