[PHP-DEV] [RFC] End PEAR Project Endorsement

Hey internals,

I would like to open the discussion to "End PEAR Project Endorsement":
https://wiki.php.net/rfc/end_pear_endorsement

Over the last months the state of PEAR was several times discussed here. Multiple people reached out to PEAR via direct and official channels; no finite solution could be found. About three months ago I started going through all previous discussions and old (not voted) RFC attempts; I don't see an unsolvable blocker. Hence, I drafted this RFC, and created a static mirror of the PEAR website (to keep the CLI working; infra team was consulted). After that, it once again was tried to find a cooperative solution (foundation also aware), and things given time to play out another two months -- with no finite result.

PEAR was a great effort, and we can all be grateful to the people who invested their time to make it happen.

However, times changed -- people use Composer. The PEAR site is partly broken, spammed, has very little activity, and as of recent happens to be unmaintained.

We win nothing by further stalling a decision; I believe we should stop the endorsement for PEAR.

This RFC attempts to address all open questions from previous discussions, and seeks to offer a balanced and practical solution.

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Cheers
Nick