Re: [pear-webmaster] Re: Help with installing PEAR

techtonik wrote:

The answer I'd like to hear is - what do you need to do to solve that problem and why can't I do that? You need to talk to Edin, who has the only copy of the windows build, and you need to also modify pearweb/public_html/go-pear, and also the list of bundled packages in a script found in php-src/pear, pear-core, both HEAD and PEAR_1_3 branches, and you also need to coordinate with Pierre-Alain, who is the primary contact from the PEAR end, and with Wez, who is the king of windows builds of PHP. It's much more of a political than a coding headache.

Support here is very different and sometimes too often it is trying to convince "you don't need that" in opposite to following guidelines of commercial support "client always right". It is a pity to receive an answer

GB> Commercial support is "the client must be placated by people with no GB> programming experience and lists of soothing phrases that always lead to GB> the suggestion to re-install windows" Try RedHat support. =) And don't use cheap third-party hosting. =) Professional commercial support is well-organized structure, where your opponent talks to you on the same language, so you need to introduce yourself first and tell "people with no programming experience" to redirect you to appropriate person. If you don't do that - you are an "average customer" who often doesn't know what (s)he wants, what happened and haven't seen anything with title "How To Ask Questions The Smart Way". Perhaps the people you should be complaining to then are Zend, Inc. They have the resources to set up professional support.

GB> OK, I will only say this next part once, I promise. GB> It's possible to have both. Rather than throw up roadblocks and GB> complain, provide proof that you are in favor of both community and GB> quality. All I have seen from you is that you are in favor of someone GB> else doing the work for problems that you seem to be an expert on. If GB> you're an expert on a problem, then fix it and provide a patch. Wrong. I wanted to fix problem myself to feel immediate positive feedback from my actions and move to next problem without waiting for smb. month or more to receive his benediction. I don't care much about community as long as it doesn't hamper PEAR quality, in which I'm interested in the first place. To me it seems that people here make more talk than work in the sphere of my interests and this "culture" produces a conflict where different approach feels very hard to survive. The point is we have a number of good coders who disagree about the quality of the patches in question. Now perhaps you are really saying that the coders who are already in PEAR simply aren't as good as you are, and that I can accept as an argument. You probably won't get anywhere with that one though :).

I've already submitted a couple of patches, but the way they've got into CVS was very unpleasant in time and technical aspects. It is rather funny, but I need one more day to merge my patched version with CVS one and some more hours to test it. GB> Communicate with people who have cvs commit access, and *CALMLY* explain GB> why the patch works. I can't. They don't read my messages. =/ How can I explain if they don't ask questions and don't offer alternative solutions except "don't do this". Also I have troubles with php.net email system - haven't received any letter from bugsystem after XML-RPC was fixed, though I left patch in most of the issues there. You do know that your patches were read, the problem with XML_RPC is that there was no lead maintainer for a long time. Dan has taken time away from his other projects to take over XML_RPC. When you submitted your patches, did you verify that they did not disturb the workings of the PEAR installer as well? I saw no evidence of this, which is not to say that you did not do so, but this is a crucial part of the way PEAR works and how it works differently from other open source systems. PEAR has critical dependencies. Any change to XML_RPC or Console_Getopt can break everyone's PEAR installation, even minor changes, if they break BC. This means that the package cannot be developed in a vacuum.

GB> In addition, *LISTEN* to the responses. Don't write off your fellow GB> developers as evil or callous because we bristle when you procede to say GB> our code is flawed and our work ethic is worse. You just don't allow me to show the opposite. =) Nothing more. What else can I do? I have not seen a positive email from you - maybe they were mis-addressed?

GB> When you join the open source community, it is a proud moment. You are GB> now saying "I am not a dribbling little baby who needs a GB> 'the-client-must-be-placated-by-people-with-no-programming-experience-and-lists-of-soothing-phrases-that-always-lead-to-the-suggestion-to-re-install-windows' GB> person to tell me that I am OK and the program will be fixed for the low GB> price of $99.95 to upgrade. NO! I have the programming skills and the GB> people skills to provide a working patch, and to fix it when others see GB> problems with my imperfect fix for their imperfect programs!" Agreed. Almost - If I don't have people skills, but I have programming skills, can evaluate code quality, respect others work and don't sell GPL code in my closed products - I still don't deserve to be in OpenSource, right? no - but you may find it is more difficult to get your code accepted by other developers. Users don't care much about the politics, of course. Know thyself. If you are much happier coding solo and working that way, there are plenty of wonderful resources, like sourceforge.net, which will give a very successful outlet for your creativity. This will also benefit PHP, as getting good code out there is always a good thing.

GB> Don't blame the developer if your suggestions are half-baked. Bake them GB> more fully and you will find yourself an accepted member of the GB> grown-ups club that is open source. To tell the truth I don't accept this kind of attutude. "Code is poetry" (c) WordPress. Poetry is an art like music, like painting, like any other creative work. How can you tell musician how to compose music? How can you tell poet what to write? If you made it OpenSource Code is more like performance. You take a pre-existing language and manipulate it to say something. And open source is more like chamber music. If you don't want to listen to what other people have to say, then your string quartet is not likely to go very far :)

- let your actions be proof of a concept. Some people just want to tell opposite opinion to make sure you've taken into account all possible variants where your work will not be useful, but this doesn't mean there will be nobody who will benefit from it. Make it optional. Any functionality is welcomed as long as it useful for smb. and doesn't jam other (sometimes possible) features. I still think you are convinced, that your patch isn't really useful and you don't bear any ill, because it was you who weightened all pros and cons. You've got experience, which you will use while planning new patch, but if it you are not convinved - it is a conflict and in that case PEAR community is a very fertile land for such conflicts. I can't see why it is good then. Art need freedom to evolve. Not rules. No patents. You are free to develop in a vacuum. PEAR is not a vacuum. Your art can become better, and you can enhance others work with gentle suggestions, or make enemies and waste bandwidth with FUD, it's your choice.

Greg