Lukas Smith has this new post today over on his blog talking about where the future lies where the extensions for PHP are concerned - with PEAR or with PECL.

Its been a while since we had a nice flameware about the relevance of either project. Looking at the stats packages for PEAR and PECL (unfortunately not properly separated atm), we see that 15 million downloads has been passed. Back in february we have not reached 10 million yet. Of those 15 million it seems about 2 million have been produced by PECL, leaving 13 million to PEAR.

As such it seems that PEAR alone is likely pulling in more than half a million downloads per month. Suffice it to say I think these are the number of a successful project. PECL also seems to be looking quite well, given that it has alot less packages and also considering that not that many people have the ability to integrate their extensions into their host setup.

From that quote and the rest of the post it sounds like PEAR is "winning" by a landslide. But, there are more and more larger pakcages coming in the PECL front that might help tip the scales a bit more in its direction...