In article <Pine.LNX.4.44.0305131458230.9307-100000 / candle.superlink.net>,
 <dblack / superlink.net> wrote:
>Hi --
>
>On Wed, 14 May 2003, Pat Eyler wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 14 May 2003 dblack / superlink.net wrote:
>>
>> > Hi --
>> >
>> > On Wed, 14 May 2003, Pat Eyler wrote:
>> >
>> > > ActiveState is holding a contest to determine 'your favorite programmer'
>> > > (awards to be given at OSCON).  However, they have no option for choosing
>> > > Ruby developers at their voting page.  Perhaps this is an oversight which
>> > > could be rectified if brought to their attention.
>> >
>> > They say that "Awards will be presented in each of ActiveState's key
>> > technologies: Perl, PHP, Python, Tcl, and XSLT."  I don't think Ruby
>> > (at the moment) belongs on that list, does it?  (I mean based on what
>> > ActiveState does, not based on merit obviously :-)
>> >
>>
>> On the other hand, they say that Ruby is not one of their key technologies
>> because they don't hear enough about it in the marketplace.  Perhaps this
>> is a good opportunity to speak up and let them hear about it.  (Or, I
>> could just be tilting at windmills again.)
>
>I spoke to Gurusamy Sarathy of ActiveState at Linux Expo in New York
>recently about Ruby, and he said that the main obstacle to their
>getting involved with Ruby is [dare I say this and risk starting a
>thead? :] licensing, specifically of the regular expression engine.
>

Isn't that why a new regex engine is being written - apparently the old 
one was GPL and they want a more BSD-like license.  Though, I really don't 
understand what the problem with GPL was in this context...

Phil