The big news last night, for me professionally, was the announcement that Rails 3 would merge in the Merb framework: read here, here and here

This is news that i receive with mixed feelings. On the good side:

• Rails will improve: decoupling of modules (and the choice of ORM), the use of Merb Rack (already being merged in if i'm not mistaken)

• Merb philosophy was to go soft on the Ruby meta magic: code readability is more important than writing 1 line instead of two. Let's hope the Rails development can integrate that.

On the doubtful side: * the Merb project had a lot of freedom to reinvent itself, to manoeuvre from scratch. Rails already has what amounts to legacy. Can it purify itself up to the standards of Merb ?

• Merb was keeping Rails on its toes - healthy competition never hurts. Is there another comparable Ruby web framework out there ? I'm not a huge fan of Zed Shaw (other than he's funny), but he had a point: complacency sucks.

Anyway, we'll see how it goes. I'm certainly excited to see what comes out of this particular union. Rails 3 will again move a faire bit away from its previous version. Anyone know what kind of schedule we're talking about ? Update: and i guess we have an answer*