Actually, reading the tea leaves, I think Merb will become a solid competitor to Rails this year and perhaps even overtake it in 18-24 months. This is all spec

Actually, reading the tea leaves, I think Merb will become a solid competitor to Rails this year and perhaps even overtake it in 18-24 months. This is all speculative, of course, but there are definitely a lot of smart people taking a very serious look at Merb because it amounts to a clean-room rewrite of Rails that preserves most of its elegance and none of the bloat. Indeed, I consider Merb's relationship with Rails to be similar to that of Rubinius's relationship to MRI. It'll be interesting to see what happens.