Re: [PHP] Re: UK Project Opportunity
This thread's getting a bit tired but here's my $0.02 worth. I've always found the phpclasses website a bit confusing to navigate and I've never had much success finding what I want. But it's free and as a non-paying customer I don't feel entitled to complain, when probably a bit more work from me would find what I was looking for. As for advertising, well so what. It's there and my eye is pretty well trained to ignore it. No big deal to me, and if it's a necessary thing to pay for a free site, then so be it. The site could do with an easier interface and I look forward to seeing it in action, but I think it's a bit too much to complain and swear and criticize the owner if you're not paying for what he provides. And if you are paying, then you can't honestly say you didn't know what you were signing up for. The information is all there if you take the time and trouble to find it. Angus -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Re: UK Project Opportunity
Normally I would just stay out of a public thread on such a subject, but Rixham and I had a discussion about the site prior to his posting here, and I may as well make my point known My problem - and indeed, it is a problem - is not with the design, usability, or lack thereof. It's also not in the business practices and profitability. Everyone needs to make money, and I think it's great that Manuel has managed to do so in doing something he loves. My problem is with Manuel's practices of advertising the site. In all of the years I've been involved with PHP, both officially and as a part of the community, all I've seen you (Manuel) contribute to the community is a health dose of go to my website. You've never (or, perhaps so rarely it seems as though you've never) offered advice, assistance, or free code without the guise of, go to phpclasses.org. To me, it's completely out of the spirit of open source, and puts a thin veil over - however unintentional it may be - extremely disgusting practices of advertising. I've avoided saying anything negative about it on the list through the years, but seriously, enough is enough, and something has to be said. And you can trust me that I'm *not* the only one who thinks that. I know of a lot of people who filter messages from you into the trash or SPAM folder because the response is always the same, and usually useless, overall. Again, it's nothing against your site. The site can actually be pretty useful but how about just adding it as a signature to your email and actually posting FREE, USEFUL material relevant to the topic? Stop using mailing lists and forums as a free treasure trove of opportunity for advertising your services and pay it back in a way: by actually contributing something to the community, completely selfless, with no ulterior motive. You think the site is seeing some success now? Wait until you try that and see how good quality traffic increases in a few months. You'll be well-rewarded, I would almost guarantee it. Still, if the only reason you're here is to increase your visibility and profitability, then your *credibility* is, in my opinion, null. And while that may not matter to you, it should; even if it's just one voice, my voice is representative of the greater part of the community on the issue. Though it should also be noted that it's not just about you, but as a whole. Open source communities should *NEVER, EVER* be considered a venue for commercial advertisements. Some will make their way in, and I'm guilty of that offense myself (though I've pruned my signature to reduce the irony herein). The difference is that myself (and several others who come immediately to mind) have offered substance, fostering the community to incredible worth that will benefit future generations of technical professionals and hobbyists. Maybe some commercial gains came of it for some, but I would like to think that fame and money weren't the motive for involvement. If that were one's only reason for being a part of the community, why in the world would I respect that individual enough to support them? And if that were to become an acceptable practice in any open source project or community to allow it, even to ignore it, I would resign, because my own efforts and passion would be wasted, hidden in a pile of useless information and competition, all losing sight of what the actual spirit was in the first place. Think of it this way: if there were a commercial-only list here at php.net, would you subscribe and read posts by other senders? Knowing that all they are doing is advertising a service, you really couldn't reply by saying, this is better, so use this instead. Very, very few - if any - would actually subscribe to the list. Those who did would likely be there only to post, not to read. And those few remaining would undoubtedly be trying frantically to unsubscribe after a few messages, both ruing and lamenting the day their curiosity got the best of them. We all hate SPAM, and I'm sure you do as well, Manuel. I doubt you read ads and say, Wow! What a great price for v!...@. Where did I put my credit card? (It's used as an example, by the way. I have no intention of or interest in getting into a discussion as to whether or not anyone needs any assistance in that area, of course. ;-P) However, if someone were to continuously offer assistance to their peers, I would still get the message and be reminded of the advertisement of their services with a simple signature link. I think I've visited every website by every moderate or major contributor to this list alone in the last ten years --- no joke. And I've bought things from them, helped them land jobs, and even hired some of them myself the common thing with all of them is that they never outright asked or advertised. It was a subtle hint nestled beneath a mountain of valuable information. That said, I actually do wish
Re: [PHP] Re: UK Project Opportunity
Hello Angus, on 02/17/2010 09:35 AM Angus Mann said the following: I've always found the phpclasses website a bit confusing to navigate and I've never had much success finding what I want. But it's free and as a non-paying customer I don't feel entitled to complain, when probably a bit more work from me would find what I was looking for. As for advertising, well so what. It's there and my eye is pretty well trained to ignore it. No big deal to me, and if it's a necessary thing to pay for a free site, then so be it. The site could do with an easier interface and I look forward to seeing it in action, but I think it's a bit too much to complain and swear and criticize the owner if you're not paying for what he provides. And if you are paying, then you can't honestly say you didn't know what you were signing up for. The information is all there if you take the time and trouble to find it. Criticism is welcome when it is constructive, regardless whether you are paying or not to use the site. My greatest problem with criticism is when it is vague. For instance confusing to navigate and easier interface is vague. It would be more helpful if you say what exactly is confusing you when you navigate the site, as I am not capable to imagine what goes on in your mind that you find confusing. Actually, better than that, would be specific suggestions to make it less confusing for you, if you would not mind going further than just pointing what is not good for you. When it comes to not finding what you are looking for, as I mentioned before, a few months ago the site search pages for non-premium users was improved to split results in tabs according to the page section they belong. I wonder if you have seen that already and if that would help in making it better for you. Just go on the site search pages and check it out if you have not done it already. -- Regards, Manuel Lemos Find and post PHP jobs http://www.phpclasses.org/jobs/ PHP Classes - Free ready to use OOP components written in PHP http://www.phpclasses.org/ -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Re: UK Project Opportunity
