http://www.crunchbase.com/person/yehuda-katz
It's like saying, "Yeah Slash or Eddie Van Halen needs 40k to record a few tracks, but this kid from across the street will do it for free."
To add to that, most open source contributors live in large metros that aren't cheap (in the West and East Asia). $25k does not even come close to covering a year in those areas.
That was the only analogy I could think of when comparing guitarists. I didn't mean to equate both you and myself to famous programmers as children, but that's the best I could do in 5 min. My point was just to show that Yehuda isn't some average unknown panhandling for money. He's well known and he's already given a lot to the community and not to just Ruby.
The man is taking time off his job to do something he loves for a community which he's put a lot of time into, and that's something anyone should respect.
But since you don't know what you're talking about, I'm left wondering why you bothered to comment on this thread. What context could you possibly have to offer?
The level of irrational behavior dollar signs generate on HN is baffling.
Once upon a time, my neighbor brought me a cake that they had made. It was fantastic. They weren't a professional baker, but could likely have sold the recipe to that cake, as I enjoyed it immensely.
Does this now mean that all other cakes aren't worth it? If I go to the grocery store, can I just walk out with a cake because "someone else is willing to do it for free"?
Obviously, the answer is that I can't. You're perfectly welcome to think whatever snide things you like about wycats, but it seems like kind of a douchey thing to do unless you were personally willing to provide Rails.app.
oscardelben is. Perhaps it's to make a name for himself? Perhaps it's because he believes it should be done? Perhaps it's because he believes that wycats shouldn't be charging money for it? Who knows?
It's awesome that he's doing it, and it makes him look like a big giant hero. He deserves every kudo that comes his way -- but that doesn't mean, for one second, that wycats shouldn't be able to accept money people are willing to give for a task he can perform very well. wycats is a proven developer, and doesn't need any reputation. (Not saying that oscar isn't -- I don't generally follow Rails development that closely. Apologies if he's the Linus Torvalds of Rails or something.)
And at the risk of sounding like a tool, we should probably point out that oscardelben's project isn't finished, and is described, in the Readme as "Not ready". It might take him a few months to get it perfect.
And since you mentioned it, $44k is a two full years salary where I live, so excuse me if I think that's a bit much for a installer script.
Other than that, I have no interest in this since I'm not a RoR developer nor am I planning on becoming one. Like I said, I just wanted to provide context.