Re: The Nature of PEAR's Greatness

On Apr 13, 2004, at 11:45 AM, Martin Jansen wrote:

On Tue Apr 13, 2004 at 11:0817AM -0500, Paul M Jones wrote:

Martin, as a PEAR Group man, what do you actively like about PEAR?

I had originally promised myself not to participate in this discussion, but such is life:

Dude, I don't see why; these are excellent!

Generally I like the diversity of minds in the PEAR community: First of all there are extremely intelligent and talented people from which I have learned quite a lot of things (Technically, "politically" and linguistically). Then there are people who by their permanent presence keep the company going.

Completely agreed; I think we can put this in the category of "community and communication", yes?

Finally there are people like you, who, while sometimes being real pains in the neck, keep PEAR evolving by unyieldingly smashing wounds.

I like you too, Martin. :-) Man, I am a big PEAR fanatic, even if you don't think I sound like one. I evangelize PEAR at every opportunity, and there are many. If you care to, you may call me a professional malcontent, or even the "designated ogre", when it comes to PEAR. :-) And this thread is certainly not about smashing wounds. I asked specifically for good, positive comments about PEAR, and directly in response to a brutal thread about "quality issues." Thanks for providing good stuff. :-)

Technically I enjoy big parts of the infrastructure like the XML-RPC stuff, the installer and some features of the PEAR website. And I understandably like the PEAR manual in its current version, because I have invested quite a bit of work in making it what it is today. (Others may feel different about the manual, but I do not care about that in the current context.)

Nor do we; of course you like the manual, because in most important ways, it is your creation. :-) So: put you down for "installer and infrastructure", "PEAR Website (sort-of)", and "Manual/documentation." Does that sound right?

And sometimes I really enjoy running "tail -f /var/log/httpd-access.log" on pear.php.net and watching it for a few minutes: When we first set up the machine (~ 10 months ago) one was able to read most of the lines that scrolled across the screen. Even for fast readers, this has become impossible now. :)

Such are the joys of a project lead. :-)

Politically I like the "rules" that have emerged around PEAR. The coding standards are outstanding, PEPr and the associated rule type is a absolutely great thing and I also fully support most of the decisions by the Group.

What do you mean when you say "rule type"? Add "coding standards", "the proposal and voting system (PEPr)" to the things Martin likes; good.

Speaking about the PEAR Group, I think that Stig made at least two good decisions about PEAR: The first one was founding the project, and the second one was annoucing the Group. I doubt that PEAR had evolved in the same positive manner without the Group.

I agree that a republic-style, or even oligarchy-style, of project "government" is excellent. There are some negative systematic issues there, but I won't get into those, as this thread is not about smashing wounds. ;-)

Enough said.

And well said; thank you. Any other PEAR Group guys want to add to the discussion? -- Paul M. Jones Savant: the simple alternative to Smarty. http://phpsavant.com/