Hello, on 02/17/2010 02:46 PM Daniel Brown said the following: My problem is with Manuel's practices of advertising the site. In all of the years I've been involved with PHP, both officially and as a part of the community, all I've seen you (Manuel) contribute to the community is a health dose of go to my website. You've never (or, perhaps so rarely it seems as though you've never) offered advice, assistance, or free code without the guise of, go to I completely disagree with that. Regardless how many times I refer to pages in the PHPClasses site, I always explain how to solve the problems of the users that I bother to reply here. Anybody can check the archives and verify that. phpclasses.org. To me, it's completely out of the spirit of open source, and puts a thin veil over - however unintentional it may be - extremely disgusting practices of advertising. I've avoided saying I don't know what you think it is the Open Source spirit. For me is sharing the source of code that solves user problems. That is what I share in the PHPClasses site: I share my PHP source code. It seems you are complaining that I do not post the source code here. I do not think that would be viable, as most solutions that I refer have thousands of lines of code. Sharing large pieces of code is what repositories like PHPClasses are for. What about you? How many times have you shared your Open Source code? anything negative about it on the list through the years, but seriously, enough is enough, and something has to be said. And you can trust me that I'm *not* the only one who thinks that. I know of a lot of people who filter messages from you into the trash or SPAM folder because the response is always the same, and usually useless, overall. That is your opinion because you seem to be biased and you just do not seem to want that I post any sort of help at all, otherwise you would not ignored the countless times that I bothered to come here and post replies that do not lead people to the PHPClasses site. It would be much less hypocrit if you would just tell me directly that you do not want me to help people here in any form. Again, it's nothing against your site. The site can actually be I doubt that. You seem to be contradicting yourself. First you complain that I lead people to the PHPClasses site, then you claim you have nothing against the site. Does not sound very consistent. How else do you want me to help people when I have a solution to their problems that I submitted to the PHPClasses site? Do you want me to tell that I have a solution, do not tell them where it is available, and let them guess that it is in the PHPClasses? Sounds ridiculous. pretty useful but how about just adding it as a signature to your email and actually posting FREE, USEFUL material relevant to the What are you talking about? I only post free material here. I do not sell code. All the code I distribute is open source. If you do not find it useful just because I make the code available in the PHPClasses site, that is your opinion. Assuming that everybody finds it useless it is just a biased complaint. If you search the archives of the list you will find plenty of other users recommending code that is in the PHPClasses site, either mine or from others. Are you going to claim those people are also evil? topic? Stop using mailing lists and forums as a free treasure trove of opportunity for advertising your services and pay it back in a way: by actually contributing something to the community, completely selfless, with no ulterior motive. You think the site is seeing some success now? Wait until you try that and see how good quality traffic increases in a few months. You'll be well-rewarded, I would almost guarantee it. I may be wrong but the impression that you are passing is that you have a deep envy of the attention that the site gets. You seem to want to fight that, as if letting the others know about the site is bad thing, and I am being evil when I tell about the site resources here. Furthermore you seem to assume that the site only gets traffic from this list. You could not be farther from truth. This site gets more than 20.000 unique visitors every day. About 12.000 come from Google and other search engines. The rest is users that visit the site directly or were lead after reading any of the site newsletters. The mentions of the site in this list hardly affect the site traffic these days. It may have affected in the early days when the site was unknown. If you really want to know why the site gets so much traffic these days, is because it has over 5000 packages for all sorts of purposes contributed by over 2600 of authors. The 30 packages that I have contributed hardly make a difference these days in the overall site traffic. So, if you wonder why I still bother to come here when I have time and tell you about my packages, is because the original reason that made me create
Re: [PHP] Re: UK Project Opportunity
On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 16:23, Manuel Lemos mle...@acm.org wrote: What about you? How many times have you shared your Open Source code? HA! That's hilarious that you would say that to *me.* I actually laughed out loud. I'll probably do it a few more times before the day is out. Well, Manuel, you've just earned a rightful spot in my permanent SPAM-direction filter, and I will now publicly state that I will NEVER use phpclasses.org, nor will I recommend that anyone else do the same. HINT: Next time, READ the email I sent before jumping to conclusions and getting defensive. And secondly, know your enemy. ;-P Goodbye! -- /Daniel P. Brown daniel.br...@parasane.net || danbr...@php.net http://www.parasane.net/ || http://www.pilotpig.net/ Looking for hosting or dedicated servers? Ask me how we can fit your budget! Looking for PHP Classes? Try Google! -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Re: UK Project Opportunity
Daniel Brown wrote: On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 16:23, Manuel Lemos mle...@acm.org wrote: What about you? How many times have you shared your Open Source code? HA! That's hilarious that you would say that to *me.* I actually laughed out loud. I'll probably do it a few more times before the day is out. Well, Manuel, you've just earned a rightful spot in my permanent SPAM-direction filter, and I will now publicly state that I will NEVER use phpclasses.org, nor will I recommend that anyone else do the same. That's your choice to make, but I think this thread has got out of hand and needs to stop. Some people do not like his decisions. Fine, we get it. Those people do not have to use his resource. There, problem solved. -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Re: UK Project Opportunity
Nathan Rixham wrote: You make every interaction with your site a horrible, painful interaction that is purely there to get as many adverts as you can in front of people, so that you can bleed every cent possible from the hard work and effort of PHP developers and innocent users. In short, you take advantage of your users, members and the PHP community. While you are entitled to your opinion, as someone with a few classes on that site I do not feel taken advantage of in the slightest. I find it to be a great resource for finding existing classes that often do exactly what I need but is not available in pear, and I also have found it to be an excellent resource for seeing how other coders solved certain problems. Yes, there are advertisements on the site. Some of the advertisers donate useful products to be given as innovation awards and I assume some of them do not. Resources like that are not free to operate. I use to run a yum repository for RHEL/CentOS that provided packages from Fedora/Livna that were not available in EPEL. I had to close it down because after a couple months, my bandwidth costs were way too high. I do not know what phpclasses uses in terms of bandwidth, but I do not blame him for trying to cover his costs or even profiting from the service he provides, I find it to be a service that is of a great benefit to me. -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Re: UK Project Opportunity
