"On December 23rd, we decided to end the duplication and the paradox of choice."

Let's be clear about one thing: They didn't eliminate "the paradox of choice," they eliminated "choice." The Paradox of Choice comes into play when there are so many choices that people have difficulty making a choice at all -- like 23 varieties of white bread. The Paradox of Choice does not come into play when there are two choices. But I guess this was destined to happen because eliminating choice has been the philosophy of the Rails team all along.

BTW, the book "The Paradox of Choice" is a great read and every hacker should read it. And the best part is that you don't even have to read it all the way to the end to 'get it.'

http://www.amazon.com/Paradox-Choice-Why-More-Less/dp/006000...

(Yes, this is my second rant on this topic. I will shut up now).

That book was a great read. Here's his talk at TED for a taste what it's about:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_par...

I'm still tripping on this. Not sure what to think of it yet. It sounds like it could be quite awesome.

amazing. i'm all for a less-cluttered field of choices.

anyone know of another high-profile project that has merged with a "competitor"?

From jm4:

"Compiz and Beryl. Beryl forked from Compiz and, if I remember correctly, relations were very sour between the two projects. Several months later they merged into Compiz Fusion."

...and it was awesome!

I'm not a Ruby guy, so I may be completely off here, but it struck me as kind of inaccurate to describe Merb as "an alternative Rails stack"...I thought Merb was an alternative to the Rails stack?

To disambiguate: It was a separate project, with similar goals and similar, though meaningfully improved, architecture.

Cool. Can we get some Django news now, please? :)

Merge Pylons. ;)

Merge SqlAlchemy