I think the main thing holding erlang back is its community culture, its source may have been open, but it was not an "open source" project until very recently, some might say it still isnt, the good news is that it is changing.
The OTP team moved erlang to github so people can see and contribute to its development.
The OTP team are moving erlangs infrastructure to open tools (the tests are switching to common test) which helps outside contribution a lot.
Community contributions are starting to pick up, http://erlagner.org/ is finally a package manager that has been picked up by the community, http://learnyousomeerlang.com/ is an awesome set of beginner tutorials, http://erldocs.com/ (mine) is an easy way to browse the documentation.
Node is a lot younger but is already more mature than erlang in all the areas above, erlang is playing catch up in these regards, but it has a much more solid base.
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I think the main thing holding erlang back is its community culture, its source may have been open, but it was not an "open source" project until very recently, some might say it still isnt, the good news is that it is changing.
The OTP team moved erlang to github so people can see and contribute to its development.
The OTP team are moving erlangs infrastructure to open tools (the tests are switching to common test) which helps outside contribution a lot.
Community contributions are starting to pick up, http://erlagner.org/ is finally a package manager that has been picked up by the community, http://learnyousomeerlang.com/ is an awesome set of beginner tutorials, http://erldocs.com/ (mine) is an easy way to browse the documentation.
Node is a lot younger but is already more mature than erlang in all the areas above, erlang is playing catch up in these regards, but it has a much more solid base.