[phplib] [RFC] Future of phplib From: nathan r. hruby (nathan <email protected>)
Date: 07/21/01

I love PHPLib. It's fast, flexible and fairly elegant. It is
pleasant to work with. The PHPLib community is smart, and forgiving
of my ranting and raving here. I hope you will all continue that
trend after reading this. :)

I hate the fact that there hasn't been a release in over a year.
Kristian and Ulf have abandoned PHPLIB for new ventures -- that
was evident last year and made official at the start of this year.
I wish them luck in their new ventures. They have created something
great with PHPLib.

In an attempt to let PHPLib down slowly Kris and Ulf tried to get
PHPLib ported into PEAR. As we all know (or at least should know)
PHPLib won't be ported to PEAR in any form that will be usable with
the current body of code that exists for it. Some of the HTML bits
might make it in if someone makes them PEAR-ified. Session, Auth,
Perm, DB_Sql, Template and such will die.

Giancarlo's posts about both the recent security hole and questions
about making a standard method of implementation went, for the most
part, unanswered or with little discussion. This is something,
even six months ago, which would have elicited a much larger response
from this audience. So the question is: Is there a PHPLib community
anymore? Are there people out there who want to see PHPLib continue?
Do *YOU* care, or have you just started modifying PHPLib to your
taste without sending patches or anything back?

Max has done some work on PHPLib-ifying PHP4 native sessions and
Ulf has been poking away at a much needed and promised re-implementation
of OOForms. I've worked on the web site, Chris has fixed some
bugs, but really I think that we feel a little lost, lacking in
direction from both the community and the previous developers.
Has PHPLib reached the end of its life cycle? Two people fooling
with projects they need for their own work does not a library make.

I personally have a lot of time invested into PHPLib and would like
to see it continue. Not just for phpSlash, but for my other projects
and as an alternative to PEAR. Yes, I have my complaints about
PEAR, but they are mine. I do feel, however, that a lightweight
alternative such as PHPLib still needs to exist.

So I propose we move PHPLib to SourceForge. Infrastructure-wise
it can't be beat and it will hopefully attract some of you all to
contribute a little more. Maybe it will attract a few more others
from outside the PHPLib world. Furthermore, it will allow many
people to keep track of PHPLib, not just the one or two that are
doing it now.

Part of this proposal is a call for help. I would not want to see
PHPLib move to SourceForge and have it languish as it is here. So
I am asking other members of the community volunteer a little time
and help out with stuff. If you have patches, send them in. If
you have time, request to be a part of the group and verify / commit
patches. Develop stuff, make things work the PHP4 way, document
things, whatever, but please help!

To start it off, if there is agreement, I will volunteer the next
week or so to getting the SourceForge account set up, getting CVS
imported, making new mailing lists, moving the web site, making an
announcement, releasing a new PHPLib with a fix for the security
hole, etc. I ask that before this happens some other folks could
volunteer for being a patch wrangler, or to beautify their favorite
class, or to volunteer their own classes, etc. Or else there will
be no one to maintain the moved PHPLib and thus the move will be
pointless.

If there is no agreement I will simply release the patched version
on the PHPLib web site, and hand over the admin of the site to
someone else.

-n 

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