There's been a lot of controversy around the PHP Standards group that was formed around May of 2009 and how they've handled the decision making process. They want to provide a standard that frameworks and other applications can follow to help making them all play nicely together a much easier process. Unfortunately, they decided to go the "closed source" way. Greg Beaver has posted some of his thoughts on their approach.

The idea is a wonderful one, and at first things looked like they were nothing but good. [...] At this point, signs of trouble began to crop up, and the good intentions began to result in a chill on the openness with suggestions of reducing input through moderation and discussions of who was a "member" of the standards group. [...] Since then, I have made several pleas, off-list and some on, to open the discussion and move things back to the way open source and specifically PHP works.

Greg's comments are shared by several in the community who wonder why something that could be such a key point for so many applications only involved a handful of the community. Be sure to check out the comments to hear the community voicing some of their own opinions on the subject, both for and against the way the standards group has been handled so far.