On Wed, 2010-02-17 at 00:29 +, Nathan Rixham wrote: Manuel Lemos wrote: Hello, on 02/16/2010 08:02 PM Nathan Rixham said the following: I need to find a skilled PHP dev, UK based, with long term availability, in the short term to join me on a project and ultimately be prepared to take over the project and own it. Remote contract work w/ occasional meetings on site. You may want to try searching PHP professionals with the specific skills you need here: http://www.phpclasses.org/professionals/country/uk/ Or you may want to try to post a job here: http://www.phpclasses.org/jobs/ Manuel, I'm sure there are some very talented people on your site (and in the community) - one slight problem though, I won't use you're website under any circumstance (been there, done that). You make every interaction with your site a horrible, painful interaction that is purely there to get as many adverts as you can in front of people, so that you can bleed every cent possible from the hard work and effort of PHP developers and innocent users. In short, you take advantage of your users, members and the PHP community - I've never seen such a bold and ongoing attempt to profit on the hard work and good will of PHP developers, ever, period. There seems to be a misunderstanding here. The PHPClasses.org site was created by me in 1999 with the purpose of making it easy to distribute my PHP classes so others could test them and send bug reports and suggestions. Then I thought it would be nice to let others also share their code there to do the same, if they want of course. Back then, there was no advertising or any sort of monetization of the site. Meanwhile the site has grown a lot. Now it has over 850.000 registered users. Initially it could run on a shared hosting, but since many years ago it needs dedicated servers. Hiring dedicated servers costs good money as you know. In 2002 I had to choose, either to dedicate to the site full time to moderate the new site content and develop the features that it needed to better serve the PHP developers, or shut the site down for good because I would not have the time to take a day job and maintain the site at the same time. I took the chance and decided to work on the site full time. But I had to find some way to make it generate revenue, basically turn it into a full time business. My first option was to provide a package of premium services for a small subscription fee. I placed a survey asking the users about services they could be willing to pay. http://www.phpclasses.org/blog/post/10-Paid-site-services-survey.html That was a good idea but it would take me a lot of time to develop the planned services. So the alternative option that was available was to put advertising. I do not like advertising because it slows down page loading and distracts users from the real content. But over the time, if it was not for advertising the site would have been shut down a long time ago. After a lot of time and development effort, in 2007 I finally was able to launch the planned premium services. http://www.phpclasses.org/blog/post/68-Launched-premium-services-for-PHP-developers.html Premium services help in generating nice revenue, but honestly it is not a big deal. Not only I have to keep the advertising, I also need to seek other sources of revenue. To continue to make the site useful for PHP developers, I decided to develop a dedicated job board for PHP professionals that was launched in 2008. http://www.phpclasses.org/blog/post/79-New-PHP-dedicated-job-site.html As you may figure by now, the site requires continuous development to address the user needs. For instance, some site users complained about the site design. In 2008 I started developing a system that would let designers propose new designs and users try the designs in different pages. When the system was finished in late 2009, a contest was launched. The winning design won a USD $3.000 money prize (and a big elePHPant). The new design will replace the current in a few days, once we make a few adjustments. The money prize comes mostly from the revenue of premium subscriptions. I am sorry if you feel that what I have done and will continue doing is a bad thing and I am just taking advantage of the site users. I suppose you do not work for free. So you cannot expect me to work for free as well, as we all have families and have to put food on the table. There are no miracles. If what I did with PHPClasses.org is bad, my alternative is to close the site because I cannot work on the site and have a day job at the same time. And then, you have the good thought to come on here and SPAM the hell out of your site at every opportunity. What you call spam, I call word of mouth. You have expressed a
Re: [PHP] Re: UK Project Opportunity
Hello, on 02/16/2010 10:54 PM Ashley Sheridan said the following: I myself do find the site confusing to navigate, which doesn't always help when looking for a PHP class to fit in a project that's already That is a bit vague as you do not mention explicitly what is confusing. Sometimes I read comments like yours and do not have a clear idea of what people find so confusing. Maybe it helps if you can be more explicit. Anyway, I don't know if you have accessed the site lately, but a few months ago the site made available the internal site search engine to every user, which before that was only available to premium users. Until them regular users would see a co-branded version of the Google site search. That was not good for searching a site with many sections, as results of different site sections would appear totally mixed. The internal site search provides a better solution because it splits results into tabs: packages, reviews, blogs, forums, videos, etc.. http://www.phpclasses.org/blog/post/105-Improved-site-search-for-every-user.html With charging for the open source items, that does seem a little old-fashioned. What about allowing the contributors to offer up paid support for their code, with the site taking a cut. Charging for the support and documentation of an open-source system is a model that seems quite popular in the open source world (look at a lot of Linux distros, for example). You'll still have people being a bit tight and not wanting to pay, but there will be more people (I think) that would want to pay for the documentation if it was reasonably priced. In fact, a system like that could possibly improve the state of documentation for some systems. The question is whether that would provide enough revenue to justify an investment in developing something like that? Anyway, there is already a PHP specialists forum. It is forum that you may go and ask tough questions about PHP development and related subjects. http://www.phpclasses.org/discuss/topic/specialists/forum/general/ All questions are answered by either me or any premium subscriber. The advantage for premium subscribers is that they can expose their contacts in case you want to hire them to provide paid consultancy. Many premium subscribers are actually winners or nominees of the innovation award, so often they are developers above the average. So, they often provide very good answers and also get private requests to provide paid work. Despite, PHP specialists forum is restricted and you can only see the responses if you are a premium subscriber, if you are a regular user of the site you can post a question there for free. If you have a though problem to solve, you may try it now for free in the address above. -- Regards, Manuel Lemos Find and post PHP jobs http://www.phpclasses.org/jobs/ PHP Classes - Free ready to use OOP components written in PHP http://www.phpclasses.org/ -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Re: UK Project Opportunity
