All for naught...

Friday, December 30. 2005

Well, it had to come, so here it is, without further delay, hindrance or obstructions. I'm no longer going to be working on Cerebral Cortex.

There are several reasons for this, I will go into them now:

1) Zend Framework
First and foremost, the announcement of the Zend Framework has led me to re-assess many things. With my lack of time it seems very stupid to develop a framework that whilst it may technically compete with the Zend Framework, will never have the same "Enterprise" support behind it - I can't win.

2) Lack of Community
I may have spent almost 2 years on getting Cerebral Cortex to a point where I was happy to release it; however I can't finish this herculean task on my own. There has been very little suggestions to Cerebral Cortex (and to those who are in #crtx on Freenode, I thank you very much) and even less code input. Add to this the fact that nobody seems to be using it except those few who gave input, it just doesn't seem worth it.

What Next?

Well I won't be removing Cerebral Cortex from the web, mostly because I have nothing else to do with the domain

In some ways I do feel that I wasted a lot of time in Cerebral Cortex, and that alone has kept me wanting to do something with it, but in actual fact, the amount of learning I have accomplished whilst developing it - PDO, Advanced SQL, Advanced OO, Web Services, etc etc etc has been phenominal, and that alone has been worth it.

I would dearly love to be invited to work on the Zend Framework (as an community contributor) and I feel that my experience with Cerebral Cortex would be a great asset to the framework, as it too strived for the extreme simplicity that Zend is trying so hard to achieve - so Zend people, if you're listening, feel free to contact me

- Davey

Posted by Davey Shafik in Cerebral Cortex, PHP at 01:22 | Comments (6) | Trackbacks (3)

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A pity to see this happening. Zend clearly stated that this is not the kind of thing they want to see happening. It's not about 'winning' of course (I can't 'win' either, but that's not my goal), but I understand your concerns.

Maybe if Cerebral Cortex has some users that want to continu its development, it can live on. Otherwise, I'd ofcourse be happy to help them move over to ATK.

#1 Ivo Jansch (Homepage) on 2005-12-30 07:13 (Reply)

Maybe if Cerebral Cortex did use LGPL or BSD like license it would be much more popular

#2 Tomek on 2005-12-30 08:09 (Reply)

Why?

The only difference is that people wanting to use it in a closed source app have to pay a commercial license. Since they are writing a closed source app, I think that is only fair.

#2.1 Ivo Jansch (Homepage) on 2005-12-30 08:19 (Reply)

It might only be fair, but with so many frameworks out there on more liberal licenses, it makes life harder for commercial frameworks. In Cerebal Cortexes case, no price structure was ever announced and so I didn't even bother downloading the code to have a look.

Unless Zend's framework sucks really badly, I can see most other frameworks suffering considerably.

#2.1.1 Rob Allen (Homepage) on 2005-12-30 11:10 (Reply)

Dude, that sucks. I know it's a hell of a lot of work to keep up, so I understand; Solar is like that for me, more so lately because of the new job. It's hard going.

As you say, the benefit to you personally is positive, having learned all that new stuff.

Still, having more to choose from is better; maybe someone else will pick up the load.

#3 Paul M. Jones (Homepage) on 2005-12-30 12:04 (Reply)

I like your 'bright side' view...it's the same as mine. If nothing else, you learned A LOT, and are a better developer for it.

I've written/writing a 'framework' that I will probably never release and, even if I did, it would never get used. Mostly I did it because I needed a reason to practice the language. I wanted to do that rather than 'learn' PHP by using Nuke or something else. Now, like you, I know more about databases, MVC, caching, etc. Self satisfaction.

...plus, at least you can sound authoritative when you say "Yeah, I wrote a framework: Cortex".

#4 Alex Mikitik on 2005-12-30 18:17 (Reply)

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About Me

Davey Shafik is a full time PHP Developer with 7-10 years experience in PHP and related technologies. An avid magazine writer and soon to be book author, Davey keeps his mind sharp by trying to tackle problems from a unique perspective.