I think there's two separate issues raised by Dreamhost's post.
1. Should Rails have better shared hosting support?
2. Is it nice for a business that wants to make more money by having a new feature implemented to demand that an open source project make their desire a priority, without any offer of quid pro quo?
I don't see much room for debate in either. 1. Of course 2. Of course not.
2. is of course as well. Rails stands to benefit from having hundreds of shared hosting services promoting their product. The original post wasn't "Rails should support Dreamhost" it was "Rails should support shared hosting."
Rails stands to benefit from all sorts of things, but who's going to put in the effort to make them happen? Open source is all about scratching your own itch. If shared hosting support is itchy for Dreamhost they should be scratching it, not blogging about how they have an itch and someone else should scratch it for them, for free, and now.
1. Should Rails have better shared hosting support?
2. Is it nice for a business that wants to make more money by having a new feature implemented to demand that an open source project make their desire a priority, without any offer of quid pro quo?
I don't see much room for debate in either. 1. Of course 2. Of course not.