As MS discovers its once huge following of web code writers leaving for easier free open source approaches. They have of course tried to recapture some of its base by offering things in the past like Iron Python and now they are doing the same with Iron Ruby.

While at Redmond few can actually point out the benefits of running these things the framework verses just simply tossing a Linux box up with a free CentOS distro, and just running it native with the only real cost being the hardware investment.

The approach always seems to be at MS we can fit a round peg in a square hole just as long as the radius is small enough.

This is not to say that the .net platform is by itself somehow flawed. But rather that MS has focused on the enterprise at a time when many small web business applications simply do not have the budgets that MS seeks. This really reminds me of a replay that IBM once saw as a solution to their loss of market share. Lets not forget the PC was invented by IBM and the open hardware standards of almost every PC was created by them.

It really seems MS has forgot how to compete. Perhaps a replay of the late 1990s and the fight with Netscape in both the browser wars, and web servers, was waged and MS won hands down. How did they do it? Simple they gave away a browser Netscape tried to sell, and gave away a web server, that then Netscape tried to sell.

Enough of this and on to the great news of MS and Iron Ruby. While it might be a bit late at least they are trying, and we have to give them points for that.