PEAR future now, for 2 weeks

As of February 22, 2007, I have called an official
referendum on the
future of PEAR.  There is a news item on the front page of
pear.php.net
with the same instructions in this message.  This election
is only open
to PEAR developers who have contributed to the development
of a PEAR
package at any time in history, but you must have the
ability to log in
at pear.php.net, and must have "pear.dev" karma.

Please go vote!

http://pear.php.net/election/info.php?election=6&
vote=1

The choices are between:

1) don't change a thing

Keep the PEAR Group

2) Greg Beaver's constitution

As proposed on pear-dev

3) Anant Narayanan's constitution

As proposed in response to my original proposal on Dec. 30,
2006.

More information on each of these proposals is in the
election description.

I have tried to present a clear picture of the differences
between the
proposals: each has merit, and should be considered
carefully.  The
result of this election will determine how PEAR moves
forward on
important issues such as the ultimate purpose of PEAR, how
much control
developers have versus the PEAR community at large, and
other major
issues such as granting CVS karma.

The ballot is secret, and is designed so that it is nearly
impossible to
reverse-engineer voters to votes in the database.  The
election
interface will not let you vote without logging in or
without pear.dev
karma.  If you believe you should have pear.dev karma to
vote, and do
not, please mail the pear-dev mailing list and we'll try to
resolve the
issue.

Go vote!

Thanks,
Greg

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according to pear website, Anant Narayanan's proposes:
   * package collectives elect a single leader
   * PEAR Group is made up of package collective leaders

Also he says on the proposal email:

"Create a set of groups within PEAR that consist of a
similar set of
packages ... we have around 10-15 such groups..."

doesn't it means we would have 10-15 members on PEAR group
?

I don't understand as he previously said, in the same email
:

"The size of the PEAR group can be increased to 8, and
we can do away
with the president"

Which means that PEAR group would be a fixed size...

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This one's a bit inflamatory,
PEAR Group makes all legislative decisions in private
(secret ballot)

The reality is that as things have evolved, the PEAR Group
primarily is 
there to alter CVS karma, I dont think there has been any
"legislative 
decisions" for years, especially now that there is a
RFC system - which 
was the point of that one.. - so that everybody decides on
things.

The reason that the Group is set up that way I presume is
more that the 
php-group who run the CVS servers are naturally concerned
about who has 
access to that file. So the group who can modify it is
limited. Note 
that the PEAR group only got access to this many years after
PEAR 
started.... - so I'm not sure what will happen if there's a
PEAR group 
with members that php-group dont know...
 
I'm not sure secret ballot's are a great benefit to PEAR -
(living in  a 
country that doesnt have real democracy, it sounds alot like
one of the 
tricks that are used here to keep real democracy  down) -
why not an RFC 
- that was their purpose. - including collating the
comments.

To be honest, though, there is a sense that while PEAR
continues to 
grow, and new packages are added it is being overshadowed a
little by 
Zend's private developer club. And you are probably driving
more of the 
real activity in PEAR than anyone else..

While the wording in the Proposal is rather grand and a
little 
derogatory, I think you may have something with the idea of
an elected 
president/core team, - To me, it looks more like you could
have 
structured your proposal more like the "Commons &
the lords" (Pear 
Group+President / Pear-security) Commons is the elected one
that does 
all the work/has the power, the Lords(sec team) just sit
over and make 
sure the Commons's dont f**k up big time.... ;)

Eg. phasing out the pear-group into security based role (eg.
the karma) 
- and perhaps absolute veto - that could be used at their
peril, as that 
could justify their removal altogether...

As the proposal stands at present, To me, while I agree with
the general 
direction, I feel it's not been worked through fully, so
unfortunately 
I'll abstain for the time being.

Regards
Alan



Gregory Beaver wrote:
> As of February 22, 2007, I have called an official
referendum on the
> future of PEAR.  There is a news item on the front page
of pear.php.net
> with the same instructions in this message.  This
election is only open
> to PEAR developers who have contributed to the
development of a PEAR
> package at any time in history, but you must have the
ability to log in
> at pear.php.net, and must have "pear.dev"
karma.
>
> Please go vote!
>
> http://pear.php.net/election/info.php?election=6&
vote=1
>
> The choices are between:
>
> 1) don't change a thing
>
> Keep the PEAR Group
>
> 2) Greg Beaver's constitution
>
> As proposed on pear-dev
>
> 3) Anant Narayanan's constitution
>
> As proposed in response to my original proposal on Dec.
30, 2006.
>
> More information on each of these proposals is in the
election description.
>
> I have tried to present a clear picture of the
differences between the
> proposals: each has merit, and should be considered
carefully.  The
> result of this election will determine how PEAR moves
forward on
> important issues such as the ultimate purpose of PEAR,
how much control
> developers have versus the PEAR community at large, and
other major
> issues such as granting CVS karma.
>
> The ballot is secret, and is designed so that it is
nearly impossible to
> reverse-engineer voters to votes in the database.  The
election
> interface will not let you vote without logging in or
without pear.dev
> karma.  If you believe you should have pear.dev karma
to vote, and do
> not, please mail the pear-dev mailing list and we'll
try to resolve the
> issue.
>
> Go vote!
>
> Thanks,
> Greg
>
>   

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Hi Alan,

I don't intend to be derogatory, only to present the issues
I have seen
with PEAR governance as fairly as I am capable.  Of course,
the members
of the PEAR Group are great people, and great coders.  I
happen to
believe that the structure of the group, like all
real-world
appointed-for-life-no-matter-what governing structures, is
doomed to the
failure of absenteeism and lack of direction.

