PEAR: The next biggest thing??? Maybe...

My comments about including BinaryCloud into PEAR was more a philosophical proposition that we ought to explore. While I can sympathize with those of you who are striving to maintain a conservative idea of what PEAR ought to be, we also have to think for a moment about the crazy phenomenon that has brought us all together in the first place... PHP for starters. I am sure that when Rasmus created PHP, he had not envisioned it as it is today, from what I understand, PHP came about not to change the face of web application development, as it just may someday and many argue it is doing... rather I understand Rasmus created PHP in an effort to better track his own online resume, and look where that has taken us all. There are of course many factors that have led to the success of PHP, and I in no way want to belittle the effort of everyone who has contributed to its success, but I would argue nothing was more significant than when Rasmus decided to open his creation to others, and allow for it to develop on its own trajectory. If he had not done so... obviously there would not even be a PEAR to talk about. Again, in thinking along this line, we have to ask what has made PHP so successful? Especially when we have had other options all along, I mean CGI/PERL is a very capable way to develop, C++ and C even better, but they are not very user friendly, or simple, and perhaps most of all, not suited for the world of web development as PHP is. There are really three things I feel that have contributed to the success of PHP. One, it is useful, fulfills a need, and for the most part is well documented. There was a need for a scripting language that was flexible, and relatively easy to learn. PHP is both flexible and easy to learn (relatively speaking). There are for sure countless people out there now developing for the web, and doing so because PHP made that a possibility. That at least is the case for me anyway. However... concerning PEAR: There seems to be an issue of whether application frameworks are appropriate or not, I don't see why they should not be. PEAR after does stand for "extension and add-on repository." Might not an add-on be construed as more than a straightforward class? I really do not understand why, if someone wants to develop an application framework that builds on the solid PEAR base, what the harm would be to add a section, or area for them. I mean we are here trying to create a common code base, but we do not want to include anything that actually uses that code base? That does not make much sense. It seems to me, that something that used the PEAR framework, would make a great addition to the pear project, and in turn would attract a whole hell of a lot of interest in PEAR, this is turn would probably create a lot more interest in contributing to the PEAR core base code. There are a lot of people out there who are developing great PHP applications, yet none of them share a common base, in the end we end up with a whole bunch of incompatible projects that cannot really work with each other, a lot of confusion, and a very big waste of resources. In the end it only holds back PHP. It seems there are a lot of developers out there who would be more than willing to contribute to an open source project such as PEAR if they saw it as more than a few useful classes and nice error reporting. Someone mentioned that PEAR should follow in the footsteps on CPAN and used that as a reason we should not consider doing something with PEAR. Yet, CPAN was a system that grew out of a demand that existed in a PERL programming environment years ago when the Internet then looked nothing like the Internet now. I propose that we not simply set out to repeat the model of CPAN when we are dealing with something that is much different. The world of PHP development, is not the world of PERL development. The world of PHP development exists because obviously something was missing in the world of PERL development. I am not an expert but I would be willing to bet the very number of PHP developers out there is beginning to rival that of PERL developers, at least if it has not yet, in time it will. However, PEAR should be more than CPAN... as for what that is, I cannot say for sure. All I can do is maybe motivate some of you to think about PEAR in a different manner, and see it's potential beyond what we all might have originally envisioned, just as Rasmus did with his self made utilities to track his own web site stats. I feel... better yet, I propose that we look beyond models of the past and think about the unchartered future, a future we can all play a role in shaping and defining right now! I feel we need to open our eyes and see just how significant PEAR can actually be, or at least ponder the possibility. I honestly feel that if we proceeded in thinking of PEAR as a yet undefined model rather than a PHP version of CPAN, the possibilities are limitless and PEAR in the end can be as important as when Rasmus decided to share his work those few short years ago. Again... just my 2cents. > -----Original Message----- > From: Stig.Bakken@fast.no [mailto:Stig.Bakken@fast.no] > Sent: Sunday, July 15, 2001 4:00 AM > To: Alex Black > Cc: pear-dev@lists.php.net > Subject: Re: [PEAR-DEV] Re: BinaryCloud should be let into PEAR > withothers as well.... my 2cents > > > Alex Black wrote: > > > > >> Inclusion should not necessarily mean "endorsement" it > should mean "base set > > >> of quality requirements met" > > >> > > > > > > Ahh.. But I get the feeling it does. > > > > Right. I think that's a mistake but that's me and this isn't > the place for > > that. Did that once (the whole proving my point thing) and I > only needed to > > do that once :) > > I'm aware of this, and I too probably have a few spots on my record for > doing this kind of thing, but I strive not to. It will be less > difficult when we have the distribution framework up (I want my hand > back dammit), then distributing a PEAR class will no longer be > equivalent with "hosted at php.net and pear-dev will rip you to shreds > if you misindent one function" :) > > - Stig > > -- > PEAR Development Mailing List (http://pear.php.net/) > To unsubscribe, e-mail: pear-dev-unsubscribe@lists.php.net > For additional commands, e-mail: pear-dev-help@lists.php.net > To contact the list administrators, e-mail: php-list-admin@lists.php.net