Preface: I am the Founder and Lead Developer for Fuel
A lot of people are complaining, and saying things like we don't use namespaces properly. My response: Then don't use the framework. I started the framework because no current framework met my needs. Here are some of the reasons I did not simply use an existing framework:
CodeIgniter - Slow to evolve, requires a lot of code for simple things, nothing autoloaded (don't even try to mention the autoload config file.
Symfony2 - Over-complication of menial tasks, kind of slow.
CakePHP - Slowest (php) framework known too man, bloated, need I say more?
Zend - Slow, bloated.
Yii - Just don't generally like the syntax.
Kohana - There isn't much I don't like about Kohana actually...other than its not PHP 5.3 yet (not going into specifics on why this is bad).
DooPHP - Not full-featured-enough.
I also wanted things like HMVC (i know some of the above support it), Modular Routing and a few other things.
To the guy that said he was turned off by the Html class: if you don't want it, don't use it, stop whining.
I agree with your assertion to not use your framework. Believe it or not, having an open and active user base of your framework will help you and all members. Doesn't seem like you are attempting to start things off on a very good note.
I think you got him wrong. We've been at this for some time now and did some heavy development on this. Sometimes a person comes in and comments with a single line like "I WANT MORE NAMESPACES" and seems to assume that we picked our current setup without giving it a second thought. When someone comes around and all they can say is something as unmotivated and useless as that we won't have a lot of time for the assumption we didn't think of it.
If you completely disagree that's fine, move on to something else then - no hard feelings either way I hope. Just don't assume we just created this at random. Dan's remark was spot on, we chose the way we handle namespaces and autoloading very deliberately and we'll take the time to explain our motivations if you ask. But if you come in telling us that our setup sucks because we should be all-something because product X has that as well: don't expect we'll spend any time on you. There are lots of others with a more open-minded approach whom our time is far better spent on, and of course especially those actively helping out being the community you refer to.
If you try to make your software perfect for everyone, then all you will create is a muddled mess. It's a good thing to acknowledge that some people are your audience and other people aren't.
I mean, if you were developing a new social network site, would you try to seed it with the Amish?
I think it's great to have more active frameworks for PHP that keep questioning how 'stuff was done' with the previous ones.
The only thing that I keep wishing for is that the whole 'new school' PHP 5.3+ gets something similar to Ruby's gems and having more high quality code that lives outside of frameworks.
(That's no criticism towards FuelPHP at all - just seeing that you guys are writing some 'good PHP code' it might be worth considering if it wouldn't be great when some of it was available outside of FuelPHP as well.)
Actually we have something along those lines: using our command line utility you can install "packages" which should be a collection of classes for added functionality. Currently we have some well known libraries already available through the CLI by using "php oil install package htmlpurifier" for example, they're taken from Github and installed in the fuel/packages/<packagename> dir.
Of course if you don't want CLI you can just download them and copy them to the right directory yourself.
We intend to create a repository for packages and classes installable through Oil directly into your Fuel install.
At this time we are still using a single Github profile to fork any repo into that will be available through Oil package install: https://github.com/fuel-packages (install the packages without the "fuel-" prefix as their name)
PEAR and PECL are great, but they add requirements to your application that live outside of the system.
You have to worry about your application being compatible with the version installed on the server and all sorts of other madness. Through this incredibly simple system (which will shortly become more powerful with its own interface) we can basically just install a package into your application in the same way most people would normally download, unzip, etc.
php oil install foo
Then add it to git, push and you're all good. Otherwise you have to run around installing dependencies and all sorts of other junk.
Some of us in the PHP community definitely agree with you, and are working on trying to change the culture amongst developers. I'm currently writing a series of blog posts to try and convince developers why this is a good idea, and how to go about doing it.
A lot of people are complaining, and saying things like we don't use namespaces properly. My response: Then don't use the framework. I started the framework because no current framework met my needs. Here are some of the reasons I did not simply use an existing framework:
CodeIgniter - Slow to evolve, requires a lot of code for simple things, nothing autoloaded (don't even try to mention the autoload config file.
Symfony2 - Over-complication of menial tasks, kind of slow.
CakePHP - Slowest (php) framework known too man, bloated, need I say more?
Zend - Slow, bloated.
Yii - Just don't generally like the syntax.
Kohana - There isn't much I don't like about Kohana actually...other than its not PHP 5.3 yet (not going into specifics on why this is bad).
DooPHP - Not full-featured-enough.
I also wanted things like HMVC (i know some of the above support it), Modular Routing and a few other things.
To the guy that said he was turned off by the Html class: if you don't want it, don't use it, stop whining.