"I think the author of the algorithm implementation would have benefited more from..."
Well obviously the meta argument, taking a step back, is if the community insists on porting to ruby, doing all the work for him, such that the happy and cooperative leader can now collect sweet support contracts from MORE corporate users and increase the resume fodder value of his original product...
What looks better on dude's resume:
Author of a Java library with 1000 users resulting in $50K/yr support contract revenue
or
Author of a multiplatform Java and Ruby library with 2000 users resulting in $100K/yr support contract revenue
or
Author of a Java library, got into a fight with the ruby community mostly because I don't know the difference between licenses, copyrights, and patents, and now I've only got 500 users and $25K/yr of revenue
Well obviously the meta argument, taking a step back, is if the community insists on porting to ruby, doing all the work for him, such that the happy and cooperative leader can now collect sweet support contracts from MORE corporate users and increase the resume fodder value of his original product...
What looks better on dude's resume:
Author of a Java library with 1000 users resulting in $50K/yr support contract revenue
or
Author of a multiplatform Java and Ruby library with 2000 users resulting in $100K/yr support contract revenue
or
Author of a Java library, got into a fight with the ruby community mostly because I don't know the difference between licenses, copyrights, and patents, and now I've only got 500 users and $25K/yr of revenue