I didn't mean to say it is better than all other dependency managers and basically didn't want to argue at all. My point is just that I am happy that Composer is around now, as it lets me include all dependencies from various sources in a convenient and reliable way. So no matter which dependency manager for which language is 'the best', Composer definitely means better times for all PHP developers.

Seems that Ruby had one good standard solution with gems for a long time, let's hope that Composer has a similar bright future. From my perspective, it's already the standard and including a composer.json file is a 'best practice' for all 'well-connected' PHP developers releasing a library these days.