To summarize some of my thoughts I wrote about on IRC after this post was posted:
- With both Meteor and Derby being so similar, I believe it to be fairly simple to port from one to the other if one really needs to switch. The template systems are fairly similar (most JS template systems are?) and of course, any HTML/CSS can be re-used. They both work with MongoDB at the moment, which means any DB design will most likely work equally well for both frameworks.
- We can all do our fair share to help Nate and Brian out by helping out as much as possible in any way possible. This includes helping out with the community, ie. helping people out on IRC, answer to questions on Google Groups, writing blog tutorials, helping out with writing documentation, writing good re-usable components, etcetera. It might seem like this doesn't contribute to the speed of development of Derby/Racer - but on the contrary this will do two things: A) Make Nate and Brian have more time to contribute to the source (because they don't have to deal with the community as much) B) Bring more people on board the Derby-train, and thus get the ball rolling faster.
- Authentication: Nate answered that one and obviously I was/am simply not getting it at the moment. Still a lot to learn!
What I think will be the two most important aspects for Derby's chance of survival (and long-term possible edge and success) against Meteor (and in general) are:
- How well it'll keeps up with Meteor in terms of functionality
- How many components/plugins there will be
Anyway, just my 5 cents.