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Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 14:44:46 -0400
To: "Daniel Brown" <parasane@gmail.com>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] My musings on problems I've had with the PHP
 community
From: wmoran@potentialtech.com (Bill Moran)

In response to "Daniel Brown" <parasane@gmail.com>:

> On 10/15/07, Bill Moran <wmoran@potentialtech.com> wrote:
> >
> > http://www.potentialtech.com/cms/node/48
> >
> > Hope that article doesn't come across as too harsh, but I really feel
> > like it needed to be said.
> >
> > --
> > Bill Moran
> > http://www.potentialtech.com
> >
> > --
> > PHP Internals - PHP Runtime Development Mailing List
> > To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
> >
> >
> 
>     Bill,
> 
>     Since your blog post didn't allow comments, I'm submitting the
> original message thread in question right here:
> 
> > On Thu, May 3, 2007 6:59 am, Crayon wrote:
> >> On Thursday 03 May 2007 03:18, Richard Lynch wrote:
> >>> On Wed, May 2, 2007 1:14 pm, Bill Moran wrote:
> >>> > http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=39062
> >>
> >>> This discussion may be better placed on "Internals" where the people
> >>> who make these decisions hang out more...
> >>
> >> Maybe Bill wanted us lowly users to know that the all powerful
> >> developers
> >> aren't listening to their users.
> >
> > :-)
> 
> > Some of them are definitely listening here.
> 
> > And all of them are trying to juggle needs/demands/desires of an
> > enormous community with more variety than, errr, dog species?
> 
> > Lord knows I'm not real happy with some of the decisions/directions,
> > but you know what?  Anybody *really* unhappy that cares enough can get
> > off their butt and start submitting patches, and push things a
> > different direction.  Self included, mind you. :-)
> 
>     It seems to me that Lynch was actually just saying, "you seem as
> though you have the technical know-how, so jump in feet-first and
> let's get going!"  It wasn't "ripping [you] a new one", as you
> suggested in your post, unless your "old one" was that defective in
> the first place and was inadvertently replaced by the "new one".  ;-P
> 
>     Before you make a public post demeaning the community that drives
> the project you are using, no doubt, to help put food on your table,
> why not take a moment to read this fantastic Wikipedia article:
> 
>         http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarcasm

Are you implying that I'm being inappropriately sarcastic, or that I'm
misunderstanding sarcasm when it's used?

Thanks for pulling out your original reply.  I intended to post a link
to the message thread, but today's been crazy.  Hopefully I'll find time
to update that post later this week.  Now that you've reminded me, you
_were_ one of the people who responded in a positive manner.

It's possible that the focus of the article is off, as I wasn't as much
interested in the mild misunderstandings that occurred on the mailing
list.  The two things I'm frustrated by are:

1) The use of "not a bug" to close things that look like bugs with no
   further explanation
2) The fact that I submitted a fix to a bug 2 weeks ago and nobody has
   even acknowledged it.

Of course, any time you attempt to levy constructive criticism, it's
liable to be misunderstood.  The fact that you're calling it
"demeaning" is hard evidence that's already happened.  My goal here
is for others to understand the problem, otherwise, nothing can be done
about it.

As far as the "public" posting, I assure you that hardly anybody reads
my blog :)  http://www.potentialtech.com/awstats/awstats.pl
(yes, stats collection has been broken for the past week, but you can
see several months of demonstration that nobody cares what I think :)

Additionally, I think this discussion is of general interest to all
open source groups.  A good friend of mine at CMU has been studying
open source groups and how they attract contributors, and how they
sometimes scare them away.  My opinion is that the lack of response
from core developers is going to make contributors think their time
is better spend elsewhere, and I'd prefer _not_ to see that happen.

-- 
Bill Moran
http://www.potentialtech.com