This is an awesome time to be a Rubyist. Ruby is already a great language, but many brilliant programmers are working on projects that will make it even better.

After hearing a RubyConf presentation from Seattle.rb member Evan Phoenix I had wanted to find a way to help. It’s a project to write a fast, maintainable, Ruby 1.8-compatible interpreter. Last night I learned that Evan is between jobs and won’t start his next job until January. This seemed like a fantastic opportunity to support the Rubinius Project financially and give him a reason to spend the month of December working on it.

PeepCode Screencasts has been more successful than I expected and I want to give back to the community. So I’m putting US$1,000 toward the development of Rubinius in the month of December. Yes, there have been other funding drives recently, but this is a real project with real code that is being actively worked on.

If you want to support the Rubinius Project now or in the future, you can send money via PayPal to evan (at) fallingsnow (dot) net.

Questions

• Why?: The current Ruby interpreter powers many high traffic sites and enterprise projects, but a faster, more maintainable interpreter would be a huge benefit to current and future Ruby projects.
• Why not YARV?: Matz has expressed support for other Ruby interpreters and has said that YARV has a difficult task since the specs of Ruby 1.9/2.0 are not finalized yet (mentioned in this interview). Rubinius is targeting the current Ruby 1.8 series and is using the existing interpreter to bootstrap the project.
• When will it be done?: There is no timeline. It may take 6 months, 6 years, or never. The idea is to put resources behind this project so progress can be made.

Other information about Rubinius

• The Rubinius Project
• The Code
• Recent blog post and answer from Evan
• Notes from RubyConf