Re: Re: [metabase-dev] MDB news

Hello, On 09/14/2002 05:10 PM, Björn Schotte wrote:

What are you doing for the benefit of PHP? And please

I don't have to prove myself. Either you see me with good faith or there

What gives you the impression that I don't see you with good faith? (To give you some positive statement:

It is the sense that I get from you challenging me to demonstrate that what I do is for the benefit of PHP, when it is pretty much public and you know about it.

I liked the discussion on PHP-DEV about SOAP/Web Services some months ago. I liked your postings, but only one part of them: the fact that you see SOAP/web services as an important thing. Nevertheless I didn't like the tone of your mails.)

Yes, the tone is often use as an excuse to refute what I propose.

don't tell me about phpclasses.

And what is it really your problem against PHP Classes site?

Nothing.

So, why can't I tell you about PHP Classes as something that I do for the benefit of PHP?

have decided on their own to exclude themselves from participating in it. It is their choice, so it is their problem.

Yep. And the same is for those developers who don't like the PEAR coding standard and so they exclude themselves from participating in it. It is their choice, so it is their problem.

No, it is not just their problem, is a problem of the whole PHP community. The PHP Classes site is an initiative of an individual that is not sanctioned by the PHP Group and it is not assumed to become the PHP standard library of ready to use components unlike PEAR was assumed.PEAR will hardly become such standard library by circunstancially excluding many qualified developers from contributing. Even if those developers loose, PHP looses much more.

Just one example: recently I offered to advertise at not cost the PHP-Con conference that is going to be held in the US soon. I believe that it is an important event for the PHP community in North America and the improvement of PHP credibility world wide. I don't know if that will help much, but I figure that 500,000 full banner views may help leading some attendants more to the conference.

Yep.

Oddly I did not get a response from you.

I receive more than 600 mails per day (which mostly I have to read and most things, like PHP-CVS, have to scan to be up-to-date) and I am involved in some non-commercial projects, in some commercial projects that are regularly (PHP Conference, PHP Magazin), some projects that are non-commercial and that have nothing to do with PHP (that's because I am self-employed, i.e. self-marketing, publishing my newsletter etc.etc.) and then (surprise!) I have to earn money with other commercial projects. And (surprise again!) I also have some private life. So ...

Bjorn, my message was a follow-up to a message of yours in a thread that you participated actively in the comp.lang.php newsgroup so it was not really in your mailbox and since you were so promptly responding to the messages in that thread, it didn't seem like you would miss the message as you did not miss others.

Either you did not notice the

... I didn't have the time to answer you. And as told in another

That sounds pretty much as if you are not interested. If you aren't, I prefer that you be straight and say it.

mail, you don't need special permission from me to promote the PHP Conference. If you need something like a banner, please contact Frank Stepan <fstepan@entwickler.com>. He'll send it to you.

The opportunity is for a fair banner exchange like it was accepted by the PHP-CON marketing people. So, if you are interested, just reply to me privately on this subject.

This offer preceeded by far your questioning of what I have done for PHP , so you can't tell me that I am not doing nothing, or at least I do not try.

Why do you have the impression that I think that you are doing nothing? I didn't say that, if you remember. I only asked.

As I said, it seems like a challenge to prove what I do is for the benefit of PHP.

(and "PEAR elitists" _is_ aggressive) may be funny (usually I

If you think it is aggressive, you missed my point. Maybe being an elitist means something else in your mind than in mine.

I refer to the tone. If somebody wants to be heard by somebody, he has to adapt to a factual tone.

The tone is intentionally meant to bring the attention of people that otherwise would avoid the subject as have done before.

My point is to provide feedback about the way people are seeing PEAR. If you think that is just me, go and read the comp.lang.php thread about why people do not want to use PEAR. I intentionally excluded myself from

I have read this thread and loughed out loudly.

I said the thread, not just a single message. I did not say that all that spoken are right. Some may not be using PEAR for misconceptions, but that also means that something should be done to avoid misconceptions. Anyway, if avoid trying to understand why a few users do not use PEAR, you are sticking the head on the sand and can't blame people for not using it.

| 1) I had to bring in a whole slew of other classes (for error handling, etc.) in | order to use the mail class, and use a different coding style that I did not | have time for. <alqf2s$7ief$1@ID-156870.news.dfncis.de> Yeah, a real professional user. He doesn't have "time" to dig into the _use_ of the PEAR classes (on the other side, you need to bring time with you if you want to *commit* PEAR classes, but this user wanted to _use_ PEAR classes).

AFAIK, this user never meant to be a contributor. He was explaining why he did not want to become a user.

Also, he obviously hasn't seen some bigger OO projects/frameworks where one class relies to another, i.e. as PHPLib Auth class does (relying on PHPLIB::Session, PHPLIB::DB and PHPLIB:CT_* class)

Moderate dependence is understandable. However, forcing a dependendance on fat base classes like it is required in PEAR is often inappropriate as it makes applications slower and consume more memory, often when you hardly use any of the functionalities of dependant classes.

| Now that you mention it I do remember that the PEAR MIME class was also | based on his work. Sort of a sad commentary on PEAR that it takes good work | and makes it hard to use by forcing you in a direction where you don't want | to go, or where it takes too much time to learn to go, or both. <alrjab$elo4$1@ID-156870.news.dfncis.de> The next professional user. Why does he think that he's the navel of the world and everything else has to follow _his_ style? Reality is bottom-up: if _you want to use_ another thing, you have to adapt to the thing's style, and not the other way round.

