Sam Ruby
Encyclopedia
Sam Ruby is a prominent software developer who has made significant contributions to many of the Apache Software Foundation
's open source software projects, and to the standardization of web feeds via his involvement with the Atom
web feed standard and the feedvalidator.org web service.
He currently holds a Senior Technical Staff Member position in the Emerging Technologies Group of IBM
. He resides in Raleigh
, North Carolina
.
He is a co-chair of the W3C's HTML Working Group.
, Newport News, Virginia
. Sam was hired immediately out of college by IBM
and has worked there since.
, as well as being both the foundation's Assistant Secretary and Vice President of Legal Affairs, and the former Chair of the Apache Jakarta Project
. He also actively contributes to numerous Apache projects; the ASF Committers page provides a complete and current listing of Apache projects to which he is actively contributing. Notably, he was one of the early Ant
contributors, as well as being the creator of Gump
.
validator
, which he developed along with Mark Pilgrim
(the feedvalidator.org About page states, "The validator was conceived and designed by Mark Pilgrim, who also wrote most of the test cases and designed the web front end. Much of the actual back end coding was done by Sam Ruby."). It's able to validate Atom
feeds as well as RSS
0.90, 0.91, 0.92, 0.93, 0.94, 1.0, 1.1 and 2.0 feeds.
, in particular to the Java Extension.
programming language, leading to some confusion between the person's name and the language. However, there is no formal connection—they both just coincidentally have the same name.
/RSS
feed aggregator, the codebase that began as a radical refactoring of the Planet 2.0 feed aggregator.
programming language.
TC39 group that standardized the Common Language Infrastructure
for Microsoft
's .NET Framework
.
web feed standard was started by a blog posting by Sam Ruby in 2002 entitled "what makes a log entry". This blog posting eventually became a wiki project which acted as a rallying point for people looking to improve upon the frozen RSS format. Sam Ruby was the secretary of the IETF AtomPub working group. This working group completed RFC 4287, the Atom
format specification ("The Atom Syndication Format"), in December 2005 and RFC 5023, "The Atom Publishing Protocol", in October 2007.
technical committee (ECMAScript TC39); his primary contribution to the group is in driving the effort to add Decimal support to ECMAScript.
, David Heinemeier Hansson
, et al., of the book Agile Web Development with Rails, Third Edition (published in March, 2009).
Apache Software Foundation
The Apache Software Foundation is a non-profit corporation to support Apache software projects, including the Apache HTTP Server. The ASF was formed from the Apache Group and incorporated in Delaware, U.S., in June 1999.The Apache Software Foundation is a decentralized community of developers...
's open source software projects, and to the standardization of web feeds via his involvement with the Atom
Atom (standard)
The name Atom applies to a pair of related standards. The Atom Syndication Format is an XML language used for web feeds, while the Atom Publishing Protocol is a simple HTTP-based protocol for creating and updating web resources.Web feeds allow software programs to check for updates published on a...
web feed standard and the feedvalidator.org web service.
He currently holds a Senior Technical Staff Member position in the Emerging Technologies Group of IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
. He resides in Raleigh
Raleigh, North Carolina
Raleigh is the capital and the second largest city in the state of North Carolina as well as the seat of Wake County. Raleigh is known as the "City of Oaks" for its many oak trees. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the city's 2010 population was 403,892, over an area of , making Raleigh...
, North Carolina
North Carolina
North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...
.
He is a co-chair of the W3C's HTML Working Group.
Background
Sam Ruby received a B.A. in Mathematics from Christopher Newport UniversityChristopher Newport University
Christopher Newport University, or CNU, is a public liberal arts university located in Newport News, Virginia, United States. CNU is the youngest comprehensive university in the Commonwealth of Virginia...
, Newport News, Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
. Sam was hired immediately out of college by IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
and has worked there since.
Apache Project
Ruby is a current Director of the Apache Software FoundationApache Software Foundation
The Apache Software Foundation is a non-profit corporation to support Apache software projects, including the Apache HTTP Server. The ASF was formed from the Apache Group and incorporated in Delaware, U.S., in June 1999.The Apache Software Foundation is a decentralized community of developers...
