A guy takes issue with the folks at Phusion because
- Their product has ‘Enterprise’ in the title
- Their release FREE products ‘late’ (late being 2 excruciating weeks)
- You want them to be more ‘modest’ (have you heard of the guys at 37 signals?)
- The marketing seems to slick and something ‘fishy’ is going on?!?!
- Then claims that the ‘rails community’ will not embrace you guys because of these laughable quibbles …

what a joke.

Please, ignore these trite and negative comments and ‘shake the haters off’ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rt3_I1rvlCs).

You’re changing the fundamental direction of Ruby of Rails adoption by doing this, so keep doing the awesome work you are doing on Passenger. And if you happen to make a couple of bucks along the way … more power to you.
You guys have definitely earned it.

You guys did everything right and we all owe you a debt of gratitude for helping the community so hard!

Bless you!
Mike

Let’s face it, anyone criticizing Phusion is dying on jealousy because they are smart, they created a very clever solution where everybody else failed or didn’t even try, they made a successful debut, they just came back from Apple’s mother-ship and of course some people will be absolutely jealous.

They can do whatever they want with their own stuff. The “rules” of open source is: if it is not released nowhere, it is not public. Now they released it and it is public, and free as in speech. There is absolutely nowhere that states “how” one should release something.

Marketing is a VERY important component. Hype is very important mechanisms. Every successful product started with good marketing. There are many ways to do it, the Apple way is one of these ways and it works, no matter what the pundits say.

So, please, unless you have a real legal complaint, back off and let the guys work. You’re unhappy with the way the publicized their product? Sue them. Bitching around just screams ‘jealousy’.

Phusion Passenger is awesome. Ruby Enterprise Edition (and you would have understood the meaning if you have read the announcements) is also amazing.

Kudos to the Phusion guys, keep going with the awesome work.

‘Nuff said.

You guys ROCK.

Keep up the good work … sorry that the community can be a bit touchy feely. No body wants to be sold to and the big marketing simply turned some folks off. Thank you guys SO much for opening the source so that normal people like me can contribute.

Thanks!

The work you guys are doing is fantastic, don’t let vague discontent get you down. The stuff you have is great, don’t let people make you feel guilty about promoting it.

About the late releases: We know that you’re human, but we didn’t decide the release dates – you did. When some makes a promise we expect them to hold it! It’s better to say “it’s done when it’s done” than “expect awesomeness on saturday!”

Oh, but you liked the soundtrack, right?

All kidding aside, we do take all feedback into consideration, i.e. the reason why we’re having this conversation here. Unfortunately, it’s hard for us to explain our methodology on certain things, as they’re best understood if you’ve walked the path. We just wanted to point this out, i.e. nothing we’ve done is without substantial reason. Needless to say, we love to elaborate on this and we’re always for more than happy to receive input as it often sheds a new light on the matter. So keep it up, that’s all we’re saying

It sounds to me like most of this criticism (though I don’t think it’s intended as criticism so much as constructive feedback) is about marketing. Most programmers (myself included) are very suspicious of anything we perceive as glitzy marketing, because we associate it with poorly made products that compensate for their lack of substance with a shiny appearance. What I hear some people saying here is, “here’s the most effective way to promote your product to *me* and here’s the way *I* would like to have you in the community.” Once you get that information, then it’s up to you to determine if that perspective is representative of who you want to be reaching out to. If it is, altering your marketing style and community involvement may be in your interest. If it’s not, then you can probably safely ignore it.

Either way, the best immediate response is probably something like, “thanks for your feedback. We’ll take it into account as we move forward.” It may be useful to correct misinformation, if there is any, but arguing with people’s subjective perceptions of your marketing style, version numbers, etc. probably won’t get you anywhere. It’ll just sap you of energy that you’d probably much rather direct towards making awesome software (which you do, by the way!).

So, thanks for an awesome and deeply needed product, and have fun learning from all the challenges that come with success!

In short, we could have a lengthy discussion about this, where we’d bring up some arguments, and where you’d try to retort them, and where this cycle repeats OR we could work on improving on open source products in such a way that they’re easily adopted by enterprises as well. Bottom line, thank you for your comment and concerns as it goes to show that we’re not the only ones who care about this company and its products.

P.S. @Geoffrey Likewise, you’re “suited up/inquisitive appearance” made me feel quite insecure about my enterpriseyness Have you ever considered becoming a superhero? I mean, we have superman, batman, but I think the world would be better off with “businessman” instead. However, as uncle Ben told Peter Parker, with great power comes great responsibility! Looking forward to meeting you again soon. -Ninh

There is one thing that comes out of pretty much every comment on this topic: “You can’t criticize people doing great work, and you wouldn’t even do any better”.

Let me take an example. You might have heard of Zidane, the best football player of all time for some? Well… I really suck at football. And he’s a semi-god at it! Does it prevent me from saying “He shouldn’t have knocked off the italian guy on his last game”? What I mean here is that you don’t have to be better than the guys you’re criticizing! Imagine how the World would be stuck!

So: YES, phusion is doing a GREAT job, which I admire! And NO I couldn’t even do 10% of what you did. And NO you don’t owe me anything. And YES you gave me a lot, because I’ve got a few servers running Passenger. And YES it’s your company and you can do anything you want with it. And NO, I don’t believe in communism, and I strongly encourage you to make money out of such good products!

BUT: that doesn’t prevent me from saying what I feel like would improve your image!

Now, you’re free to take it or leave it, and I see no point in trying to argue (which I already did too much).