Rubyspec aims to provide an executable specification for the Ruby programming language to precisely define the language and allow implementations to test compatibility. It describes the development of Ruby 1.9 as requiring changes to the language, class hierarchy, encoding support, and object coercion. Implementations like JRuby, Rubinius, IronRuby, and MacRuby have progressed based on tests in Rubyspec. Future development of Ruby 2.0 may again require changes captured in the evolving specification.