Hi, On Tue, Oct 8, 2019 at 11:13 PM Mike Schinkel <m...@newclarity.net> wrote:
> If a vote is the middle ground then why the need to participate in any > discussion? > > Also, how is a vote a middle ground? A vote ensures that one sides wins > and the other side looses. IOW, a zero-sum game. > > Why does it not make better sense to actively look for ways to optimize > outcomes so that the most people can win? For example... > > There is no middle ground in an RFC that proposes the deprecation at this level of specifics. You either deprecate it, or you don't. The only middle ground you can reach, is that you give it a vote to see if it should indeed be deprecated. Perhaps I'm looking at it from a wrong perspective, it looks very binary to me (see next answer for why). > A compromise might be *"NO agreement to remove in a later patch."* > > Why does it not make sense to offer that up as a consolation to the one > asking for deprecation? If they accepted and changed the RFC, then more > people could get a "win." > > The idea behind a deprecation is that you are discouraging its use and plan to remove it at a later stage. To me it makes no sense to deprecate something but never remove it, might as well not deprecate it at that point. Either we accept it's in the language and keep it, or we remove it at some point, which ideally gets a deprecation first to ease migrations. I have noticed on this list much discussion of the "minority vs. the > majority." But that is a red-herring. There are a small number of people > who have a vote (~200?) whereas there are over 5 million PHP developers and > even more PHP stakeholders who have no vote. > > In other words, when internals@ votes unanimously on an RFC they still > only represent ~0.004% of PHP stakeholders. Basically an aristocracy. > > So while a vote is a way to share an opinion, it is not representative of > the opinions of those it may affect. It is a shame that the PHP voting > process has no objective way to incorporate userland concerns except when > some act as their proxy. Which is not the same as userland having explicit > representatives with a vote. > > I agree. There are a lot of unhappy user-land voices about a lot of decisions made here. Sadly I don't see a way to give everyone a voice in this. Regards, Lynn van der Berg
