Yes, I do believe that DHH and the Rails community has done far more to advance web development than the Apache Software Foundation.
Yes, if your community has done the one good thing of popularizing the MVC web framework idea, you too can claim that it is better than the place where the earliest web server was built and the open-source web development platform that powered the Internet for years without a viable competitor was incubated. Especially if your only reason is that you are unhappy with having to submit reports to the people who are providing you legal protection at no monetary cost.
Perhaps when your entire community has only been around for a few years it is natural for it to suffer from drastic nearsightedness?
Even if every major ASF project currently "sucks" (which is debatable, but whatever, I'll concede it), you can't create an argument which throws out everything the ASF has done up to now and have it sound logical. Which is why I read this while engaging in a perpetual eye-roll.
1. Keep in mind that the article is a response to another article comparing the two communities. The article author did not beg the comparison. Only defended DHH and Rails in a previously made comparison of the two.
2. The article author is the creator of the Lift web framework for Scala, so he's not really part of the Rails community to begin with. It's more of an (admittedly familiar) outsider's perspective than an insider's.
Perhaps when your entire community has only been around for a few years it is natural for it to suffer from drastic nearsightedness?
I suggest someone with stake in ruby to sponsor glasses for that vocal minority. Articles like this damage the public perception of the ruby community. That's bad - when you are a programming language then mindshare is your most valuable asset...
Yes, if your community has done the one good thing of popularizing the MVC web framework idea, you too can claim that it is better than the place where the earliest web server was built and the open-source web development platform that powered the Internet for years without a viable competitor was incubated. Especially if your only reason is that you are unhappy with having to submit reports to the people who are providing you legal protection at no monetary cost.