Earlier quoted context omitted.
Following up on that - Shooting from the hip, though, if the desire is for funding, I'm guessing Microsoft wouldn't see much strategic value in putting money into a Ruby extension. The Ruby ecosystem has largely congealed around an ASP.NET competitor, some devops tools that don't really work on Windows, and not much else. Python, on the other hand, is widely used in Microsoft shops. Windows shops need data scientists…
Maybe that might change now that they bought github (heavy users of ruby) but I doubt it ;)
There's also just a question of which way the winds are blowing. I know the TIOBE index needs to be taken with a dose of salt, but it is interesting to see that Python is entering the top 3 at the same time that Ruby is falling behind Object Pascal.