Yes, it may seem a “shocking news” at first sight, but it isn’t.
The two team joined their effort in Rails v.3, you can read the offical announce here.
The main reasons are:
people like a Rails less “fat” and with more stable core API (that’s important especially for who write plugins) - and Merb is like that.
performance [...]
I’m curious. I’ve always been curious in my life, so now I’d like to play a little with Merb, a project by Ezra Zygmuntowicz of EngineYard.
After all I’m starting to think that Rails (to be clear: more and more I find it really nice and impressive under different standpoints) is a little over-hyped. It’s a [...]