The MRI implementation is way more important than the other implementations. Compare Ruby to something like C, where there is no reference implementation: * GN

The MRI implementation is way more important than the other implementations. Compare Ruby to something like C, where there is no reference implementation: * GNU (gcc) * Visual Studio (mscl) * Intel (icc) * ARM (armcc) * TI (cl6x) * LLVM (clang) * ... Having used all of these compilers (plus more), all implementing the same language, I would say that there is much more meaningful competition in the C space. Having a standard is a good way to allow better competition, but it does depend on how good the standard actually is.