I'm the author of backbone-rails, one of the main differences that I see is I provide a Backbone.sync method that plays nicely with rails conventions of namespacing your put/post params by model name. It also adds csrf-token to the header in the request for you.
However, I think both of our projects are mainly just about helping users learn how to use backbone.js with rails. I try to balance the pull requests I accept based on usefulness vs will this actually help or confuse a new user trying to get started with rails and backbone. Use either one that makes more sense to you, as long as we helped some users get started with backbone and rails then I think we did our job.
I think backbone-rails comes with the older 0.5.0 version of backbone.js, whereas this one has 0.5.3 version. But i haven't tried it so not sure of other differences.
> wait till they eventually come to their senses and offer it for $19
If they eventually offer it for $19, it could be they’ve come to their senses. Another possibility is that it’s good old-fashioned price discrimination: You offer it for $49, and sell as many as you can to those who can afford it.
When $49 sales dry up, drop the price and now a whole new group of customers—like you—buy it. If you had offered it at $19 to begin with, you’d have left money on the table from all the people who would have paid $49 but got it for $19.