It really doesn't. It can't change Ruby in a major way, can't charge for it, can't close-source it, etc. even if it's paying the creator.

> So Heroku now owns Ruby.

Nah, I don't think so. Ruby is a community effort. Should Matz ever turn into an asshole (which just seems hiiiighly unlikely), someone else would fork the project.

Yikes, bye bye karma.

I'm wondering if there's not a single person out on HN that sees this the way I do? It's not a bad thing that Matz is joining Heroku, but it does give them a very different stature in the Ruby community than they had pre-Matz. Nothing inherently evil or snarky about that.

I'm a Heroku user who hopes that this produces an even better experience on the platform. But I find it hard to see this as just another hire. Google's got a huge leg up in Go since they've got the two Robs and Ken, Joyent has Node + Ryan Dahl.

They don't own the language, but they do "own" it.

Did Google start owning Python when Guido went to work there? Replace Google by Transmeta and Guido by Linus and you have another earlier example. This kind of thing happens all the time. You can generally count on long-time system designers and implementors to have enough integrity and pride in their creation that they won't succumb to corporate agendas even from their own employers. It's not like they're so desperate they have to suck corporate cock to hang onto a job.

Matz created...and to what I understand still develops MRI (Matz Ruby Interpreter). Rubinius and jRuby are coming on strong from the Engine Yard team.