, as well as being both the foundation's Assistant Secretary and Vice President of Legal Affairs, and the former Chair of the Apache Jakarta Project
Jakarta Project
The Jakarta Project creates and maintains open source software for the Java platform. It operates as an umbrella project under the auspices of the Apache Software Foundation, and all of Jakarta products are released under the Apache License.-Subprojects:...
. He also actively contributes to numerous Apache projects; the ASF Committers page provides a complete and current listing of Apache projects to which he is actively contributing. Notably, he was one of the early Ant
Apache Ant
Apache Ant is a software tool for automating software build processes. It is similar to Make but is implemented using the Java language, requires the Java platform, and is best suited to building Java projects....
contributors, as well as being the creator of Gump
Apache Gump
Apache Gump is an open source continuous integration system, which aims to build and test all the open source Java projects, every night. Its aim is to make sure that all the projects are compatible, at both the API level and in terms of functionality matching specifications...
.
feedvalidator.org
Ruby is the principal maintainer of the feedvalidator.org feedWeb feed
A web feed is a data format used for providing users with frequently updated content. Content distributors syndicate a web feed, thereby allowing users to subscribe to it. Making a collection of web feeds accessible in one spot is known as aggregation, which is performed by an aggregator...
validator
Validator
A validator is a computer program used to check the validity or syntactical correctness of a fragment of code or document. The term is commonly used in the context of validating HTML, CSS and XML documents or RSS feeds though it can be used for any defined format or language.-HTML validator:In the...
, which he developed along with Mark Pilgrim
Mark Pilgrim
Mark Pilgrim is a software developer, writer, and advocate of free software. He authors a popular blog, and has written several books including Dive into Python, a guide to the Python programming language published under the GNU Free Documentation License...
(the feedvalidator.org About page states, "The validator was conceived and designed by Mark Pilgrim, who also wrote most of the test cases and designed the web front end. Much of the actual back end coding was done by Sam Ruby."). It's able to validate Atom
Atom (standard)
The name Atom applies to a pair of related standards. The Atom Syndication Format is an XML language used for web feeds, while the Atom Publishing Protocol is a simple HTTP-based protocol for creating and updating web resources.Web feeds allow software programs to check for updates published on a...
feeds as well as RSS
RSS (file format)
RSS is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format...
0.90, 0.91, 0.92, 0.93, 0.94, 1.0, 1.1 and 2.0 feeds.
PHP Group
Ruby also contributed to the PHP GroupPHP
PHP is a general-purpose server-side scripting language originally designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. For this purpose, PHP code is embedded into the HTML source document and interpreted by a web server with a PHP processor module, which generates the web page document...
, in particular to the Java Extension.
Ruby on Ruby
Sam Ruby has done development in the RubyRuby (programming language)
Ruby is a dynamic, reflective, general-purpose object-oriented programming language that combines syntax inspired by Perl with Smalltalk-like features. Ruby originated in Japan during the mid-1990s and was first developed and designed by Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto...
programming language, leading to some confusion between the person's name and the language. However, there is no formal connection—they both just coincidentally have the same name.
Venus
Ruby is the author of Venus, an AtomAtom (standard)
The name Atom applies to a pair of related standards. The Atom Syndication Format is an XML language used for web feeds, while the Atom Publishing Protocol is a simple HTTP-based protocol for creating and updating web resources.Web feeds allow software programs to check for updates published on a...
/RSS
RSS
-Mathematics:* Root-sum-square, the square root of the sum of the squares of the elements of a data set* Residual sum of squares in statistics-Technology:* RSS , "Really Simple Syndication" or "Rich Site Summary", a family of web feed formats...
feed aggregator, the codebase that began as a radical refactoring of the Planet 2.0 feed aggregator.
html5lib
Ruby is a developer member of the html5lib project, with his primary contribution being the initial port of html5lib to the RubyRuby (programming language)
Ruby is a dynamic, reflective, general-purpose object-oriented programming language that combines syntax inspired by Perl with Smalltalk-like features. Ruby originated in Japan during the mid-1990s and was first developed and designed by Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto...
programming language.
