Re: On PEAR quality issues and natural selection

Hi Lukas, Lukas Smith wrote:

Yes, absolutely. From my perspective PEPr has changed nothing about what gets accepted or rejected; (Do you think it has?) it's just made the process more systematic. It hasn't even changed who can vote, has it?

How many packages have been rejected since PEPr?

I don't know. (I know the answer is not "none", since Config_Registry was recently rejected, right?) How many were proposed? How many suggestions never materialized into proposals? I'm actually really asking since I'm assuming you have these statistics more at your disposal. The point is that I don't believe PEPr changed anything about what gets accepted. I still ask how you believe it has. How is it more fair now? Fewer people can vote, right ... ?

We are an open community since we allow new developer to join if they provide something new. Of course you can consider us closed since determining if something is new is upto the existing community members.

Yes, I think the problem is that what is "new" is often going to exclude what is simply "different" (or better yet, what is "better") -- as evinced by the DB_OO, DB_Table stuff.

Err? We are working to provide the same thing. So PEAR sucks because it doesnt have features which a package that lacks features that PEAR has will have in the future? Greg is working to implement channels this very moment. Sure we are a bit "slower" to add new features. But that is because we have other pressing features to implement (like PECL handling) and more importantly we cannot take the same riscs as the ZZ/OSS people when adding new features. Our image has been hurt alot by releasing new features that havent been scrutinized enough before.

I think it's different -- but maybe I don't understand the channels feature. What I'm talking about is a network of repositories that anyone can create. PEAR will never be that will it? This is the powerful feature, IMO, that the ZZ/OSS crew is promising. At that point my question was -- "why pear?". Many of the advantages (dependencies, etc.) will be addressed by a system that requires no "stamp of approval" from a small community of PEAR package owners.

Hans I have a great deal of respect for you, but this is not your best day.

Heh :) & I have a great deal of respect for you, Lukas. & I'll warrant that this is a much better day for you :) Don't get me wrong, what I'm expressing is a frustration and the feeling that PEAR could be truly great. It could be great by being far more closed & exercising a great deal of scrutiny over packages *or* it could be great by being far more open, allowing for all sorts of competing packages and being welcoming to anyone in the PHP community. I like the latter method because I think the quality of the code in the end will be greater. I think that the fittest do definitely survive. Hans