If you truly believe in Mongrel2, start your own company. Don't wait for the company that's going to <i>truly open source it</i>, it won't be the way you want it if it's not your company.
Sure hope Zed finishes <a href="http://learnpythonthehardway.com/" rel="nofollow">http://learnpythonthehardway.com/</a> Such a great primer for pre-programmers.
Zed, you totally have to write some great new rants now.<p>(Not related to Dropbox, not what I'm implying. Just that you should have more free time to write for a while, so we'd love to see the fruits of it.)
>If you got something interesting that doesn't involve me being a <i>system administrator</i><p>Is it me, or is this a running meme/problem for him?
And that's the problem with Rockstar Programmers. They know they are rockstars, they know that they can get funding for their own product at a moments notice, they know that they can always go on a speaking tour.<p>You need them, but they don't need you, and they know it. So they walk in and want to do what they want to do, they have no intention of doing the shitty stuff. But work in a company has a lot of shitty stuff to be done.<p>The problem with Zed is that though he is a good developer, he's also a good writer and probably a good talker. Those last two are important to him, and when people work at companies, they should not be having two big side projects (writing and talking). It distracts from the work.<p>All the rockstar programmers of the last few years all seemed to have entered CTO roles, have started their own companies, or are important people in very big companies. Very few are still just slugging away at code at small startups.<p>This story is basically why you should not hire rockstar programmers. Hire normal people who depend on you for their income.