[jrochkind1]

Even for PHP you do, it's just delivered as an apache module. (Passenger can be run as an apache module too, fwiw).

Although to be fair, the PHP model doesn't require a _persistent_ process between requests (I think?). But most other platforms do.

[lucaspiller]

It isn't required for Ruby either, but loading a Rails app is slow so it's better to persist it between requests.