The Merb and Ruby on Rails projects this week announced plans to merge Merb into Rails 3.

"Both are open-source development frameworks for creating Web applications and services in the Ruby programming language," writes Computerworld's James Niccolai. "Rails has been around since about 2004, while Merb emerged earlier this year as what many see as a faster, more lightweight alternative."

"The Merb community has strong philosophical values, technical expertise, and code that will make Rails a richer framework for end users," writes Ars Technica's Ryan Paul. "The convergence of Merb and Rails is a win for everyone involved, and it is always gratifying to see developers put their differences aside so that they can put the users first; that is exactly what has happened here."

"Rails is currently still in development on its 2.x cycle of releases, which began a year ago," writes InternetNews' Sean Michael Kerner. "The Rails 2.3 release is set for launch at the end of January. After Rails 2.3 is out, the next big release from Rails will be Rails 3, which will include the Merb components."

More here from InfoQ ... more here from Slashdot ... and the announcements are here ... and here.