On PHPEverywhere, there is a new posting that some of the core PEAR developers out there might not want to see.

Quoted from a recent PHPDN forum post: I am one of the core developers of the PEAR package who has joined the game relatively late... The base PEAR class is one monstrous mistake, and PEAR_Error is pretty close. Everyone knows this. I designed an error class that is much, much more flexible and it is part of PEAR 1.3.1 (PEAR_ErrorStack) - check it out.

Of course, he's not alone in what's wrong with this default PHP installation. And, John Lim even tosses his hat into the ring: I once said once that too many PEAR developers were journeymen. This might have offended some people, but I was trying hard to be diplomatic. I must say that today the PEAR group is definitely more mature, and they have learnt a lot about library design. What would really make my eyes light up would be an PEAR2 initiative that kept the existing classes, but dropped the bad seeds such as PEAR.php (e.g. the PEAR and PEAR_Error classes).