Obviously no one is arguing for slow innovation of everything. However, it is not dumb at all to argue for slow innovation of something foundational, if it allows for things built on top to innovate faster. This is arguing for faster overall innovation. This sentiment might be wrong in this case, because the transition 1.9 to 2.0 might be painless, but I'm replying to your original misrepresentation of the argument.
raises hand, compiling C extensions on Windows has changed a lot from 1.9 to 2.0 in my experience, since there are no MSVC builds of Ruby anymore (to link against). Now I'd have to compile my pet extensions using MinGW and the compilers just aren't the same. CMIIW...
