I guess this link gives me the answer I was looking for:
utunga 22 hours ago | link | parent | flag
snippet of email from Ryan Fugger Sep last year (2012) seems relevant
.. group would like to take over the Ripple project and call their system "Ripple". They have offered me xx for this, which would give them ownership of all Ripple software I've written...[and] ripplepay.com domains... I could continue my work independently, but I would need to give it a different name.
I think this pretty much explains the stark disconnect between ripple of now and ripple of the past. I feel a little cheated: I wrote positive sounding statements in the past about the usefulness of Ripple, and I wouldn't currently apply those statements to the current system. My endorsement wasn't Ryan Fugger's to sell. (Fortunately on the forum I can go back and edit my old posts to remove reference to Ripple (Edit: And I've since done so)).
I think most of your complaints are legitimate. Every system reflects tradeoffs and Ripple is not trying to be all things to all people.[...]The point is to allow people to transact in fiat currencies much the same way they transact in Bitcoins. Bitcoin is a currency with a built in payment system for that currency. Ripple is a Bitcoin-like payment system for any currency.
I'm certainly a fan of having things with different tradeoffs! But I don't think I'd call Ripple a "Bitcoin like" payment system it seems to have inherited some of Bitcoin's scaling weaknesses, but not its fundamental purpose or strengths (strong decentralization). The places where it is similar seem to be fairly superficial (use of ECDSA and base58 encoded 160 bit addresses). Maybe I'm entirely missing what is actually bitcoin like about it. ... but not being Bitcoin like is a good thing, ... failing to be obviously and assuredly decentralized, however, makes me skeptical of its future.
"Ripple isn't a good currency" is a great rebuttal to an argument nobody's making.
It's an argument implicitly being made in many of the threads on the forum here where people are offering increasingly large prices for XRP.