Back to my regularly scheduled program of Rails work today.

  • Open Source Licensing: Obsolete or Of Importance? - A good run-down of some of the current issues from RedMonk's Stephen O'Grady.

  • Rails Search Benchmarks - Evan Weaver compares sphinx, ferret, and solr. Sphinx comes out ahead. I've not had a chance to use sphinx (the one client I have doing massive search refuses to look at it due to a perception of missing features), but I think I'll be trying it for an app I'm starting to work on.

  • Ruby on Rails: the Duplo Generation - Matt Aimonetti complains about developers who just use a ton of plugins to create things, complain without giving back, and don't understand the Rails internals. I think I disagree; much as I try to avoid mindless reuse in my own applications, I think that enabling this sort of easy development by less-talented or less-committed developers is a necessary part of building a popular platform. Of course, it's clear that some core Rails folks don't want Rails to be a popular platform.

  • can_flag plugin sees the light of day - Support from Courtenay to allow users to flag objectionable content from other users.