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Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 15:16:17 -0400
To: Antony Dovgal <tony@daylessday.org>
Cc: internals@lists.php.net
Message-ID: <20071015151617.0706a365.wmoran@potentialtech.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 Antony Dovgal <tony@daylessday.org>:

> On 15.10.2007 22:05, Bill Moran 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.
> 
> I don't know about Dmitry, but I can explain why I stopped looking through the bug reports lately.
> 
> So here is my reasoning: I can spend several hours a day fixing bugs and helping other 
> people to fix their problems, explaining their mistakes, and what do I get for that? 
> "Thank you"? I can't recall when I heard it last time.
> The only thing I get is personal insults for closing someone's report as bogus. And I 
> also have to prove that it is bogus and close it several times explaining why it is so 
> and why I'm not an asshole.
> 
> Also some people tend to think that their bug reports have to be reviewed now (I mean NOW!!!), 
> as they probably do not realize that developers may have vacation, they can be busy with their 
> real job, there might be other bugs with much higher priority, or (god forbid!) they can be speaking 
> on some conference.
> 
> These people also do not realize that most of the extensions are maintained by certain people and 
> other developers are either not interested in fixing them, or are not familiar with the code, 
> or just do now want to touch other people's code without discussing this change with the author 
> (which is another unwritten rule, btw).
> 
> After all, this kind of job became too frustrating to me and I've decided to take a rest (at least for a while).
> Thank you for confirming that my decision was right.

Wow ... sorry to hear that Antony.

But you're confirming something I theorized ... there _is_ something wrong
with the PHP community.  If contributors like yourself have become so
frustrated with the users that they don't want to be involved, there is
a REAL problem.

I expect that this sort of frustration on the part of developers leads to
exacerbated frustration on the part of the users, which leads to more
frustration on the part of developers ... and so on and so on in an
endless loop.

(and science claims there's no such thing as a perpetual motion machine)

So, I'm not sure I have any suggestions.  Looks like PHP is a tough project
to be a part of.

-- 
Bill Moran
http://www.potentialtech.com