Engine Yard's management took several strategic missteps over the years. One of them was stifling Merb. The quotes from Yehuda describe his difficulty in making the best of a forced merger.
Ezra's vision for Merb and DHH's vision for Rails were distinct. Both warranted development. Over time, I assume they would have collectively strengthened the Ruby community. It was a mistake for Engine Yard's management to have instead framed it as zero sum and forced a merger.
It might be a situation where you see it differently because you were involved or benefiting from the way things unfolded
> That said, the Rails vs Merb era was mostly good natured competition [...] wouldn't describe any of it as toxic
Competition can be healthy, Rails vs Merb was anything but. Quotes from Yehuda himself:
••• "I was just so blinded by tribalism that I never even bothered to check how fundamental the disagreements really were."
••• "waging an all-out war against Ruby on Rails from inside of a company that makes its money selling Ruby on Rails deployment is a pretty bad life strategy"
••• "It's so easy for our brains to turn disagreements about priorities into value conflicts. It takes a lot of effort to see past that mistake."
https://yehudakatz.com/2020/02/19/together-the-merb-story/