Re: Package proposal misuse?

Ilia Alshanetsky wrote:

On August 12, 2003 03:03 pm, Davey wrote:

I *so* strongly disagree in this case. I think that whilst the pear-devs should be the ones who say if a package is fit for PEAR, only the community knows what it wants *IN* PEAR. So perhaps we need to approach this from 2 stand points:

I've said it before and I'll say it again. PEAR is not YASA (Yet Another Script Archive). It is a repository of libraries that are useful to majority(!!) of PHP users and are stable/functional/secure enough to be associated with PHP as a project. It is my opinion that given the number of people who fall into the $DEVELOPERS category, there is more then enough opinions & points of view to determine the merits of package exclusion or inclusion. Inviting anyone from the street to make such decisions is a bad idea. You would have no reflection on the person level of competence, which you could determine about a $DEVELOPER by looking at their code and prior communication(s) to the list. You also have no guarantee that people voting are in fact distinct users, a person with multiple e-mail addresses, ips could easily trick the system. A compromise of sorts would be to allow anyone to comment on the package. Which may bring up previously unconsidered benefits and downsides of a particular package. However, the final vote of the merits of the package should be up to $DEVELOPERS and $GROUP (PEAR Group). Personally, I'd be much happier if package acceptance decisions were $GROUP only, but that's probably impractical. Ilia

*sigh* I find it hard to believe that 503 PEAR-DEVs can decide accurately what millions of people want. Also bring into the fact that theres maybe 50 people who ever actually vote on the ML, this just doesn't sit right with me. Ultimately, yes, the PEAR-DEVs/PEAR-GROUP should say what goes in and out, but the public should have their say, perhaps it'll make the DEVs go "wow, actually, I was wrong, people love this, perhaps it should be +1" I'm only trying to make sure that the devs are not some sort of deity figure. The public is what makes PEAR, without anyone to actually use the scripts and promote their use etc, we may aswell not have it. - Davey