I don't know why everyone thinks all of _why's code is gone, which is Zed's main complaint. He left his Rubyforge page up, with all of his code, and anything your project depended on can still be installed. He also had it all on github, so anyone with a checkout has full commit history.
I dont follow or use _why's work, but if used I would be pretty angry with him. Sure with DVCS there I have full commit history, but, now there is no centralised place to send patches, and take the development forward. There is going to be commotion for a long time before things settle down, and if my business and livelihood depended on it, you can bet I would be searching him to give him a piece of my mind.
Just think how would you feel if the Rails or Django guys decided to take everything down. You have the full commit history, if you had cloned the Github repo, so why do you care?
That may be true, but tryruby.hobix.com is GONE, and that is a travesty of the highest proportions.
That was the page I learned my first bits of Ruby on. That was the page I introduced 8 friends to Ruby for the first time. It was the page I single-handedly got our contract renewed, by proving a piece of functionality was possible and easily done.
I think for many, it was an easy way in to Ruby. Someone must replace this immediately.
There was a tryruby repository at Github, but I don't know if it was all that was needed to run it.
One of the things that bother me more is the fact that he also pulled the plug on all the mailing list of his projects, which would have been the right place to discuss what to do with the code.
For what it's worth, this impacts me enough that I've looked, and I couldn't find it. If I had, I likely would have already been fast at work trying to put up a replacement, if only to have something to link to the people who are sure to ask me what happened to it.
My wife actually noticed yesterday that it was gone before I got around to reading all the comments on HN about Why's departure. I eventually told her that he was basically dead. Her response? "How am I going to learn Ruby now?"
I of course have installed a local interpreter, but she really liked the lessons.
