And I think it will happen over time, these things just take time. Merb has a clear advantage in terms of modularity and speed that cannot simply be slapped on

And I think it will happen over time, these things just take time. Merb has a clear advantage in terms of modularity and speed that cannot simply be slapped on top of Rails, a more complex and begin-to-end framework. Rails 3.0 marked the first real release with merged code bases, I'm sure the merge wasn't without friction, so hopefully Rails 4 or subsequent releases will go deeper in terms of integration with the philosophy of Merb itself.