On Tue, Feb 16, 2010 at 10:02:09PM +, Nathan Rixham wrote: Manuel Lemos wrote: Hello, on 02/15/2010 11:37 AM Nathan Rixham said the following: I need to find a skilled PHP dev, UK based, with long term availability, in the short term to join me on a project and ultimately be prepared to take over the project and own it. Remote contract work w/ occasional meetings on site. You may want to try searching PHP professionals with the specific skills you need here: http://www.phpclasses.org/professionals/country/uk/ Or you may want to try to post a job here: http://www.phpclasses.org/jobs/ Manuel, I'm sure there are some very talented people on your site (and in the community) - one slight problem though, I won't use you're website under any circumstance (been there, done that). You make every interaction with your site a horrible, painful interaction that is purely there to get as many adverts as you can in front of people, so that you can bleed every cent possible from the hard work and effort of PHP developers and innocent users. In short, you take advantage of your users, members and the PHP community - I've never seen such a bold and ongoing attempt to profit on the hard work and good will of PHP developers, ever, period. I've given Manuel a hard time in the past about his site design. But we'll see what his new design is, when it shows up. As for Manuel profiting from the whole thing, I don't see another busines model working. Source Forge has a similar business model. And nearly every other Linux publication profits from the work of FOSS developers. The only other popular business model on the FOSS world is a support-based model, which works for companies with a single product or a small stable of products. It wouldn't work for phpclasses.org. Having to register to download classes from phpclasses.org is a nuisance. Manuel says this is up to the individual developer. This may be technically true, but Manuel *offers* this as an option. Contrast Source Forge, which performs a similar function but does not require any registration to download anything. I imagine that the registration allows Manuel to tightly monitor site usage in a variety of ways. But I don't know of another, better, resource for PHP code written by random developers anywhere. I'm willing to give his site a plug when someone can't find a class they need. If I had worthy classes, I'd upload them there myself. I can't really blame Manuel for promoting the site. It's his job. As for the jobs and other aspects of the site, I can't say. I don't use them. Paul -- Paul M. Foster -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Re: UK Project Opportunity
Yeez eh, some of you people here are truely ungrateful for serious effort spent to save you time. While i've never found a use for any of the code on phpclasses.org, and i also would've chosen a slightly different pay-server-rent-model for the jobs subsection, i can't help but notice the author of phpclasses must've put in quite a bit of time to organize a specialist meetingplace. You really really shouldn't flame a person for trying to make a small living while at the same time still giving away quite a bit of timesaving products for free. Instead you people bitch about too many ads, and you practically force me to pay for something. If you don't like the ads, ignore 'm! And still click on a few and let'm sit in tabs for a few seconds. It's the very-fucking-least you can do for the time you're saved. And if you have a complaint-and-tip-for-change about somebody's business model, you'll find that framing such a change in neutral / positive lanugage is far likelier to be considered at all. I have also put out 3 opensource products, paid hosting cost for it even for a while, and have never used ads to support 'm. But you know what? Out of thousands of downloads, i never got even a single short thanks message back. I must've saved at least some people quite a bit of time and mental energy, and possibly decreased their schedule pressure at the same time. But a thank you over email is too much effort for them apparently. Open-source users are often very haughty and insist on everything-must-be-free, but those are often also the vast majority who don't put out free work of their own. They want to get paid good money for the conglomerate products they create, yet pay preferably NOTHING for the components they base that on. If these people weren't so dispicable, it'd be funny. I would not be surprised to see open-source releasers (like myself) quit putting out free wares all together. Afterall, being paid with public flames instead of even-short-thank-yous and the occasional click on-my-ads, will cause any human to think why would i want to offer that thing for free at all? - putting ads on his site, even lots of them I'm sure there are some very talented people on your site (and in the community) - one slight problem though, I won't use you're website under any circumstance (been there, done that). You make every interaction with your site a horrible, painful interaction that is purely there to get as many adverts as you can in front of people, so that you can bleed every cent possible from the hard work and effort of PHP developers and innocent users. In short, you take advantage of your users, members and the PHP community - I've never seen such a bold and ongoing attempt to profit on the hard work and good will of PHP developers, ever, period. And then, you have the good thought to come on here and SPAM the hell out of your site at every opportunity. -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Re: UK Project Opportunity
Hello, on 02/17/2010 01:06 AM Paul M Foster said the following: I've given Manuel a hard time in the past about his site design. But we'll see what his new design is, when it shows up. Actually, there was a contest and the users have chosen the winning design, not me. That was the way to assure the majority of the users that care would be satisfied. The winning designing is viewable here but since the author is still making some changes to fix some issues on pages that were not tested during the contest, it may not be viewable all the times. http://www.phpclasses.org/design/turn/2/theme/igd01.html If you cannot see it yet, the author left a preview on their site: http://www.intergraphicdesigns.com/clients/phpclasses/ As for Manuel profiting from the whole thing, I don't see another busines model working. Source Forge has a similar business model. And nearly every other Linux publication profits from the work of FOSS developers. The only other popular business model on the FOSS world is a support-based model, which works for companies with a single product or a small stable of products. It wouldn't work for phpclasses.org. Right, because the site just distributes other people's code, not support it directly. Having to register to download classes from phpclasses.org is a nuisance. Manuel says this is up to the individual developer. This may be technically true, but Manuel *offers* this as an option. Contrast Source Forge, which performs a similar function but does not require any registration to download anything. I imagine that the registration allows Manuel to tightly monitor site usage in a variety of ways. Actually it is much more than that. If you download a package, the site keeps track of that and next time the package is updated, it send you an e-mail alert so you can get the latest version, unless you do not want to be notified of course. Also the site counts how many distinct users downloaded each package and builds top download rankings . If you download a package more than once, it only counts once, so the top download charts are accurate, making it fair for everybody. For users this may not be very important, but for authors it is very motivating. Authors are happy that the site lets their users know about updates of their classes. Authors also like to see the progress of their packages in terms of users that have downloaded it. The site also provide a blog for each package, so when the author wants to post something new about the class or ask for feedback, a message is sent to the users that downloaded the package. There are other compelling reasons but this is basically why more than 2600 authors submitted over 5000 packages. The site gets them attention. Other sites like Sourceforge cannot provide this level of attention precisely because they do not require users to download even if the authors wanted that. -- Regards, Manuel Lemos Find and post PHP jobs http://www.phpclasses.org/jobs/ PHP Classes - Free ready to use OOP components written in PHP http://www.phpclasses.org/ -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Re: UK Project Opportunity
