Hi Ramon, Thanks for your feedback. It's great to hear candid impressions of the Zend Framework.
One of the primary goals of the Zend Framework project is one that I'm afraid many individual developers don't value much: that the code is completely unencumbered by any copyrights, license restrictions, or patents. This is very important to corporate users who have been watching events like the "SCO vs. IBM" case (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO_v._IBM). They want some assurance that they won't be exposed to legal action merely by using a given piece of software. One consequence of meeting that "clean code" goal is that Zend Framework could not use any existing code unless it were granted specifically by its authors under the terms of the CLA. In most cases, this meant that Zend Framework had to develop wholly original code, where another project probably could have borrowed some code from other open-source works. Another goal of Zend Framework is to be exceptionally well tested. The ZF library has 140,000 lines of PHP code, but did you know that there are over 90,000 lines of PHP code in the tests directory? As I talk to people, I am surprised that they have totally overlooked the tests. It seems that most people never open the tests directory. I don't see us in competition with other PHP frameworks. There are some projects out there that are exremely clever and visionary, and I don't want to take anything away from their accomplishments. But the Zend Framework had goals, including those mentioned above, that are not solely technical in nature. Regarding documentation and demos, yes I totally agree. Based on your notes from the Dutch conference and other feedback I get, it seems clear that there is a great demand for specific technical information on how to code applications with the Zend Framework. The documentation we have currently is very reference-oriented, showing how to use individual components and APIs. That's appropriate for a manual. But it doesn't cover the whole story, showing how to architect a full application that uses many components in concert. We've heard consistently that this kind of information is what the PHP community needs, so this should be the highest short/medium term priority for the project as we go forward. The ZF team will be working on tutorials, example applications, and articles. There are plenty of ideas for technology enhancements too, but I hope to change the balance between core coding and writing, favoring writing for a while. I also encourage all of you to write articles on DevZone.Zend.com if you have a good example of applying the ZF in real-world projects. The way that the ZF project can scale up to meet the demand for information of the user community is to leverage our community to provide that information like a true open-source ecosystem. Regards, Bill Karwin
