Re: [ELECTION] PEAR future now, for 2 weeks

This one's a bit inflamatory, PEAR Group makes all legislative decisions in private (secret ballot) The reality is that as things have evolved, the PEAR Group primarily is there to alter CVS karma, I dont think there has been any "legislative decisions" for years, especially now that there is a RFC system - which was the point of that one.. - so that everybody decides on things. The reason that the Group is set up that way I presume is more that the php-group who run the CVS servers are naturally concerned about who has access to that file. So the group who can modify it is limited. Note that the PEAR group only got access to this many years after PEAR started.... - so I'm not sure what will happen if there's a PEAR group with members that php-group dont know... I'm not sure secret ballot's are a great benefit to PEAR - (living in a country that doesnt have real democracy, it sounds alot like one of the tricks that are used here to keep real democracy down) - why not an RFC - that was their purpose. - including collating the comments. To be honest, though, there is a sense that while PEAR continues to grow, and new packages are added it is being overshadowed a little by Zend's private developer club. And you are probably driving more of the real activity in PEAR than anyone else.. While the wording in the Proposal is rather grand and a little derogatory, I think you may have something with the idea of an elected president/core team, - To me, it looks more like you could have structured your proposal more like the "Commons & the lords" (Pear Group+President / Pear-security) Commons is the elected one that does all the work/has the power, the Lords(sec team) just sit over and make sure the Commons's dont f**k up big time.... ;) Eg. phasing out the pear-group into security based role (eg. the karma) - and perhaps absolute veto - that could be used at their peril, as that could justify their removal altogether... As the proposal stands at present, To me, while I agree with the general direction, I feel it's not been worked through fully, so unfortunately I'll abstain for the time being. Regards Alan Gregory Beaver wrote:

As of February 22, 2007, I have called an official referendum on the future of PEAR. There is a news item on the front page of pear.php.net with the same instructions in this message. This election is only open to PEAR developers who have contributed to the development of a PEAR package at any time in history, but you must have the ability to log in at pear.php.net, and must have "pear.dev" karma. Please go vote! http://pear.php.net/election/info.php?election=6&vote=1 The choices are between: 1) don't change a thing Keep the PEAR Group 2) Greg Beaver's constitution As proposed on pear-dev 3) Anant Narayanan's constitution As proposed in response to my original proposal on Dec. 30, 2006. More information on each of these proposals is in the election description. I have tried to present a clear picture of the differences between the proposals: each has merit, and should be considered carefully. The result of this election will determine how PEAR moves forward on important issues such as the ultimate purpose of PEAR, how much control developers have versus the PEAR community at large, and other major issues such as granting CVS karma. The ballot is secret, and is designed so that it is nearly impossible to reverse-engineer voters to votes in the database. The election interface will not let you vote without logging in or without pear.dev karma. If you believe you should have pear.dev karma to vote, and do not, please mail the pear-dev mailing list and we'll try to resolve the issue. Go vote! Thanks, Greg