Tobias> I thought about that too; what about Ruby being a
    Tobias> standard?

    Matz> If one need languages standardized, he can't choose Perl,
    Matz> Python, PHP, Pike, Ocaml, nor Ruby (not in particular
    Matz> order).  It's no fun.

Or Java either, as someone else has pointed out.

My take on the matter is that an open sourced language (one where the
implementation of the language is available as open source software)
has little need for the standardization process.  The open source
process will tend to keep the language from forking better than any
standardization process.  This is true of both Ruby, Python and Perl.

Python is particularly interesting because there are now two
implementation, a C version and a Java version.  But the Python
community is working hard to keep them compatible (as much as
possible).  Standardization would do little there.

Just my 2 cents.

-- 
-- Jim Weirich     jweirich / one.net    http://w3.one.net/~jweirich
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"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, 
not tried it." -- Donald Knuth (in a memo to Peter van Emde Boas)