This market is an attempt to guage when Rails 2.0 (or it’s first “release candidate”, e.g. 2.0RC1) will be released. In other words, we’ll cash this out on the day a release or a release candidate is available.

Of course I love Ruby on Rails. However, its releases have been hard to pin down. Rails 1.2 I believe was released quite a bit later than what people were given as an expectation. I’m not complaining about the process; I know it’s tough and everyone is doing an awesome job on it. I’m just reporting my observation, and noting that it does make life awkward for some people who would like to (or need to) use some of the latest features. So if this market could shed some light on a Rails 2.0 release, awesome!

A good example is the latest Query Cache. Query Cache exists in Rails 2.0, but 2.0 hasn’t been released yet, so there are still some things in flux. We wanted to use the Query Cache, but since we didn’t want to go down the road just yet (again) of getting on unreleased code (called Edge. We’ve gone on this road before, and the Edge can cut.) We were forced to make a plugin of the thing.

The market end date will continue to get pushed out until Rails 2.0 gets it’s first pre-release.