Paul M Foster wrote: On Tue, Feb 16, 2010 at 10:02:09PM +, Nathan Rixham wrote: Manuel Lemos wrote: Hello, on 02/15/2010 11:37 AM Nathan Rixham said the following: I need to find a skilled PHP dev, UK based, with long term availability, in the short term to join me on a project and ultimately be prepared to take over the project and own it. Remote contract work w/ occasional meetings on site. You may want to try searching PHP professionals with the specific skills you need here: http://www.phpclasses.org/professionals/country/uk/ Or you may want to try to post a job here: http://www.phpclasses.org/jobs/ Manuel, I'm sure there are some very talented people on your site (and in the community) - one slight problem though, I won't use you're website under any circumstance (been there, done that). You make every interaction with your site a horrible, painful interaction that is purely there to get as many adverts as you can in front of people, so that you can bleed every cent possible from the hard work and effort of PHP developers and innocent users. In short, you take advantage of your users, members and the PHP community - I've never seen such a bold and ongoing attempt to profit on the hard work and good will of PHP developers, ever, period. I've given Manuel a hard time in the past about his site design. But we'll see what his new design is, when it shows up. As for Manuel profiting from the whole thing, I don't see another busines model working. Source Forge has a similar business model. And nearly every other Linux publication profits from the work of FOSS developers. The only other popular business model on the FOSS world is a support-based model, which works for companies with a single product or a small stable of products. It wouldn't work for phpclasses.org. Having to register to download classes from phpclasses.org is a nuisance. Manuel says this is up to the individual developer. This may be technically true, but Manuel *offers* this as an option. Contrast Source Forge, which performs a similar function but does not require any registration to download anything. I imagine that the registration allows Manuel to tightly monitor site usage in a variety of ways. But I don't know of another, better, resource for PHP code written by random developers anywhere. I'm willing to give his site a plug when someone can't find a class they need. If I had worthy classes, I'd upload them there myself. I can't really blame Manuel for promoting the site. It's his job. As for the jobs and other aspects of the site, I can't say. I don't use them. Paul I won't write a lengthy post, but I'll second some of what Paul has said. phpclasses has been around for a while and has provided a collection of quite a few very nice classes before there was really any PHP framework to speak of. Manuel has authored most of them and many other people have their own nice collection there. I haven't ever used one of the classes, but I have downloaded several in the past that performed functions that I wasn't very familiar with and used them as a learning guide and inspiration for my own code. I don't have a problem with the profits. People submit their code because they want to, and well, ads are part of most sites now days, sf included. The only slightly negative thing that I can say is that I have never seen a post by Manuel on this list actually contributing a solution, recommendation or any type of help other than a link to phpclasses. -- Thanks! -Shawn http://www.spidean.com -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Re: UK Project Opportunity
On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 04:28:07AM +0100, Rene Veerman wrote: snip I have also put out 3 opensource products, paid hosting cost for it even for a while, and have never used ads to support 'm. But you know what? Out of thousands of downloads, i never got even a single short thanks message back. I must've saved at least some people quite a bit of time and mental energy, and possibly decreased their schedule pressure at the same time. But a thank you over email is too much effort for them apparently. You know, I've noticed this too. I have a project on SourceForge, which gets downloaded with some regularity. It's the kind of thing you wouldn't download unless it specifically fit what you needed. I've had three people submit patches, but beyond that, no one has ever emailed me to say, Gee thanks for the code. It really helped! snip I would not be surprised to see open-source releasers (like myself) quit putting out free wares all together. Afterall, being paid with public flames instead of even-short-thank-yous and the occasional click on-my-ads, will cause any human to think why would i want to offer that thing for free at all? I don't think this will ever happen. I don't submit public code in order to receive accolades. If no one ever uses it or thanks me, that's okay. It would be *nice* to receive some acknowledgement, but I'm too busy writing code to worry about that much. I will say this though: if you're on a list like this and someone materially assists you with their advice, it would be a nice courtesy to just write back and thank them. It also helps let others know that this particular piece of advice actually was the key to solving the problem. Paul -- Paul M. Foster -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Re: UK Project Opportunity
On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 01:52:08AM -0200, Manuel Lemos wrote: The winning designing is viewable here but since the author is still making some changes to fix some issues on pages that were not tested during the contest, it may not be viewable all the times. http://www.phpclasses.org/design/turn/2/theme/igd01.html If you cannot see it yet, the author left a preview on their site: http://www.intergraphicdesigns.com/clients/phpclasses/ Mch better. Paul -- Paul M. Foster -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Re: UK Project Opportunity
I don't think this will ever happen. I don't submit public code in order to receive accolades. If no one ever uses it or thanks me, that's okay. It would be *nice* to receive some acknowledgement, but I'm too busy writing code to worry about that much. yea, i don't particularly mind not-being-thanked, i take the opensource from others that i use myself as thanks, but if it would turn into public flaming because of some ads, i would be offended. on the other hand, i have received off-list mail about other business practices of phpclasses.org that i also would not have chosen myself, because i disapprove of them. but, it can be argued that for a person with a certain skillset and skill levels, maintaining and marketing phpclasses.org is the work related to opensourcing. Not contributing a lot of work-code can then be forgiven, imo. but if it turns out he's truely leeching on the work of others (by for instance requiring authors to give him (near-)free exclusive rights or something), then i'd have to switch sides, and say that authors need to be warned of such practices. They should at least retain the full rights to their work and be able to quickly and permanently remove their work from a site like phpclasses.org, including the removal of individual files. it's been made clear to me that when it comes to his business practices, the owner of phpclasses.org likes to stick to his own ideas and descisions. but hey, one can always start a competitor. it shouldn't be that hard for the cluefull to create something better-looking and easier-to-work-with, while still making a finders-fee profit. and if you're an author and don't like phpclasses.org, just use something like sf.net or googlecode. -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Re: UK Project Opportunity
On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 5:39 AM, Paul M Foster pa...@quillandmouse.com wrote: On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 01:52:08AM -0200, Manuel Lemos wrote: The winning designing is viewable here but since the author is still making some changes to fix some issues on pages that were not tested during the contest, it may not be viewable all the times. http://www.phpclasses.org/design/turn/2/theme/igd01.html If you cannot see it yet, the author left a preview on their site: http://www.intergraphicdesigns.com/clients/phpclasses/ Mch better. Paul +1 ! And Manuel, you'd get more goodwill if you'd allow dowloading without registration.. -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Re: UK Project Opportunity
Hello, on 02/17/2010 02:13 AM Shawn McKenzie said the following: PHP framework to speak of. Manuel has authored most of them and many I suppose you meant that I authored many of the classes. I only submitted about 30 out of more than 2600 classes available submitted to the site. 30 may be many, but 1% is far from being most. The only slightly negative thing that I can say is that I have never seen a post by Manuel on this list actually contributing a solution, recommendation or any type of help other than a link to phpclasses. This doesn't sound fair. If a developer has a problem and I have a class that solves that problem, suggesting to use the class does not contribute to the solution of the problem? Still it is not accurate to say that I only post messages here to suggest links to the site. Even if it was true, keep in mind that I do not have all the time in the world. I think it is still helpful when I find time to suggest solutions even if they include using any of my classes or something else in the PHPClasses site, unless you prefer that I do not even post any messages here at all and do not bother trying helping anybody here in any way. -- Regards, Manuel Lemos Find and post PHP jobs http://www.phpclasses.org/jobs/ PHP Classes - Free ready to use OOP components written in PHP http://www.phpclasses.org/ -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Re: UK Project Opportunity
