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In-Reply-To: <95e918c8-aaeb-d700-cc08-30f10a07162d@lsces.co.uk>
Date: Fri, 22 Mar 2019 15:00:35 +0000
Message-ID: <CA+kxMuRsECouuM0+c49tiiVZswVQckEF_VE=VMjmccPVeOEYbQ@mail.gmail.com>
To: Lester Caine <lester@lsces.co.uk>
Cc: PHP internals <internals@lists.php.net>
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="0000000000009fbfa00584b01e8e"
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [RFC] Unbundle ext/interbase
From: Danack@basereality.com (Dan Ackroyd)

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On Fri, 22 Mar 2019 at 14:10, Lester Caine <lester@lsces.co.uk> wrote:
>
> it has been impossible in recent years to get a handle
> on just what needs to be done TO maintain it.

Yes, figuring out what needs to be done takes more time that writing the
code. Did you not know this?

This is what takes up most of my time as the maintainer of the Imagick
extension. I hardly write any code for it, instead I spend a lot of time
trying to figure out:

* what has changed upstream? Do I need to support that change?
* is this bug report valid? which involves spending time trying to recreate
it.
* how is a feature of it that I've never used myself meant to work?
* what needs more documentation? And then writing that documentation.

All of that is tediously boring to me, and yet I still do it because I care
just enough to avoid the extension from being considered abandoned.

We've had this discussion about the interbase extension multiple times.
Each time people have said they will step up to maintain it. But apparently
each time no-one actually cares enough to commit the time to be up-to-speed
and maintain the extension.

> So all we are asking for is

Who is we in this sentence?

Is it end-users who claim that it's a vital part of their business, but
haven't actually contributed enough of their time to maintain it?

Or is it the billion dollar company that bought Interbase (
https://www.ideracorp.com/brands), and has recently bought Travis CI, and
yet doesn't want to hire someone to maintain the extension?

In either case, you are asking people who do not use a piece of software to
donate their own time maintaining it.

btw please do not cross post to multiple groups. If you want to make the
firebird developers aware of this proposal you should do separately from
your emails to PHP internals.

cheers
Dan
Ack

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