Standardization efforts
Ruby has been active within various standards development organizations.ECMA standardization of the .NET Framework CLI
Ruby was the convener of the ECMAEcma International
Ecma International is an international, private non-profit standards organization for information and communication systems. It acquired its name in 1994, when the European Computer Manufacturers Association changed its name to reflect the organization's global reach and activities...
TC39 group that standardized the Common Language Infrastructure
Common Language Infrastructure
The Common Language Infrastructure is an open specification developed by Microsoft and standardized by ISO and ECMA that describes the executable code and runtime environment that form the core of the Microsoft .NET Framework and the free and open source implementations Mono and Portable.NET...
for Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
's .NET Framework
.NET Framework
The .NET Framework is a software framework that runs primarily on Microsoft Windows. It includes a large library and supports several programming languages which allows language interoperability...
.
Atom
The project which eventually became the AtomAtom (standard)
The name Atom applies to a pair of related standards. The Atom Syndication Format is an XML language used for web feeds, while the Atom Publishing Protocol is a simple HTTP-based protocol for creating and updating web resources.Web feeds allow software programs to check for updates published on a...
web feed standard was started by a blog posting by Sam Ruby in 2002 entitled "what makes a log entry". This blog posting eventually became a wiki project which acted as a rallying point for people looking to improve upon the frozen RSS format. Sam Ruby was the secretary of the IETF AtomPub working group. This working group completed RFC 4287, the Atom
Atom (standard)
The name Atom applies to a pair of related standards. The Atom Syndication Format is an XML language used for web feeds, while the Atom Publishing Protocol is a simple HTTP-based protocol for creating and updating web resources.Web feeds allow software programs to check for updates published on a...
format specification ("The Atom Syndication Format"), in December 2005 and RFC 5023, "The Atom Publishing Protocol", in October 2007.
ECMAScript
Ruby is a member of the ECMAScriptECMAScript
ECMAScript is the scripting language standardized by Ecma International in the ECMA-262 specification and ISO/IEC 16262. The language is widely used for client-side scripting on the web, in the form of several well-known dialects such as JavaScript, JScript, and ActionScript.- History :JavaScript...
technical committee (ECMAScript TC39); his primary contribution to the group is in driving the effort to add Decimal support to ECMAScript.
HTML5
Ruby was an early adopter of HTML5, and has offered a number of concrete proposals which were subsequently incorporated into the HTML5 draft. He has been appointed co-chair of the W3C's HTML Working Group from 5 January 2009.Books
Ruby is the co-author, with Leonard Richardson, of the book RESTful Web Services (published in 2007), and also co-author, with Dave ThomasDave Thomas (programmer)
Dave Thomas is a computer programmer and author/editor. He has written about Ruby.Dave and partner Andy Hunt wrote The Pragmatic Programmer and run The Pragmatic Bookshelf publishing company.Dave Thomas lives in Flower Mound, Texas...
, David Heinemeier Hansson
David Heinemeier Hansson
David Heinemeier Hansson is a Danish programmer and the creator of the popular Ruby on Rails web development framework and the Instiki wiki...
, et al., of the book Agile Web Development with Rails, Third Edition (published in March, 2009).
External links
- Intertwingly - Sam Ruby's weblog (the name is a reference to Ted NelsonTed NelsonTheodor Holm Nelson is an American sociologist, philosopher, and pioneer of information technology. He coined the terms "hypertext" and "hypermedia" in 1963 and published it in 1965...
's coinage "intertwingularityIntertwingularityIntertwingularity is a term coined by Ted Nelson to express the complexity of interrelations in human knowledge.Nelson wrote in Computer Lib/Dream Machines :EVERYTHING IS DEEPLY INTERTWINGLED...
"). - Feed Validator - Sam Ruby's feed validator for Atom and RSS.