That is why he and many other people are not using PEAR.

| If PEAR opened up and became more CPAN like it would gain | mind share and leave companies like Zend to produce the coordinated | class libraries. PHP will need these to span web development from | guestbooks to enterprise applications. <alu23s$qdt$1$830fa795@news.demon.co.uk> Can't agree to this. For me, there's no link from enterprise applications to "PEAR being something like CPAN". He argues that PHP needs a "PEAR being something like CPAN with Zend producing coordinated class libs" to enter the enterprise market. Obviously he doesn't know that PHP already entered the enterprise market.

PHP has little credibility to enter in the entreprise market like other languages did.

like those things), but it's not true thinking using these words will change anything in the heads of the developers.

I would not be that sure.

Then prove it.

I won't bother to give examples, but you may want to try to pay more attention to what happens after many heated discussions that I participated.

To be honest, I have sometimes the impression that you're looking up for the greatest acceptance of phpclasses and not of PHP itself. ;-)

How come that it is a problem for you? If that was named JavaClasses or

Why do you think that it is a problem for me? Are you so much suffering from a persecution mania that you always try to lay words into my mouth that I haven't written?

You wrote that you have the impression that I am looking for the site to have the greatest acceptance as if that is a problem for you. To be sure that is what you mean I asked.

I only said that I have the *impression* that you *tend* to see phpclasses as the navel of the world. It is not a problem for me, since I can ignore it and I or my dayly life don't suffer from it. But the impression stands out.

Bjorn, you were the one that brought the PHP Classes site to this thread. You do not seem to ignore it and it seems that you are making a big deal out of it as if that is a problem for you. I wish people stop having sick feelings against the site that after all is a good thing for the PHP community. However, it seems that some people keep bringing the site to the discussions that I am envolved some times with the intention to attack the things that I do. I can imagine how that must be frustrating because the more you mention it, the more it attracts the attention of people that probably did not know it and will become curious. Since the site is a good thing for many PHP users, chances are that they like it and will find these attacks to what I do totally uncalled.

Demanding people to bend and become less productive to be allowed to contribute is a very ungrateful posture.

I don't think so. Also you may not forget that the "PEAR el3333333t" is very helpful. I can remember Martin Jansen helping me commiting the PEARifyed PHPLIB Template class (thanks Martin!) some months ago. So I don't think the "PEAR el3333333t" is trying to keep people out.

That doesn't avoid the fact that you had to spend time starting to PEARify the code yourself. For people with classes with many thousands of line to contribute, the work that is necessary is totally unrealistic. OTOH, making people that worked consistently with the same style for many years, is not viable unless they agree that they can continue productive using the PEAR style. Like I said, if you are right-handed, it would be like making you write with left hand from now on.

You make it sound as if developers have the duty to conform to rules that they are not paid to work by, as if they are obligated to contribute. Since they are not obligated to contribute at all, obviously you will see a lot of qualified developers refusing to contribute.

So what? Is this the problem of PEAR? No.

It is a problem of the PHP community and its future.

- The rules were defined by a small number of people: an elite.

If I remember right (please correct me, list members), those rules were discussed on this list. This list is open to the public. So everybody who _wanted_ to influence the process of creating the coding styles had the opportunity to do so. 1.) It's always easy to criticise things _after_ they were created. 2.) It's more productive (and it's harder so that may be the reason why people like you are preferring 1.) to criticise things during the _process of creation_.

I suggested to be more flexible allowing the code to preserve the original style of the contributor if he is not willing to convert. I was not heard.

- The rules were not subject of approval by any democratic process.

The democratic process was the discussion on this list. In my opinion, having Usenet rules (for example) like RfD/CfV would be overblown.

There was no vote, just opinions exchanged.

- The rules serve the purposes that those few that defined them in the sense that they effectively exclude other developers that could contribute with superior packages that would make obsolete other

I can repeat myself again: everyone who decides not to contribute to PEAR has made a choice. That's okay. But that's the problem of the developer and not for PEAR. If some rules have to be re-thought, I trust the "PEAR el3333333t" will do that.

The subject was brought over and over again and the PEAR elite remains inflexible.

I think the same would be okay for phpclasses, wouldn't it? So if somebody would refuse to contribute to phpclasses for reason X and Y, you would also say "That's okay. You made a choice not contributing to phpclasses. It's your problem, not the problem of phpclasses", wouldn't you?

Sure, but the difference is that the site does not require anybody to change their classes to contribute. The only requirement is that the code is contributed in the site is made of PHP Classes, as that is why the site is named like that. There are no style requirements because it is obvious that if I was dumb to lift difficulties, people would not contribute and the purpose of sharing knowledge and ready to use components would be lost. -- Regards, Manuel Lemos