Re: HTTP Class

Hello Rasmus, On 05-Jan-01 18:41:52, you wrote: >Manuel, we obviously have different approaches to things, but could you >please tone down your attacks a bit. Calling us communists because we >don't do things the way you prefer is rather strong. I think you are oversimplifying the issues. In theory communist is beautiful because it promotes the values of sharing the fruits of each others' work. The problem is that in practice it is not viable because it leads to elitism where a small number of people end up controlling what the others can do or can't so they can belong to the community, just like the elite is the sole owner of the reason and always knows what's best for the community. It's not just what I prefer. It is just that you overlook the opportunities of letting more people contribute because you only accept one way to do it right. >You say PEAR has the wrong approach because we prefer to have just one >definitive class for each problem. And that your approach is better >because you can have 8 different classes that do the same thing in >different ways. There is obviously a need for diversity, but sometimes >you need just one way to do things. Imagine if there were 10 different >syntaxes for a while() loop in PHP? At a certain point you need to set a erm... not there isn't multiple ways to do some things in PHP, like the operators && and AND that are the same and that is a good thing because it makes PHP more familiar for both C/Java programmers and Basic programmers. >style and stick with it. PEAR is an attempt to get a unified set of >classes written in a unified manner with consistent documentation and >predictable naming, etc. Many people have asked for this, so that is what >were are providing. This does not preclude other people from writing >their own collections of classes obviously, but I fail to see why you are >so dead set against the PHP team trying to pull such a collection together >using the same team approach that has built PHP over the years. I am not dead set against anybody, it is that the prior poster contested the fact that the PHP Classes site requires people to login before they can download, when in practice the access of PEAR repository to authors that want to contribute is much worse because they want to publically beg for a CVS account when what should be happening is that authors should be encourage to contribute for the joy of the whole PHP community. >Yes, we have maintainers and people who manage this and thus sometimes >contributions are rejected because it doesn't fit within the PEAR >framework nicely for whatever reason. This also happens throughout the >development of PHP. Without some control and oversight by people who have >the larger picture in mind we will end up with chaos. Yeah, right, the past history demonstrated that because nobody is the sole owner of reason, valid and useful suggestions and contributions were stupidly rejected just because you assumed to know better. I could bring up many examples, but I don't care to take yet another exhaustive discussion were people on one side are not willing to think more openly and question: "couldn't the other side be telling me something useful that I should follow?!" >PHP is one of the most open Open Source projects around. There are over >200 people who have CVS write access to the PHP tree. Very very few >projects have been so open and I doubt you will find a project where it is >easier to get an account. I agree that PHP is more open than others still called Open Source projects but that doesn't mean there isn't space for improvement. I remember that PHP development was more closed. Just 2 examples: Once I suggested that PHP should have memory allocation sanity checks to help tracking more bugs faster, and what I got was "go and patch your own version if you want that." Fortunately somebody (Zeev?) added what I suggested not a long time after that and PHP benefits of an indirect level of stability due to that despite it's quite complex today. Not a very long time ago, right before PHP 4.0.0 was released, I suggested that PHP development should have two weeks of code freeze before each major release on which developers should only be fixing outstanding bugs and adding missing documentation because that would make a different in the acceptance of PHP among people that are reluctant to adopt PHP for Web development. What I got is "we can't hold PHP release anymore because the world is waiting". Fortunately, a Quality Assurance group was formed not a long time after that makes extensive tests before all PHP releases which puts PHP development in an higher level of maturity and credibility. Honestly I don't think I know it all (nobody knows it all), but I have been around and have an extensive experience in software development. I just hope that people question my views and wonder if what I am telling you would not be a better option for a better PHP development and community fostering. The way I see it your greatest problem is that you still miss the point that community could grow larger if you started assuming that each individual has ego that must be valued to be encouraged. You should be thankful for the contributions that people make instead of discarding those that are willing to participate. Regards, Manuel Lemos Web Programming Components using PHP Classes. Look at: http://phpclasses.UpperDesign.com/?user=mlemos@acm.org -- E-mail: mlemos@acm.org URL: http://www.mlemos.e-na.net/ PGP key: http://www.mlemos.e-na.net/ManuelLemos.pgp --