> would it be very wrong to assume this just a case of a bystander starting a discussion that didn't really catch on with any of the active maintainers?
Anthony (ircmaxell) contributed some patches to the past few major releases (including the new password API and PBKDF functions) and is well-respected by a large number of PHP developers.
He's also proposed nearly a dozen RFCs including working patches, most of which include incremental but major feature improvements. He and some of the others are trying to improve PHP as a language.
The problem is that there are a handful of people that do not want language changes, think that some changes are confusing for developers, and are generally not actually able to understand the use case behind things, like, oh, I dunno, named parameters. So instead of having a well-reasoned discussion, they basically shout the proposal down.
Thankfully the RFC and voting process can bypass the volume of their arguments, but not always.
Anthony (ircmaxell) contributed some patches to the past few major releases (including the new password API and PBKDF functions) and is well-respected by a large number of PHP developers.
He's also proposed nearly a dozen RFCs including working patches, most of which include incremental but major feature improvements. He and some of the others are trying to improve PHP as a language.
The problem is that there are a handful of people that do not want language changes, think that some changes are confusing for developers, and are generally not actually able to understand the use case behind things, like, oh, I dunno, named parameters. So instead of having a well-reasoned discussion, they basically shout the proposal down.
Thankfully the RFC and voting process can bypass the volume of their arguments, but not always.