Ruby on NetBeans lives

The problem with niche open-source products is that you won't find enough developers to pick up development for free after they are abandoned by the original authors.

So, unless some company steps in to sponsor this and/or users start financing this somehow, there is a high chance that the module becomes less functional with every major release if API changes are introduced.

I work fulltime on a NetBeans Platform application (for a 3rd party, not Oracle) and I know the internals of the NetBeans community but I am still waiting to see a nice community hand-over of an open-source project/module.

The way I see it the limitation seems to be mostly economical -- developers need to eat too but developers are also the least likely to pay for tools.

I happen to know the original creator of nbPython (what led to the official Python support in Netbeans), and he's currently on sabbatical from Python as an employed Rubyist. I can put you in contact with him if you want, but I don't know what his level of commitment is to Netbeans post-Oracle. The guy who backed it at Sun/Netbeans, Tor Norbye, also quit after the Oracle acquisition and now works with Google.

Unfortunately, I don't see community support keeping it afloat. I'd look at PyCharm since it appears to have a future.