Rene Veerman wrote: On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 5:39 AM, Paul M Foster pa...@quillandmouse.com wrote: On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 01:52:08AM -0200, Manuel Lemos wrote: The winning designing is viewable here but since the author is still making some changes to fix some issues on pages that were not tested during the contest, it may not be viewable all the times. http://www.phpclasses.org/design/turn/2/theme/igd01.html If you cannot see it yet, the author left a preview on their site: http://www.intergraphicdesigns.com/clients/phpclasses/ Mch better. Paul +1 ! +1 And Manuel, you'd get more goodwill if you'd allow dowloading without registration.. +1 -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Re: UK Project Opportunity
On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 05:38:36AM +0100, Rene Veerman wrote: snip but if it turns out he's truely leeching on the work of others (by for instance requiring authors to give him (near-)free exclusive rights or something), then i'd have to switch sides, and say that authors need to be warned of such practices. They should at least retain the full rights to their work and be able to quickly and permanently remove their work from a site like phpclasses.org, including the removal of individual files. Yeah, I have a real beef with copyright-assignment, like what the GNU Project insists upon. If I built a program, I get to keep the copyright and determine the license. I feel the opposite way about patches. If you submit a patch to my sourceforge project, it's copyrighted by me. I don't make money off the project and I don't want to fight with you later about the code. And if I submit a patch to your project, you're free to do as you like with the code and its copyright. By the way, I am *not* saying Manuel does this. I'm just commenting on Rene's post. Paul -- Paul M. Foster -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Re: UK Project Opportunity
Manuel Lemos wrote: Hello, on 02/17/2010 02:13 AM Shawn McKenzie said the following: PHP framework to speak of. Manuel has authored most of them and many I suppose you meant that I authored many of the classes. I only submitted about 30 out of more than 2600 classes available submitted to the site. 30 may be many, but 1% is far from being most. The only slightly negative thing that I can say is that I have never seen a post by Manuel on this list actually contributing a solution, recommendation or any type of help other than a link to phpclasses. This doesn't sound fair. If a developer has a problem and I have a class that solves that problem, suggesting to use the class does not contribute to the solution of the problem? Still it is not accurate to say that I only post messages here to suggest links to the site. Even if it was true, keep in mind that I do not have all the time in the world. I think it is still helpful when I find time to suggest solutions even if they include using any of my classes or something else in the PHPClasses site, unless you prefer that I do not even post any messages here at all and do not bother trying helping anybody here in any way. take the (pretty much forced) registration off the site and people will mind a whole lot less ;) you're getting a lot of good feedback here -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Re: UK Project Opportunity
Paul M Foster wrote: On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 05:38:36AM +0100, Rene Veerman wrote: snip but if it turns out he's truely leeching on the work of others (by for instance requiring authors to give him (near-)free exclusive rights or something), then i'd have to switch sides, and say that authors need to be warned of such practices. They should at least retain the full rights to their work and be able to quickly and permanently remove their work from a site like phpclasses.org, including the removal of individual files. Yeah, I have a real beef with copyright-assignment, like what the GNU Project insists upon. If I built a program, I get to keep the copyright and determine the license. I feel the opposite way about patches. If you submit a patch to my sourceforge project, it's copyrighted by me. I don't make money off the project and I don't want to fight with you later about the code. And if I submit a patch to your project, you're free to do as you like with the code and its copyright. By the way, I am *not* saying Manuel does this. I'm just commenting on Rene's post. snap - afaik he doesn't do this -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Re: UK Project Opportunity
Manuel Lemos wrote: Hello, on 02/17/2010 02:13 AM Shawn McKenzie said the following: PHP framework to speak of. Manuel has authored most of them and many I suppose you meant that I authored many of the classes. I only submitted about 30 out of more than 2600 classes available submitted to the site. 30 may be many, but 1% is far from being most. The only slightly negative thing that I can say is that I have never seen a post by Manuel on this list actually contributing a solution, recommendation or any type of help other than a link to phpclasses. This doesn't sound fair. If a developer has a problem and I have a class that solves that problem, suggesting to use the class does not contribute to the solution of the problem? Still it is not accurate to say that I only post messages here to suggest links to the site. Even if it was true, keep in mind that I do not have all the time in the world. I think it is still helpful when I find time to suggest solutions even if they include using any of my classes or something else in the PHPClasses site, unless you prefer that I do not even post any messages here at all and do not bother trying helping anybody here in any way. Well fuck it then. 99% of my post was defending you with one blurb of constructive criticism. -- Thanks! -Shawn http://www.spidean.com -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Re: UK Project Opportunity
I use LGPL and i think (hope, actually) that it gives me a free full license for any patch i receive. That's what several people summarizing it for me have told me. But as far as i'm concerned, it goes both ways; any patch is included in a free update that may be re-hosted. It's just about who-does-the-coordinating and final descision making. That should be the original author for as long as he/she chooses. And i don't mind contributors insisting on crediting them in the appropriate place with at least 1 line, with an option for another line with a url of their choosing. If the url is / gets malicious, the browser content virus-malware services will warn users about it these days. On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 5:54 AM, Paul M Foster pa...@quillandmouse.com wrote: On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 05:38:36AM +0100, Rene Veerman wrote: snip but if it turns out he's truely leeching on the work of others (by for instance requiring authors to give him (near-)free exclusive rights or something), then i'd have to switch sides, and say that authors need to be warned of such practices. They should at least retain the full rights to their work and be able to quickly and permanently remove their work from a site like phpclasses.org, including the removal of individual files. Yeah, I have a real beef with copyright-assignment, like what the GNU Project insists upon. If I built a program, I get to keep the copyright and determine the license. I feel the opposite way about patches. If you submit a patch to my sourceforge project, it's copyrighted by me. I don't make money off the project and I don't want to fight with you later about the code. And if I submit a patch to your project, you're free to do as you like with the code and its copyright. By the way, I am *not* saying Manuel does this. I'm just commenting on Rene's post. -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Re: UK Project Opportunity
