Heh, been thinking myself of open sourcing an ecommerce site I'm building from scratch in node. Not sure if it would be good or bad.

The benifits of course being; a learning resource for newbs, a good transparent portfolio piece, easy collaboration with strangers on what is best etc. Downsides being; exposing potential security holes, embarrassment due to facepalm worthy pieces of logic in code (really, a plus) etc.

NodeJS is written from a MUCH different approach than Rails. An example quotation from Isaac Schlueter (and he says this OVER AND OVER):

  We like dull models.  They're easier to reason about.  Programs should 
  be boring dull things that solve problems in predictable ways. [1]

[1] The whole discussion is most instructive. https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!msg/nodejs/kxw...

Of course, you may easily download a framework that makes foolish choices as a number of Rails developers have migrated to javascript :-p. Actually, I don't have a "thing" about Ruby or Rails developers, but some aspects of their mindset are very dangerous. The first time I heard that YAML could initialize objects from the serialization structure, I was absolutely shocked. How could that NOT be a disaster?

Take care. You're responsible for your code and its security. You're not playing a game. Your business is not a hackathon. Don't claim to offer "services" unless you are plan to be a servant of others. Servants don't code recklessly. You are the custodian of your clients' digital life and wellbeing. Choose projects run by grownups -- like izs and ry (the people who have run nodejs). Again, getting hacked is NOT okay.

By the way, if you want to learn how to run a project, subscribe to the nodejs-dev thread. That's a first-rate education in how to manage a large project with a lot of hype and growing pains. Watch and take notes.