Re: [PHP-DEV] Re: [PHP-CVS] cvs: php4 /ext/sablot php_sablot.h From: Zeev Suraski (zeev <email protected>)
Date: 08/12/01

At 16:43 12-08-01, Stig Sæther Bakken wrote:
>[Zeev Suraski <zeev <email protected>>]
> > Guys,
> >
> > It's really simple, even trivial soft-dev issue, which is discussed in
> > a completely broken manner, because you pour politics into the picture.
>
>But Zeev, as much as it sucks, there _is_ politics in the picture, and
>there has always been, especially in PHP 4.

It's really what you make of it. I don't see any good reasons for the
amount of politics that was poured into PHP, and I think that none of the
fears which were planted in people's hearts in the last couple of years was
justified. As I said earlier, I think most people don't really care about
this sort of stuff. Those who do, I believe, care mostly due to threads
started by the same small group of people. I think that politics can
(almost) disappear from PHP if these threads simply ceased to exist.

>Some people are uncomfortable with the control Zend Inc. has on the
>core of PHP. I don't know if that is what you think is childish, but
>I certainly don't. With the current state of the Internet economy in
>mind, I think people have a right to be a bit paranoid.

It's Ltd, not Inc :)
At any rate, whatever 'control' we have over the core of PHP is
technological, not by virtue of licenses nor politics. Large portions of
the core of PHP were written by Andi and me (SAPI, Windows port, output
abstraction, etc. etc.) outside the scope of the engine. It just so
happens that we work full-time on PHP related things. Sure, some of them
go to proprietary Zend software, but we spend a huge amount of our time
(I'd even say most) developing PHP itself. In the last year or so, my work
has mostly been in the PHP core outside the engine.

>To speak for myself, I have two problems with the whole "Zend versus
>PHP" problem:
>
>* It causes a lot of unnecessary arguing and bickering on the mailing
> list (like this message), which in the end becomes discouraging for
> everyone. The result: "F* it, I'm sick of silly PHP politics, I'm
> switching to Foo."

I don't think that this happens too often - I think that comments like
Sebastian's are much more likely, which are more like "F* it, shut the hell
up.". At any rate, it would stop only if politics went away, and decisions
were made for technical reasons again.

>* The design of the language is basically run by two people, whom I
> suspect don't program much with PHP themselves anymore. If this
> assumption is true, there is a lot of valuable "hands on user
> experiences" missing from the language design process.

As much as people portray it differently, as Andi said, this probably has
nothing (or every little) to do with the political issues. It has to do
with what people do and are interested in.

As for whether or not we're making informed & good decisions, I believe
that we are. The reason for that is simple - PHP's success made a quantum
leap with release 3, and was further improved with release 4.
It's true that we don't spend a large portion of our time writing PHP
scripts, but we do spend a large portion of our time talking to people who
develop in PHP - in all ranges, from simple scripts to huge sites. Do we
have a strong saying on what goes into the core and what doesn't? We do,
and I think that the success of PHP is a good indicator that we're been
doing a good job. This doesn't come to say that others in the PHP project
weren't doing a good job, e.g. the module developers, documentation team,
QA team, etc.; However, if the infrastructure wasn't doing well, PHP would
have died, or lingered, or stepped back - and in reality, it's doing quite
the opposite.

Zeev 

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