

DHH addresses Dreamhost's criticism of Rails - pius
http://www.loudthinking.com/posts/21-the-deal-with-shared-hosts

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staunch
If Rails works reliably with SCGI but not FastCGI it can't be that difficult
to fix. That's probably the easiest way to get it working for them. Dreamhost
could just pledge $10k to have any FastCGI bugs fixed. They're the crappy
shared host trying to live in a VPS/dedicated world. I agree with DHH that
they should put up or shut up.

~~~
Kaizyn
Everyone who sticks with web development long enough outgrows shared hosting,
but they are a good cheap option for when you're starting out. The fact that
you don't see the same sorts of problems from every other server-side
scripting option (except maybe the Lisps) makes the Rails position seem more
unreasonable.

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hollywoodcole
RimuHosting and Slicehost are top Xen VPS Hosting for cheap. Both have great
rails and django communities to help.

~~~
altano
I've found RimuHosting to be worth the small premium for sure. I've never had
a support request take more than 15 minutes to be fully resolved in a
competent and friendly manner... how many hosts can that be said of?

So yeah, I highly recommend RimuHosting for Rails hosting or anything else you
might need a VPS for.

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Tichy
I seem to have heard the same kind of answer from the Rails community before:
"do it yourself if you really care". I don't blame DHH for it, but I think it
is interesting to note the difference to the major Java frameworks I know,
like Spring. I think they care a lot more about their community and the
popularity of their framework.

Apparently since DHH built Rails for his own use, he doesn't care if anybody
else uses it or not. Although I wonder how much the popularity of Rails
contributes to the success of 37signals - would anybody even know about their
web applications if it wasn't for the Rails hype?

In any case, that kind of thing is why people still choose Java over Ruby.

~~~
pius
_I seem to have heard the same kind of answer from the Rails community before:
"do it yourself if you really care". I don't blame DHH for it, but I think it
is interesting to note the difference to the major Java frameworks I know,
like Spring. I think they care a lot more about their community and the
popularity of their framework._

I think this is merely the difference between a framework that is
fundamentally open source and a framework that is fundamentally vendor-
supported (e.g. SpringSource writing and supporting Spring). From my
perspective, the Rails Core team cares quite a bit about their community, as
their community is themselves. Any developer who has a patch or plugin is free
to make it available. That's the beauty of open source.

~~~
Tichy
I don't really understand the difference, as Spring is open source as well?
However, I guess SpringSource makes money from consulting, so it is in their
interest to have as many people as possible adapt Spring?

~~~
pius
I'm not hugely familiar with Spring, but the impression I get is that it's not
really open source. SpringSource, as a commercial entity, essentially controls
the authoring of the framework and has a financial interest in adding features
that will drive the widest user adoption possible. If this is wrong, please
feel free to correct me.

~~~
Tichy
As far as I know, it is completely open source - not even semi open source
like MySQL, where they have a commercial and a public license, or like jBoss,
where you would have to pay for proper documentation. I think 37signals
controls the source of Rails, so again, where is the difference?

I just checked, Spring has the Apache 2.0 license, which is very liberal I
think (for example, not as restrictive as the GPL with it'S virality).

Of course the interests of SpringSource and 37signals are probably very
different, although I think Rails is good publicity for 37signals (if not the
only publicity).

If SpringSource lives on consulting, of course the question is allowed if the
features they add are tailored towards making consulting necessary (as I think
is a bit the case with the J2EE specification). My impression so far has not
been like that, though.

~~~
pius
37signals actually does _not_ control Rails. There's no vendor behind it that
stands to (directly) make money if more people adopt it.

One thing to remember about Rails was the context in which it was conceived.
Rails was not designed as a framework; rather, it was extracted from a real
project as a useful skeleton. It is "opinionated software" conceived and
publicized as a reaction to the bloated frameworks in the Java world. Edge
cases are pushed out into plugins, features generally have to be rejected
several times before they make it into core, etc.

~~~
Tichy
Of course they control Rails. Or are you telling me that I could this very
minute submit some patch to Rails and announce that Rails 3.0 is out? I don't
think so.

I don't deny that they might be different in orientation. But which one is a
better bet, the one that tries to anticipate all your needs and make you happy
(Spring), or the one that only cares for the needs of it's developers? Not
saying either way - bloat might be a problem for some, but Spring is very
modular, you can only use parts if you want to.

Spring earns more money if more people adapt it, so they try to make it as
good as possible. What is the incentive for Rails, I don't know? Economically,
their incentive would have to be to get their competition in trouble, to their
own benefit? Perhaps they don't even use Rails internally ;-)

Actually Spring also grew out of frustration and personal need, it was a
result of Rod Johnson's experiences as consultant, if I remember correctly.

~~~
pius
_Of course they control Rails. Or are you telling me that I could this very
minute submit some patch to Rails and announce that Rails 3.0 is out? I don't
think so._

37signals does not control Rails, these guys do:
<http://www.rubyonrails.org/core>

This is a group of developers that you could become a part of if you were so
inclined (the usual petty open source politics notwithstanding). This is
markedly different from having a commercial vendor in control of the product.

~~~
Tichy
I don't think they would just let anybody in. On the other hand, SpringSource
probably wouldn't reject your free contributions to Spring either, if they are
useful.

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pius
Interesting, DHH runs his blog on SliceHost.

~~~
Readmore
I have a couple sites on Slicehost and I love it. The only thing I miss from
shared hosting sites is the easy to use management console for setting up
email and such. Other than that Slicehost is the way to go.

~~~
spiralhead
What I would really love to see is affordable hosting like this but with the
ability to do stuff like run a custom web server. I know this thread isn't
really about hosting but has anyone seen something like this or is it even
technically possible without going fully dedicated?

~~~
scw
Read more on Slicehost -- its exactly that; you have full access to a
virtualized machine, and can do pretty much anything.

