It is claimed that unzip-and-go is a good thing. But let's think aloud: who is the target audience for unzip-and-go? I suppose these are the people
* unable to use PEAR installer (those who don't *want* to set up a PEAR installer on the server may use its remote installation capabilities)
* unable to set up their include_path (which is a pretty standard task among programming languages)
Actually it has a lot more to do with bundling PEAR packages inside larger applications than anything else.
Yes I could make my app install PEAR (remotely or not - which means sending all the files needed for that with the app - overkill for a small PEAR package) or upgrade/downgrade current packages to match the version(s) my app expects or install a local PEAR (which doesn't work right on windows yet, BTW) and pray the user never does anything with his own PEAR install or include_path or creates their own module using other PEAR stuff that mucks up the include path or otherwise messes with my or their own PEAR install. Or I could move to using the pear installer to distribute my app when my users are use to unzip and run (not likely)...
But it's a heck of a lot easier to just grab the package I want in my app, unzip it and include it, pack it in my release, and go.