Anthony,
94% of the votes voted in favor of integrating O+ into PHP, which is well above 2/3, it’s almost 3/3. The only open question was about timeline. And no matter how we twist it, whether it happens now or in a year has ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with whether or not it’s a language change. In other words, if I phrased the RFC differently, and only asked who’s in favor vs. who’s against – it would get a 94% vote in favor, easily blowing past both the 51% barrier as well as the 67% barrier. A 2nd RFC, asking people to vote about the timeline – would have gotten 44 vs 22, which happens to be 2/3, but clearly, would not have required more than 51% since it’s a timeline question, not a language change question. I’m afraid that’s as far as I’m willing to play this game of bureaucracy. The voting RFC wasn’t designed to turn PHP into The House, or a courtroom. There’s absolutely NO WAY we can reach consensus, and there’s no way the overwhelming majority would agree to paralysis imposed by a tiny minority. Let’s put it to rest, we all have better things to do with our time. Zeev *From:* Anthony Ferrara [mailto:ircmax...@gmail.com] *Sent:* Thursday, March 07, 2013 7:02 PM *To:* Zeev Suraski *Cc:* Rasmus Lerdorf; Nikita Popov; Laruence; PHP Developers Mailing List *Subject:* Re: [PHP-DEV] [VOTE] Integrating Zend Optimizer+ into the PHP distribution Zeev, As a rule of thumb, if the language syntax doesn’t change, it doesn’t need a 2/3 vote. How do I know? I asked for this special majority in the first place. It was designed to protect the language from becoming the kitchen sink of programming languages, not from making architectural progress. If we need to amend the original voting RFC text so that it’s clearer – let’s do that. Right now it’s slightly ambiguous because it mentions ‘language syntax’ as an example, instead of outright saying that it’s about that, period. Ambiguous writing is no excuse. People vote based on what is written, not what was intended. Clarifying after the fact the intentions is not how RFCs are designed to work. The point is that there's supposed to be clarity in the text. And considering that the text is pretty clear that any change affecting the language itself must have 2/3 majority, the question is not what was intended by that statement, but if adopting ZO+ affects the language (by interpretation). So far, from what I've seen, you and Rasmus are the major people backing the "this is not a language change" camp. In the other camp, there are several people who have stood up and said that it does appear to be a language change. I'm not trying to draw lines in the sand, but I'm trying to point out that we have a disagreement that needs to be resolved. Hand waving and saying "it's not what I meant by that line" shows nothing but disrespect for the system and for everyone who participates in it... So my proposal is to slow down for a minute and not call this RFC accepted or not until we can come to some consensus as to if it classifies as a language change or not... Better to clarify for the health of the project than to plow through and risk causing further strife... Anthony
