Re: [PHP4BETA] Re: PHP 4.0.0Release packaged

Hello Jim,

On 21-May-00 18:29:54, you wrote:

>In article <[email protected]>, Manuel Lemos wrote:
>>PHP still lacks that professional presence.  Some would say that is not
>>important as long as developers are having fun. That's not enough. You can't
>>live just on fun.  PHP has to be better known and recognized as a serious
>>solution, and not because it is Open Source or free for the matter.
>>
>>While that doesn't happen many of us are embarrassed by many small details
>>of lack of professional support that prevents us from even talking of PHP
>>as a solution for many of our job offers to start with.

>This is such a load of crap. I find it abhorrent that people are having
>to defend the software, documentation, and other work they are making
>available for free just because it somehow impacts anybody else's ability
>to make money.

>I think your problem is that you seem to be unable to live off other
>people's fun. I don't see how that gives you any right to demand or even
>request that they conform to your notion of how they should live.

I'm afraid you are missing my point. I am not demading, I am suggesting.
As I said before, I am just doing that because I feel that is necessary to
evolve in terms of quality to see PHP have wider acceptance. If you don't
care for PHP having wider acceptance, disregard my suggestions.


>Want to do some good? Spend the time you would otherwise spend arguing
>pointlessly about this and clean out some of the bogus bug reports. I was

Once upon a time I requested a CVS account that would allow me to do such
kind of bug fixing.  The request was meant to be able to integrate a a
feature that was desired by many other users.  The request was ignored.
Even though I no longer have that much time free. I can't do much that
would be effective as I was not granted with a CVS account.


>able to knock out a dozen or so in 20 minutes. Your PostgreSQL bug is one

Great.  So, after all you admit that fixing bugs is not quite a matter of
that much free time.  I knew it.  I also know that most PHP contributors
rather only add features than fixing bugs and adding documentation because
it isn't as much fun.

I wish some people would understand that development should be more
responsible in the sense that new features create expectations that may
disappoint users if they are not usable enough because outstanding bugs or
lacking. I understand that when you do stuff for free you just do what you
want, but sometimes you need to do some things that you'd better not do
so that your contributions keep an high value.


>of 440 (or whatever), so the odds of anyone going in to fix it are much
>slimmer than if someone goes in and cleans out all the cruft in the bug

Too late. It's fixed now by Jouni Ahto.


>database. You could also just dig in and fix the PostgreSQL bug yourself.

Actually I did something more important.  I went through 100K of PHP code
trying to eliminate as much as possible of it to reduce to the smallest PHP
sample that would be enough to show the behaviour.  Believe me, just this
made me stop what I was doing and hang on with that for a whole afternoon.

Then I even tried to look into C source code but I didn't have much clue
what to check because every thing seemed fine.  It turned out that Jouni
realized that it was a problem in putenv() rather than with PostgreSQL.
I forgot the old debugging principle, if it is not where you are looking,
it is because it is somewhere else. ;-)

Regards,
Manuel Lemos

Web Programming Components using PHP Classes.
Look at: http://phpclasses.UpperDesign.com/[email protected]
--
E-mail: [email protected]
URL: http://www.mlemos.e-na.net/
PGP key: http://www.mlemos.e-na.net/ManuelLemos.pgp
--