My musings on problems I've had with the PHP community

"Bob Chatman" bob.chatman@gmail.com wrote:

In response to "Daniel Brown" parasane@gmail.com:

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

--

Bill,

Since your blog post didn't allow comments, I'm submitting the

original message thread in question right here:

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

--

I feel a bit weird to be the person to bring this up, but i'm not quite sure
why you are directing your irritation at the PHP Community.

I'm not quite sure where you got the impression that I was irritated.
Frustrated, yes. Irritated, no.

I think I'll follow up with a second post called "What is wrong with
the PHP community" as I think I've already got a pretty good insight.
It appears as if the users are driving the developers insane.

It's been a while since I've had so many people assume that my attempts
at directly addressing a problem are targeted at them specifically.

It's amazing to me that I can put things in the post like, "this is
not intended to be derogatory" and then go on to explain my reason
for the post, and people still mistake my intentions.

I think it was Hemmingway who said, "The ocean is just the ocean. The
sky is just the sky. There is not symbolism!" in response to people
desperately trying to read between the lines of his writing to find
hidden meaning. There is no hidden meaning in that post. Stop trying
to find it and you'll better understand what I'm trying to say.

Your post makes
it sound like its the only community that says such things,

Despite my acknowledgement in the third paragraph that I understand
that this is a common problem? Despite my previous post to this
list that I posted that to my blog because I feel my description of
the problem is germane to other projects as well?

Sometimes I'm amazed at how hard it is to clearly communicate.

and im quite
certain that the number of communities with open, and closed, source
development all leave much to be said for being friendly because i have been
part of many of them. I can understand why you are irritated and feel
brushed off,

No you can't because I'm not irritated, and I don't feel brushed off.
In fact, I made my exact feelings clear in the post: frustrated and
confused. I'm frustrated because I'm trying to help fix a bug and
I'm unable to. I'm confused because I have zero clue what is
expected of me if I want to help.

For example, if I file a PR with the FreeBSD project that includes a
patch, it's usually acted on within a day. If I don't hear anything
within a few days, I post to the hackers list requesting someone take
a look at the PR. I have never had to go beyond that. I've had a
similar experience working with the PostgreSQL project. I have never
felt so helpless as I do working with the PHP project. I'm trying to
remedy that. I've already sent several emails asking for some
feedback on the bug with no response, so I escalated. What would
you do?

Perhaps your experience with other open source projects mimics mine
with the PHP project. But my experience with other projects is
pretty different.

No, not all projects are the same. Being that I've contributed to
many, I wouldn't be having trouble if they were all the same as I'd
know what to do. The PHP project is noticeably different than every
other one I can remember, and I'm trying to understand how to deal
with it.

but thats what happened and you shouldn't think that writing a
blog entry about it and posting it to the internals mailing list is going to
lead to drastic change from within, because the fact still remains that
these people are our puppeteers.

I have to be honest, you lost me with "that's what happened", and I'm
even more confused by "these people are our puppeteers".

They are developers just as we are, most
with "real jobs" and responsibilities to boot. if you have a bug to be fixed
you may very well have thought of something as being a bug which really
isn't. Taking something like that to heart though seems tired and
unnecessary.

Again, I'm confused by your statements. What do you mean by "take
to heart?"

There were two stories in that post. The first is a complaint that
it's very difficult to learn from a project that does not feel the
need to communicate. If a developer closes a bug without giving
any explanation, that's a failure to communicate, and people (like
myself) who are trying to understand what's going on are left out.

My second complaint is again about communication. I've no idea why
a patch would sit for 2 weeks with absolutely no response. No other
project that I'm aware of would ignore an attempt at contribution
for that long. If it's a matter of logistics, that's understandable,
but nobody on this list felt the need to reply to any of my queries
and say, "Bill, it might take a few months, that's just how things
work with the PHP project." And the lack of any response is what
I would call wrong.

Sure, at this point it sounds like I'm saying, "The PHP project is
doing it wrong!" Well, even if the PHP project is not wrong, it's
sufficiently different that it would make sense to explain the
differences somewhere. Did I miss a FAQ entry on how to contribute?
Because if so, please point me to it and I'll apologize and come
back when I've read it carefully.

--
Bill Moran
http://www.potentialtech.com

Antony Dovgal tony@daylessday.org wrote:

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.

You misunderstood what I said.
I'm still involved and I'm not going to leave the development.

Fair enough.

But I do not respond to the reports that are not directly related to the extensions
I maintain.

Well, I still consider this a problem. While your clarification is
necessary, I don't feel it alters my statement.

And one of the reasons is users like you.

I've been mulling over how to respond to this statement for a while.

Please, for my own edification, describe who you think I am. I'm
absolutely certain you're mistaken, please read below.

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.

So you decided to help us with that and wrote a nice blog post telling how
evil PHP developers made you to wait for two weeks, right?

So, I'm not sure I have any suggestions. Looks like PHP is a tough project
to be a part of.

Well, I do have one. Please do something more useful. Thanks.

I'm unsure where all your hatred stems from. I'm trying to help get a
bug in PHP fixed and I'm having difficulty with it. As a result, I'm
not trying to address the difficulty directly.

I can only assume that you're having a rough day, or that you've dealt
with so many jerks lately that your frame of mind is that everyone who
criticizes is a jerk. There is, however, such a thing as constructive
criticism, and that is what I am trying to do.

--
Bill Moran
http://www.potentialtech.com