It's at least no more divisive than to have Passenger vs Thin vs Unicorn vs Heroku vs WEBrick vs Pow for the serving end of things. Or RSpec vs Test::Unit vs MiniTest vs Shoulda vs Riot for testing. Good things have come out of all of these additions and they were not all fuelled by discussions.
In any case, to defend against claims like yours (which are common, it seems), it does seem wise for anyone wishing to create something new to post to existing mailing lists with their ideas. Once the maintainers say "No" to your idea to rip out 90% of their system, you can then create your new project and have the valuable mailing list link to say "Look, I tried."
Comments
It's at least no more divisive than to have Passenger vs Thin vs Unicorn vs Heroku vs WEBrick vs Pow for the serving end of things. Or RSpec vs Test::Unit vs MiniTest vs Shoulda vs Riot for testing. Good things have come out of all of these additions and they were not all fuelled by discussions.
In any case, to defend against claims like yours (which are common, it seems), it does seem wise for anyone wishing to create something new to post to existing mailing lists with their ideas. Once the maintainers say "No" to your idea to rip out 90% of their system, you can then create your new project and have the valuable mailing list link to say "Look, I tried."