Ruby before Ruby?

ruby-talk
1

Hi there.

I was searching some stuff about Ruby and found this:

There was a Ruby before "our" Ruby, and it's known as Visual Basic today! Jesus!
Something that worried me was these words:

"Because Microsoft owned exclusive rights to Ruby, they could do with it as they
pleased."

Argh! Is the actual "Ruby" name ok, regarding the mark stuff?

Some more links about that:

http://www.forestmoon.com/BIRTHofVB/BIRTHofVB.html
http://www.webword.com/interviews/cooper.html

I saw some messages on the list about that on 2001:

http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/9971

but as Microsoft is buying patents like crazy since then, I'm wondering if there
could be some danger to the Ruby language nowadays. Seems that there is nothing
about this on the USA trademark office, but ... btw, it only works with IE. :-p

Best regards,

- --
Eustáquio "TaQ" Rangel
http://beam.to/taq

"Computing is not about computers any more. It is about living."
N. Negroponte

2

There's also a Ruby used for (IIRC) ASIC design. I stumbled upon it while searching for some Ruby stuff.

···

On 2006-04-03 07:31:04 -0700, "Eustaquio Rangel de Oliveira Jr." <eustaquiorangel@yahoo.com> said:

There was a Ruby before "our" Ruby, and it's known as Visual Basic today! Jesus!