[boltefnovor]

This post implies relationship between 37 Signals success and the ebook.

But really their success was all about Ruby On Rails and the community and publicity and audience that brought.

So I’m not sure quite what to make of this post.

[Zanni]

They were a success long before Ruby on Rails. The article doesn't quite connect the dots, but they were so successful as a consulting company that they created Basecamp as an internal tool to manage their own products. And then Basecamp was such a hit with their clients that they sold it as a service. And when that service became a massive success, they open-sourced the framework they'd built it on. [1]

[1] https://basecamp.com/about/story