Yesterday, Fabien Potencier submitted a pull request to the PHP-FIG requesting to remove Symfony with a note : “no description provided”. According to Fabien, everything seems to be great with the PHP-FIG… until PSR-7 !
In a Tweet Fabien explained that “PHP-FIG **was** a great way to create a common ground for PHP projects, **interoperability-first**. PSR-0 and PSR-4 (autoloading) were a great start and made it possible to easily share libraries.PSR-1 and PSR-2 (coding standard) proved that projects were willing to work together to converge on non-critical topics.”
Things goes very well with PSR-11, the collaboration was successful even with some disagreements. He added “PSR-11 (container) was the best example of collaboration. Some people (me included) were skeptical at first but people in charge listened to critics and they found a middle ground that made it easier for existing projects to adopt it.”
However with PSR-7, and now PSR-14, it become not anymore about interoperability but more about creating an opinionated framework managed somehow by the PHP-FIG committee : “PSR-7 had nothing to do with interop; it ended up as a spec for the foundation of a new opinionated framework, And now, PSR-14 (event dispatcher) might be taking the same path.”
The conclusion “PHP-FIG is **not** about interoperability anymore, it’s about creating an opinionated framework, a framework by committee…”.
The implosion of PHP-FIG started two years ago with Laravel, Guzzle, Propane, SabreDAV and Doctrine, and probably earlier with Anthony Ferrera open letter in 2014 : “Please stop trying to solve generic problems. Solve the 50% problem, not the 99% problem.”
Things are not totally negative with PHP-FIG as it’s truly helping to make the PHP ecosystem better, and it’s not easy to get an agreement from all of its active members. The group should focus on interoperability, on huggable PSRs, and solving 50% of the problems while keeping the doors open for adoption and innovation.
