Kyle Neath from Warpspire wrote an interesting post yesterday entitled “How much does Rails cost?” discussing the way Rails is getting commercialized by 37signals lately specifically after the latest post David published on Ruby on Rails Blog on Recent Rails job postings from the 37signals Job Board, I don’t want to defend anybody here instead I have a point of view that I would like to share:
“Ruby on Rails was extracted by David Heinemeier Hansson from his work on Basecamp, a project-management tool by 37signals. It was first released to the public in July 2004.” from Ruby on Rails History on Wikipedia
When David extracted Rails from a product that he developed for 37signals (BaseCamp) I don’t think he would publicize Ruby on Rails as an open source project without talking about it and discuss it with 37signals, so for sure they had a plan behind that which is to support the community and benefit from Rails as a mainstream advertising as well and this is something I consider very clever and healthy for both the company and the community.
Why would 37signals (this includes David as he is a partner) publicize the framework they’ve created for their own products as an open source project? obviously it’s marketing from 37signals prospective and supporting the community from David’s point of view.. In my humble opinion it is a healthy marketing, if you look at it in some different way, their main target clients are developers and freelancers so they wanted their love and they got it by producing something really cool like Rails.
At the end when I look at Rails I find a wonderful approach from all aspects, development wise, methodology wise and business wise as well. As I said I’m not defending anybody here but Rails has given the open source a new face, it maintains the honesty that we all need, all of us as open source supporters like to give the community without waiting any paying back, sometimes this is not possible due to our responsibilities and commitments specially when we work as developers and programmers in some software house.
We do software of both kinds commercial and open source, Rails came as a mid point, as an extraction of commercial software (BaseCamp) to an open source framework, nothing wrong in that, it is even more delightful to see such a move which should encourage all of us to follow in some way.
From the above we can understand David’s point when he commented:
“Helping the 37signals Job Board in the process of doing that is extra sugar on top. Considering the untold hours of open source development the company has donated to the Rails project.”
David is a partner of the company where he developed Rails and extracted it from so it is true that the time donation was not a costless time or an afternoon time as Kyle said but it was a paid time, even though David did nothing but helping the Railers finding Rails jobs, non of the Railers is paying anything for 37signals for their volunteered time.
Finally I want to clarify that in my opinion Ruby on Rails and 37signals are not crossing the line or so but they are taking a different direction and this what we all know about them, new things.. right? I wish we could see Rails free from any commercializing but when I feel that its their right to do so I won’t negotiate it but respect it and learn from it, maybe if David posted non-rails-related jobs I can say it crossed the line but he didn’t which I consider something helpful than it is commercial.