Shawn McKenzie wrote: Manuel Lemos wrote: Hello, on 02/17/2010 02:13 AM Shawn McKenzie said the following: PHP framework to speak of. Manuel has authored most of them and many I suppose you meant that I authored many of the classes. I only submitted about 30 out of more than 2600 classes available submitted to the site. 30 may be many, but 1% is far from being most. The only slightly negative thing that I can say is that I have never seen a post by Manuel on this list actually contributing a solution, recommendation or any type of help other than a link to phpclasses. This doesn't sound fair. If a developer has a problem and I have a class that solves that problem, suggesting to use the class does not contribute to the solution of the problem? Still it is not accurate to say that I only post messages here to suggest links to the site. Even if it was true, keep in mind that I do not have all the time in the world. I think it is still helpful when I find time to suggest solutions even if they include using any of my classes or something else in the PHPClasses site, unless you prefer that I do not even post any messages here at all and do not bother trying helping anybody here in any way. Well fuck it then. 99% of my post was defending you with one blurb of constructive criticism. perhaps it's my fault for setting the negative tone from the off, or perhaps its a case of showing true colors, or perhaps different all together - time will tell I guess. there's a lot for him to think about and take on board! bailing out now, regards -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Re: UK Project Opportunity
On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 01:52:08AM -0200, Manuel Lemos wrote: snip Having to register to download classes from phpclasses.org is a nuisance. Manuel says this is up to the individual developer. This may be technically true, but Manuel *offers* this as an option. Contrast Source Forge, which performs a similar function but does not require any registration to download anything. I imagine that the registration allows Manuel to tightly monitor site usage in a variety of ways. Actually it is much more than that. If you download a package, the site keeps track of that and next time the package is updated, it send you an e-mail alert so you can get the latest version, unless you do not want to be notified of course. Also the site counts how many distinct users downloaded each package and builds top download rankings . If you download a package more than once, it only counts once, so the top download charts are accurate, making it fair for everybody. For users this may not be very important, but for authors it is very motivating. Authors are happy that the site lets their users know about updates of their classes. Authors also like to see the progress of their packages in terms of users that have downloaded it. The site also provide a blog for each package, so when the author wants to post something new about the class or ask for feedback, a message is sent to the users that downloaded the package. There are other compelling reasons but this is basically why more than 2600 authors submitted over 5000 packages. The site gets them attention. Other sites like Sourceforge cannot provide this level of attention precisely because they do not require users to download even if the authors wanted that. This type of question has been asked many times on this list, particularly for voting type projects: How do I ensure that a person can only vote once (etc.)? No answer I've ever seen, besides insisting on a registration/login, has ever been satisfactory. The above is a real-world example of this in action. And as Manuel details, it has some definite benefits to users and developers. Again, having to register/login is a pain. But ads are a pain, too. It's a trade-off. Paul -- Paul M. Foster -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Re: UK Project Opportunity
On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 06:02:18AM +0100, Rene Veerman wrote: I use LGPL and i think (hope, actually) that it gives me a free full license for any patch i receive. That's what several people summarizing it for me have told me. snip The multitude of copyright holders on several FOSS projects has created licensing issues, in particular with the Linux kernel. The problem arises where the controlling person wants to (or doesn't want to) change the license. In the case of the Linux kernel, the license issue is GPLv3 versus GPLv2. Broadly, the rights and privileges are the same between the two licenses, but Linus has some issues with some of the provisions of GPLv3. Other projects have wanted to change licenses for whatever reason, but where the copyrights are owned by a variety of people, getting them all to agree on the change has been a problem. Paul -- Paul M. Foster -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Re: UK Project Opportunity
Paul M Foster wrote: On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 01:52:08AM -0200, Manuel Lemos wrote: snip Having to register to download classes from phpclasses.org is a nuisance. Manuel says this is up to the individual developer. This may be technically true, but Manuel *offers* this as an option. Contrast Source Forge, which performs a similar function but does not require any registration to download anything. I imagine that the registration allows Manuel to tightly monitor site usage in a variety of ways. Actually it is much more than that. If you download a package, the site keeps track of that and next time the package is updated, it send you an e-mail alert so you can get the latest version, unless you do not want to be notified of course. per project rss feeds? Also the site counts how many distinct users downloaded each package and builds top download rankings . If you download a package more than once, it only counts once, so the top download charts are accurate, making it fair for everybody. no more accurate than storing the ip (or a hash of it); people forget details sign up again and so forth - can never guarantee accuracy here For users this may not be very important, but for authors it is very motivating. Authors are happy that the site lets their users know about updates of their classes. Authors also like to see the progress of their packages in terms of users that have downloaded it. can be done with the aforementioned, no need for logins The site also provide a blog for each package, so when the author wants to post something new about the class or ask for feedback, a message is sent to the users that downloaded the package. good; but again rss offering an option to subscribe by email. There are other compelling reasons but this is basically why more than 2600 authors submitted over 5000 packages. The site gets them attention. Other sites like Sourceforge cannot provide this level of attention precisely because they do not require users to download even if the authors wanted that. I'd debate this; but trying to stick to positives - sf do pretty well with their stats is all I'll say This type of question has been asked many times on this list, particularly for voting type projects: How do I ensure that a person can only vote once (etc.)? No answer I've ever seen, besides insisting on a registration/login, has ever been satisfactory. The above is a real-world example of this in action. And as Manuel details, it has some definite benefits to users and developers. ack; fact is if you wanted to skew results you'd just create lots of accounts - distinct ip and cookies can cover it just as well; there is no perfect solution. Again, having to register/login is a pain. But ads are a pain, too. It's a trade-off. always need to figure out which has more benefits though; more downloads and exposure (better conversion ratio) vs better stats and less exposure (low conversion ratio) + account for things like people downloading because they can see the source ala google code - i for one always check the svn browser on google code before downloading, sure many others do too.. regards -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Re: UK Project Opportunity
