Re: [PHP4BETA] Re: [PHP-DEV] Re: [PHP4BETA] PHP 4.0.0 Release packaged

In article <006901bfc36e$92562040$161bbb81@christian>, Christian Wenz wrote:
>the infamous mail()-bug; if you omit the last, optional parameter for
>mail(), mail() will not work on Win32 any longer. Thank god I very quickly
>found the problem (and the solution) in the PHP online bug system, but it is
>still not fixed in 3.0.16, and not documented.

It is fixed now. It took about three minutes to find and fix. Of the two
bug reports I found in the database, neither included a patch, although
both indicated the general problem.

>As I said - I am already convinced of PHP, but in order to reach more
>people, there's a lot to do, and there were already some good ideas in
>another thread (keyword: marketing :-) ).

The people who believe it is important that PHP reach more people will
spend the time and effort to do such things. There's even companies
forming based on that notion (Zend, to name the obvious one).

But that's not really an important goal to a good many of the PHP
developers. They develop PHP to suit their needs. They share the work with
others in the hope that it may suit everyone else's needs. But they don't
develop PHP to suit everyone else's needs. Maybe its a subtle distinction;
it certainly appears to be an elusive one for many people. But it is an
important one in the open-source world.

>I want to say is - I have to support some of Manuel's points, even if I know
>that it will be painful (and maybe even not possible in the next few months)
>to implement them.

Its easy to support inflicting pain on someone else.

>What really saddens me however is the reaction on the list. If Manuel tries
>to point out what could hinder PHP from conquering the world, please don't
>blame him for that. I know a lot of people that associate with PHP a certain
>kind of arrogance of the supporters. Most of those people are Windows users,
>so they are used to suffering with their OS :-) However I agree with them on
>some point. The reaction to criticism may be justified (hey, if I was one of
>the core people behind PHP, I'd kill everybody who'd say just one word
>against it), but from a marketing point of view, it's sub-optimal. I think

Hey, say all the bad words about PHP you want. It doesn't make it any
less than what it is to me.

>everybody here respects the endless, unpaid hours of work that were put into
>PHP and into php.net, but if there's no bug-free software, there's also no
>error-free concept, and (constructive) suggestions to amend that should be
>given a forum and should be discussed without bias.

Constructive suggestions are welcome. Demands for work aren't. And
discussions of constructive suggestions will sometimes include
explanations of why the suggestion is wrong.

Jim