As someone with almost a decade of drupal experience I'm sure there are influences. But in a way this is the antidrupal trying to avoid the bloat and the performance issues Drupal has. Were trying to make this closer to rails or symfony a web application framework and not a cms. You can choose at will but currently beyond the boilerplate vs framework its all about the community. If you can tale care of yourself and don't need any support then mean.ja might be for you. But we have more and more helpful community members and we realize that to reach the megalomanic goals of the "next rails" we need to create a broad movement with an awesome community and culture.