Comment 13 for bug 191251

The debian PHP maintainers are refusing the package this for a
religious reason: that they abhor PHP and believe it should not
spread. I don't believe it is suitable to hold up a package for this
reason. I'm not sure we can force their hand, so perhaps it is time to
start packaging PHP separately in Ubuntu.

On Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 12:25 AM, Ondřej Surý <email address hidden> wrote:
> Speaking here as a member of Debian php maintainers.

If you all hate PHP, I do not understand why you are the PHP maintainers.

> I have read mentioned web pages and nothing has convinced me, that this
> is more then just proof of concept with no real application in the
> sensible world.

Its a dependency for phc, a compiler/parser/optimizer for PHP.
php5-embed is well tested, and has not changed in four years.

> php5 is a language for creating web pages. Embedding language which a
> horrible design, constantly changes the API, with no common concept, is
> just a very bad idea. And I hope Ubuntu will never stray and package
> php5-embed on it's own, since it's not going to happen in Debian(*).

Please support "horrible design" and "no common concept". I can tell
you the interface has not changed in the four years the debian bug has
been open. "a very bad idea" is a religious opinion.

> There is a bunch of other programming languages suited for embedding -
> lua, python, ruby, even perl. Embedding php5 is just wrong. Don't do it.

This is a religious reason, and surely has no place in this debate.
Should we not package Emacs because the maintainers prefer vim?

> * - unless current php maintainers all retire and new maintainers will
> lost their minds, or we are overruled by technical committee in which
> case I would probably retire as php maintainer

Considering that you are refusing to package part of PHP because you
dislike PHP, I think resignation would be a good idea.

Thanks,
Paul
(phc maintainer)

--
Paul Biggar
<email address hidden>