None of this would matter if PEAR wasn't a major
representative of what
PHP has to offer.  When PEAR loses direction, it reflects
badly on PHP
as a whole.

I know I can be a bit grating with my words, but I hope that
no one will
take any criticisms I have as anything but an attempt to
goad into
action towards a much better alternative .

Alan Knowles wrote:
> This one's a bit inflamatory,
> PEAR Group makes all legislative decisions in private
(secret ballot)
>
> The reality is that as things have evolved, the PEAR
Group primarily
> is there to alter CVS karma, I dont think there has
been any
> "legislative decisions" for years, especially
now that there is a RFC
> system - which was the point of that one.. - so that
everybody decides
> on things.
>
> The reason that the Group is set up that way I presume
is more that
> the php-group who run the CVS servers are naturally
concerned about
> who has access to that file. So the group who can
modify it is
> limited. Note that the PEAR group only got access to
this many years
> after PEAR started.... - so I'm not sure what will
happen if there's a
> PEAR group with members that php-group dont know...
This is a major issue, I agree.  In my proposal, I suggested
that the
PEAR Group would control this, but I also expect that one of
the first
tasks of the president would be to work out the details with
the PHP
group on how to implement this.
>
> I'm not sure secret ballot's are a great benefit to
PEAR - (living in 
> a country that doesnt have real democracy, it sounds
alot like one of
> the tricks that are used here to keep real democracy 
down) - why not
> an RFC - that was their purpose. - including collating
the comments.
Secret ballot has worked quite effectively in the U.S. to
avoid voter
intimidation.  I've noticed on PEPr that in most cases,
people simply
vote the same direction as the first few votes cast.  As a
member of a
faculty at a university, where voting always occurs
publicly, I have
voted with the crowd (especially on things I don't really
care all that
much about) but I would have voted differently if the vote
was secret. 
I find secret ballot quite liberating when voting for a
democratic
president in a strongly republican state, for instance .

A quick note about this - each vote *is* stored
individually, and the
list of who voted is also stored.  The ballot is not 100%
unreconstructable, as apache access logs and the mysql data
could be
used to reconstruct who voted for what, but it would be an
arduous,
unrewarding process.  In addition, voter fraud is virtually
impossible
unless Martin or  I were to directly modify the results.  If
there is
enough concern about this issue, then I would be happy to
ask some third
party to host the elections interface where no interested
party would
have access to the database directly.

Honestly, even though I can't prove it, I have no interest
in falsifying
the results of this election.  I really do want to know what
the PEAR
community at large thinks about this issue, and will respect
the
decision absolutely.
> To be honest, though, there is a sense that while PEAR
continues to
> grow, and new packages are added it is being
overshadowed a little by
> Zend's private developer club. And you are probably
driving more of
> the real activity in PEAR than anyone else..
I recently read about someone who proposed a port of
HTTP_Request to PHP
5 for the Zend Framework, and he was told that the Zend
Framework "only
accepts brand new code."  Their purpose is very clearly
defined as being
the buzzword of the day, and not really of interoperating
with existing
software solutions out of a fear that some company will get
sued if the
code isn't absolutely new.  In other words, it's the king of
"Not
invented here" philosophy, and has gone so far as to
institutionalize it
and require all developers to sign an actual document
certifying that
they are NIH-ites.  PEAR is not a buzzword right now (try
googling "PEAR
sucks" to see the most common buzzword associated with
PEAR), but Zend
doesn't have a monopoly on good ideas, just a monopoly on
marketing budget.

I am actively trying to push PEAR out of a rut, but the real
activity is
shown in pear-cvs.  All open source projects have a few
driving forces
and lots of semi-active developers, that's nothing new in my
book.
> While the wording in the Proposal is rather grand and a
little
> derogatory, I think you may have something with the
idea of an elected
> president/core team, - To me, it looks more like you
could have
> structured your proposal more like the "Commons
& the lords" (Pear
> Group+President / Pear-security) Commons is the elected
one that does
> all the work/has the power, the Lords(sec team) just
sit over and make
> sure the Commons's dont f**k up big time.... ;)
in the U.S. we use the Senate to do what the house of Lords
does, but I
think simply having presidential veto power would be enough
for PEAR to
keep the crazies in check.  We, after all, don't have 300
million
citizens to deal with .
>
> Eg. phasing out the pear-group into security based role
(eg. the
> karma) - and perhaps absolute veto - that could be used
at their
> peril, as that could justify their removal
altogether...
>
> As the proposal stands at present, To me, while I agree
with the
> general direction, I feel it's not been worked through
fully, so
> unfortunately I'll abstain for the time being.
I asked for alternative structures back in December and
early January,
would have been nice to hear about your idea then.  I
strongly respect
the decision to abstain - however please do vote and click
"abstain" -
this is very important to get an accurate tally of
disapproval of the
governments proposed, as we would simply have to come up
with something
better rather than go with the least worst choice.

