I'm writing an article about Rails and I need help

Hi to everybody, I’m writing an article about Ruby on Rails and I need
to gather some information about the project and the community of core
developers. In particular I’d like to know something about the
organization of the project (how are decisions taken, who decides what
goes into the project, conflict resolution, contributions acceptance…)
and something more technical (development languages (if any, other than
Ruby), tools, software engineering techniques, versions control…).
Someone can help me? Or I can send an email directly to David Heinemeier
Hansson?

On 5/4/06, Net F. [email protected] wrote:

Hi to everybody, I’m writing an article about Ruby on Rails and I need
to gather some information about the project and the community of core
developers. In particular I’d like to know something about the
organization of the project (how are decisions taken, who decides what
goes into the project, conflict resolution, contributions acceptance…)
and something more technical (development languages (if any, other than
Ruby), tools, software engineering techniques, versions control…).
Someone can help me? Or I can send an email directly to David Heinemeier
Hansson?

You should post this question to the Rails-core mailing list.

http://www.ruby-forum.com/forum/16

Curt

Thanks for the hint

Also check out the Ruby on Rails podcasts…

http://podcast.rubyonrails.com

Some great information in there.

Something that might make a good image for your article – at Canada
on Rails, practically the first thing DHH did when he got on stage was
show a slide which listed every contributor to Rails. Definitely an
open source success story.

And actually I came across a parallel which might be interesting for
you too, although it is kind of incredibly random. It’s from a book
called “The Undercover Economist” and it has to do with what an
economist thinks of when he sees somebody drinking a cappuccino:

"Your coffee is intriguing to the economist for another reason: he
doesn’t know how to make a cappuccino, and he knows that nobody else
does either. Who, after all, could boast of being able to grow, pick,
roast, and blend coffee, raise and milk cows, roll steel and mold
plastics and assemble them into an espresso machine, and, finally,
shape ceramics into a cute mug? Your cappuccino reflects the outcome
of a system of staggering complexity. There isn’t a single person in
the world who could produce what it takes to make a cappuccino.

The economist knows that the cappuccino is the product of an
incredible team effort. Not only that, there is nobody in charge of
the team. Economist Paul Seabright reminds us of the pleas of the
Soviet official trying to comprehend the western system: “Tell
me…who is in charge of the supply of bread to the population of
London?” The question is comical, but the answer – nobody – is
dizzying."

That really describes every open source project – an incredible team
effort with nobody really in charge of the team. It’s funny,
because it means that in a sense, free software development mirrors
the workings of the capitalist free market more than commercial
software development does.


Giles B.
http://www.gilesgoatboy.org

Giles B. wrote:

Also check out the Ruby on Rails podcasts…

http://podcast.rubyonrails.com

Some great information in there.

thanks

who is in charge of the supply of bread to the population of
London?" The question is comical, but the answer – nobody – is
dizzying."

Like a bazaar (see Eric Raymond’s famous article), where you can find
bread even if nobody centrally planned to make the bread appear every
morning in the bazaar.
Nice the story of the cappuccino, in any case, the fact that every
object (a pen, a hammer…) is a “crystal” of work of millions of
people, including the past generations, was said for the first time by
Karl Marx :slight_smile:

Hey Article Guy – sorry forgot your name dude – also check this out:

http://server1.sxsw.com/2006/coverage/SXSW06.INT.20060311.Opening.Remarks.mp3

This is an extremely excellent podcast about the business perspective
behind 37Signals, the business where Rails was created.

Although it’s tangential to Rails itself, it’ll give you a great deal
of perspective about where Rails came from.


Giles B.
http://www.gilesgoatboy.org