Hello, on 02/17/2010 03:00 AM Shawn McKenzie said the following: Well fuck it then. 99% of my post was defending you with one blurb of constructive criticism. I am sorry but I was just clarifying things that I felt it were inaccurate. I did not meant to upset anybody. If you found reason to be offended, I appologise. -- Regards, Manuel Lemos Find and post PHP jobs http://www.phpclasses.org/jobs/ PHP Classes - Free ready to use OOP components written in PHP http://www.phpclasses.org/ -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Re: UK Project Opportunity
Hello, on 02/17/2010 02:38 AM Rene Veerman said the following: on the other hand, i have received off-list mail about other business practices of phpclasses.org that i also would not have chosen myself, because i disapprove of them. Off the list? Curious. Is it my impression or someone is cowardly trying to poison people here against the PHPClasses site? but, it can be argued that for a person with a certain skillset and skill levels, maintaining and marketing phpclasses.org is the work related to opensourcing. Not contributing a lot of work-code can then be forgiven, imo. but if it turns out he's truely leeching on the work of others (by for instance requiring authors to give him (near-)free exclusive rights or something), then i'd have to switch sides, and say that authors need to be warned of such practices. They should at least retain the full rights to their work and be able to quickly and permanently remove their work from a site like phpclasses.org, including the removal of individual files. I don't know where people get those ideas. The PHPClasses site has no interest nor means to require any author to grant (near-)free exclusive rights to any of the contributed code. The truth is that if authors submit their packages to PHPClasses and not elsewhere, that could be because the site provide them benefits that they do not get elsewhere. Anyway, you may check out the site contribution requirements here. Maybe the text is not very clear. http://www.phpclasses.org/contribute.html it's been made clear to me that when it comes to his business practices, the owner of phpclasses.org likes to stick to his own ideas and descisions. Is this a good or a bad thing? The site has to remain viable. By the end of the day I am the ultimate responsible to keep it viable. I often listen to user ideas and implement them. But some user ideas are not feasible or are counterproductive. Should I have to follow all user ideas even if I feel they are not right to execute? I think sometimes users do not have patience. Certain ideas are good and accepted but it take a long time to become feasible. Some people may understand that as if I just want to stick to my own ideas. For instance, the site design was meant to replaceable by the users since 2002. Unfortunately that was something that did not get development priority until 2008. It took more than one year to develop a design contest system that allows any user to propose new designs and any user to vote on the proposed designs. The contest is finished, the winner was picked and in a few days the new design will be up after a few adjustments. This was a monstrous job only meant to please the interest of users to have a different design. Still I had to put up with the criticism as if I wanted to stick to the original design. -- Regards, Manuel Lemos Find and post PHP jobs http://www.phpclasses.org/jobs/ PHP Classes - Free ready to use OOP components written in PHP http://www.phpclasses.org/ -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Re: UK Project Opportunity
Hello, on 02/17/2010 03:26 AM Nathan Rixham said the following: Having to register to download classes from phpclasses.org is a nuisance. Manuel says this is up to the individual developer. This may be technically true, but Manuel *offers* this as an option. Contrast Source Forge, which performs a similar function but does not require any registration to download anything. I imagine that the registration allows Manuel to tightly monitor site usage in a variety of ways. Actually it is much more than that. If you download a package, the site keeps track of that and next time the package is updated, it send you an e-mail alert so you can get the latest version, unless you do not want to be notified of course. per project rss feeds? That is not the same thing. The PHPClasses also has RSS project feeds but the vast majority of the users that download a package do not even realize they are available, even less subscribe to them. In PHPClasses, you are automatically subscribed to the package change e-mail alerts just because you downloaded a package. The users may realize later they are not interested and unsubscribe but many of them love to get alerts on updated classes that they have interest. So you keep your loyal users hooked. It only depends on you, the author, to update your package once you have done significant improvements. Also the site counts how many distinct users downloaded each package and builds top download rankings . If you download a package more than once, it only counts once, so the top download charts are accurate, making it fair for everybody. no more accurate than storing the ip (or a hash of it); people forget details sign up again and so forth - can never guarantee accuracy here No, it is totally different. Users change IP addresses every day. Anonymous login will never be able determine if an user is coming to download again or is another user. PHPClasses only accounts logged user download, so it can distinguish. Sure, an user may create a new account if he forgets but the way the site works he is discouraged to do so. That is part of the reason why the site does not allow deleting accounts. It may not be 100% accurate, but it is certainly more accurate than anonymous download counts. There are other compelling reasons but this is basically why more than 2600 authors submitted over 5000 packages. The site gets them attention. Other sites like Sourceforge cannot provide this level of attention precisely because they do not require users to download even if the authors wanted that. I'd debate this; but trying to stick to positives - sf do pretty well with their stats is all I'll say It depends on what you consider pretty well. If you consider that accounting Web robots downloads and mix them with real user downloads is pretty well, you may be believing in a big lie. This type of question has been asked many times on this list, particularly for voting type projects: How do I ensure that a person can only vote once (etc.)? No answer I've ever seen, besides insisting on a registration/login, has ever been satisfactory. The above is a real-world example of this in action. And as Manuel details, it has some definite benefits to users and developers. ack; fact is if you wanted to skew results you'd just create lots of accounts - distinct ip and cookies can cover it just as well; there is no perfect solution. That is what you think. The PHPClasses site has fraud combat system that tackles that case of users creating many accounts to spam rankings. I am just not going to explain how it works because nothing is 100% guaranteed, but in my experience it works wonders and prevented a lot of injustices like giving away prizes to authors that cheat that way. Anyway, for other sites that unlike PHPClasses do not give any prizes, it may not be a big deal. Again, having to register/login is a pain. But ads are a pain, too. It's a trade-off. always need to figure out which has more benefits though; more downloads and exposure (better conversion ratio) vs better stats and less exposure (low conversion ratio) + account for things like people downloading because they can see the source ala google code - i for one always check the svn browser on google code before downloading, sure many others do too.. Sure, people can always submit their projects to as many sites they want. Actually, the goal of PHPClasses is not to make people register, although that brings benefits to contributing users. But if you ever wondered why certain packages are available on PHPClasses and not elsewhere, you may have your answer regarding what provides more benefits. -- Regards, Manuel Lemos Find and post PHP jobs http://www.phpclasses.org/jobs/ PHP Classes - Free ready to use OOP components written in PHP http://www.phpclasses.org/ -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
