Stupid Ruby on Rails?

I asked the following question about RoR on the NOVA JUG. I received no responses but that is not too surprising since it was after all the NOVA _JUG_ not RUG. But since it was within the thread I thought I would give it a shot. Now I am asking it here.

I have a question about product development shops using RoR for a product that they sell to other clients. How do you protect the code? Now one suggestion is that you host the application and that will prevent users from modifying your code and creating support issues for you. Now that is one option but how about those cases where the client insists or we insist that the client host the app. Before our recent conversion to Java we were a building an app that used Cold Fusion for the web VB/Access for the desktop and backed by Sql server. The support requirements to support the mods the client would make were killing us and strangling our development efforts. So we switched to Java and provided a way for the clients to configure the app instead of modifying it. We use Swing for the desktop side and J2EE for the appserver with struts and then later Tapestry for the web. How would an organization avoid the pitfalls of visible code that RoR has in our environment but gain the benefits of increased productivity?

So there you have it. I think Ruby is great as an embedded scripting language. But amist all the buzz, can it be used by product development shops or is it just another buzz that will die down or an opportunity to sell books or only useful for departments wishing to write their own in house apps?

What do you think?