As an example of a "legislative decision" that was
made in secret, let's
look at the decision to remove PHPUnit.  Not only was this
voted on in
secret, there was never any announcement anywhere of the
decision.  We
found out indirectly by it simply not being there any more. 
Perhaps
more troubling is the fact that most of the PEAR Group
members have not
written more than 10 email messages to pear-dev over the
past 3-4
years.  This is not the fault of the people in the PEAR
Group, it is the
fault of the government structure.  Perhaps because I am an
American, it
reminds me too much of the way England used to govern the
colonies from
afar .

Part of the problem with the PEAR Group is that there have
*not* been
any legislative decisions recently.  How many RFCs have been
passed and
implemented recently? 

On the other hand, look at the equivalent PHP group of core
developers,
who are hashing out RFCs on how to implement unicode, error
handling,
namespaces, array access and all kinds of things.  PEAR, on
the other
hand, has been just doing the same old thing while one of
the PEAR group
members actually *removed* PEAR from PHP 6 and announced
this as if it
was a group decision that PEAR is no longer relevant to
PHP.

Here in PEAR, we argue endlessly about how to handle errors
without
actually making any decisions.  Someone has to put a foot
down and risk
alienating a few developers, or nothing will ever happen.

PEAR's coding standards are a great example of positive
"putting the
foot down."  When I joined PEAR, I was a "tabs
only" guy with a disdain
for one-true-brace, but because it was required, I (after
grumbling),
got used to it, and now see that it is in fact no different
from what I
was doing before.  The reasoning for the decision was
misrepresented as
"cross-OS compatibility" when the same issue does
not plague other
projects, but arbitrary though it may be, the consistency is
the most
important thing about the decision.  In other words: there
*was* a
decision made and everyone is happy now that we're used to
it.

In any case, I hope that other developers will vote either
for a
specific government or will abstain as Alan has.

Thanks,
Greg

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Hello,

a few points:

1) Anan's post is currently not reachable .. for me an a few
others in 
#pear at any rate .. so i think who ever has a copy of the
post should 
copy it and place it as a .txt file on pear.php.net

2) Greg, didnt we put in something into your proposal, that
decisions 
are only binding once they have been commited to peardoc or
pearweb?

regards,
Lukas

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Lukas Kahwe Smith wrote:
> Hello,
>
> a few points:
>
> 1) Anan's post is currently not reachable .. for me an
a few others in
> #pear at any rate .. so i think who ever has a copy of
the post should
> copy it and place it as a .txt file on pear.php.net
done - http:
//pear.php.net/~greg/anantconstitution.txt

Sorry for the troubles, I've never known theaimsgroup to
hang like that
before.
>
> 2) Greg, didnt we put in something into your proposal,
that decisions
> are only binding once they have been commited to
peardoc or pearweb? 
Yes this was an oversight, I thought it was in there
already, I have now
added a note to the part about putting decisions on the
website/in docs
for the vice president.

Thanks,
Greg

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Gregory Beaver wrote:
> Lukas Kahwe Smith wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> a few points:
>>
>> 1) Anan's post is currently not reachable .. for me
an a few others in
>> #pear at any rate .. so i think who ever has a copy
of the post should
>> copy it and place it as a .txt file on
pear.php.net
> done - http:
//pear.php.net/~greg/anantconstitution.txt

thx .. however now all "more info" links point to
this document ..

regards,
Lukas

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Lukas Kahwe Smith wrote:
> Gregory Beaver wrote:
>> Lukas Kahwe Smith wrote:
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>> a few points:
>>>
>>> 1) Anan's post is currently not reachable ..
for me an a few others in
>>> #pear at any rate .. so i think who ever has a
copy of the post should
>>> copy it and place it as a .txt file on
pear.php.net
>> done - http:
//pear.php.net/~greg/anantconstitution.txt
> 
> thx .. however now all "more info" links
point to this document ..

I realized this on the way to work.  Fortunately, I had time
to fix it,
so now all should be well.

Greg

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Hi Igor,

> "Create a set of groups within PEAR that consist
of a similar set of
> packages ... we have around 10-15 such groups..."
> 
> doesn't it means we would have 10-15 members on PEAR
group ?

That is right.

> "The size of the PEAR group can be increased to 8,
and we can do away
> with the president"
> 
> Which means that PEAR group would be a fixed size...

This was an alternative to having the post of President,
only if the
idea of having 15 people on the group is not palatable 

Best Regards,

-- 
Anant

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