RE: [phplib] Re: [PHP-PEAR] PHPLib and Pear merge

-----Original Message-----
From: Sebastian Bergmann [mailto:[email protected]]
  Reminds me, the "merging" of PHPLIB into PEAR.

  Back when Kristian and I announced that PHPLIB should - from our point
of
view - be merged into PEAR, there was only positive feedback. And then,
people went silent and now after about two months of no help offering
from
the PHPLIB mailing list people - they're against the merging. What do
you
people want?

-----End Original Message-----

What do I want?  I want the people managing PEAR to make it easy to find
out HOW to help, HOW to be involved, and to WELCOME that help.

After the discussion you mentioned above, I joined one of the PEAR
mailing lists, and I went to the PEAR website to try to find out how I
could get involved.  I won't say there were no answers to my questions
to be found at all, but I will say that it was a "user hostile"
experience.  As others have also pointed out, the PEAR managers do not
seem to be willing to let any of us from the "unclean masses" join the
project.

Even the PHPLIB "project" is less than ideal in this way.  If I wanted
to help out, but I had never used CVS before, I would have no idea what
a CVS committer was.  Even though I *do* use CVS, I have not seen
anything which says "if you want to help, you need to ask [ HERE ] for
CVS write access".  Until Fred asked for a write-access CVS login on
this mailing list, I had no idea how to become part of the group who
maintains PHPLIB.

Not every person who wants to help is going to be sophisticated in what
a PEAR manager or PHPLIB manager considers to be "common/ordinary" open
software practices, e.g. using CVS and getting access to it, etc.  But
that does NOT mean that those people are not good developers or would
not be helpful.  People have different backgrounds and experiences and
skills.

Sure, an interested developer could "chase down" the managers and ask
questions until they got the answers they needed.  But I'm guessing that
many of us are quite busy doing real work, making a living and living
our lives.  We may not feel very motivated to jump through stupid hoops
to try to get someone to take our help.  We have _some_ time to devote
to helping, but we don't have unlimited time to help.  So we don't feel
like wasting our time just to get some answers.

At least that's my viewpoint.  If I try to help someone, but they make
it hard to help, then I start to think they don't want my help, or that
they are not worth helping.  I've got more important things to do.

This is not a flame.  I am trying to explain the psychology of why some
people who want things changed and who would be willing to help, may not
appear to be volunteering.  They are feeling "put off" or "put out" or
"turned off" (sorry I can't find a non-idiomatic English way to say it)
by the process.  In other words, these people find it more difficult or
more unpleasant than necessary to help.

One more reason might be that a person uses many Open Software packages.
For example, they use Apache, MySQL, PHP, PHPLIB and Linux.  They see
things they want changed or improved in all 5 packages.  But they don't
have enough time to help all 5 projects improve.  They have to pick
which one, if any, they can spend time helping.  The others, they can
only post messages to a mailing list asking that something be improved
in the hopes that others will see the same value and make the changes.
Or maybe they are already involved in several other Open Software
efforts.

So I would give the people the "benefit of the doubt".  I do think most
people on this list are NOT complainers.  I take their comments in the
most positive way possible, because I do not know their individual
circumstances.

..chris