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Why are some frameworks (e.g. Flask for Python, Sinatra for Ruby) called microframeworks?

What differentiates them from full-fledged frameworks, like Django or Rails?

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Its not the size of your framework that counts; its what you do with it ;) – Darknight Mar 26 '12 at 10:55

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It's a shorthand for "framework written by someone annoyed by established farmeworks' percieved excessive complexity, which is going to gradually accumulate a similar amount of complexity proportional to its growth in popularity as it's extended to handle more varied requirements."

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Really? Flask people are making more and more of extensions rather than making it larger. User has the option of not using them. – c0da Mar 26 '12 at 7:58
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@c0da: You have the option of not using features of a "monolithic" framework either. The only real difference is that an extension/plugin system reduces the download size of the base system, but that hardly matters for server applications and comes at the cost of additional complexity on the form of extension/plugin management (yay, another opportunity to struggle with version and dependency management!) – Michael Borgwardt Mar 26 '12 at 8:02
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This link should provide you with all the info you need (in terms of Flask)...

Extract from the same link:

The main reason Flask is called a “microframework” is the idea to keep the core simple but extensible. There is no database abstraction layer, no form validation or anything else where different libraries already exist that can handle that.

I hope that makes it clear. :)

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