[development] PHP Standards Group

[Jeff Greenberg]

+1 to Larry for the reasons already enumerated.

The only thing I have to add that may be of value, is an observation of 
the past. The appearance of a standard that does not appear to (a) be in 
the best interests of the product, (b) best interests of the user, 
and/or (c) make much sense other than a standard for standard's sake, is 
a phenomenon that happens from time to time.

It makes every bit of sense in these cases to tread lightly, and not 
employ the standards that fall under (a) and (b), perhaps even (c), 
especially if (c) looks like it could cause unwanted limitations ongoing.

The warning is I've seen this done with, for example, HP clinging to 
HP-UX when Linux was starting to get loaded on servers, IBM with DB2, QB 
with XML, and I could go on for a long time. Granted, some examples are 
come down to Open or Proprietary, but the rationale for being one 
instead of the other was the same (with the addition of (d) Revenue), 
and usually came down to a belief that the standard would probably go 
nowhere, and wherever it *did* go would be outweighed by (a) and (b).

The result, though, in many cases was that by the time clients started 
griping about the solution not meeting a standard, and by the time it 
became a problem for the company's marketing that could not be ignored, 
they were way behind the curve in terms of meeting the standard, 
sometimes with disastrous results (for the original product and people 
who had lived it, at least).

So, my advice is to look at whatever standard emerges with two 
corrective lenses, one for near-sightedness, and one for far-, but 
definitely not with tunnel vision...not that you would :-)

Jeff