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by smackfu 4905 days ago
Nothing gives me confidence in a platform like "almost nobody is even paid to work on Rails."
4 comments

I agree, this is a dangerous sentiment.

Whether money is involved or not, for a framework, developers should either be committed to their products or not.

If this was a different sort of product then that limitation of not getting paid might carry some weight, but when you encourage people to develop on top of your platform and when it is shown to have egregious flaws there is no excuse. You either get to work fixing them or you tell the world to stop using your framework because it's broken and not going to be fixed.

Fortunately, the Rails devs are seriously committed to their product, which is why these fixes came out so quickly.

Edit: The Rails team is certainly deserving of many thanks, but they don't get a pass on problems just 'cause they work for free. Similarly, if someone gives me a free car I will thank them, but if that car starts a fire in the garage and burns down my house I will curse them too.

I'm sure some Core developers would love your sponsorship to give even more time to devote to Rails development.

Even without the money, this issue was dealt with swiftly. See the comments below about 'the Rails security team is the best vendor I've worked with.'

Yes, judging platforms by how many people are paid to work on them instead of track record or other verifiable merits is totally the best way to go.
I thought some come of the core committers had their work sponsored by their employers.
Aaron is the only person on core who is paid to work on Rails. (Among other things.)

I am a committer, and part of my job is to work on open source. Ish.

Other than that, it's everyone else's spare time, IIRC.

Wow, that actually gives me more confidence because we have people doing it because they feel passionate about it. Thanks for your hard work....

I've been busy with some other small OS projects (and stuff that pays the bills) but personally feel like I need to try to carve out some time this year to do something to contribute back to Rails.....

<3

If I can help you help us somehow, please let me know.