Very smart move by both the Merb and Rails project leaders:
Big news in the world of Ruby web frameworks: Merb and Rails will be merged.
[From InfoQ: Merb Will Be Merged Into Rails 3.0 ]
I’ve been telling people for a while that Ruby has been following the Java path at an accelerated pace. Ruby was able to learn from many of the mistakes that Java made, but the overall path seemed very similar.
The split between Merb and Rails was no different than the split between Struts and XYZ Framework. The XYZ project leaders explained that they forked off from Merb because they wanted “more flexibility” or “more cowbell” or whatever. This sounded exactly like me circa 2003 when I was championing WebWork as a better alternative to Struts.
By 2005, some of us in the Java community got a clue and realized that joining forces may be better for the user.
Congratulations to the Ruby community for getting a clue faster than we did the Java community. But please don’t let it go to your head (*cough*DHH*cough*)… you have had the benefit of learning from previous pioneers. 