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Microsoft Partners With Zend 223

jesse.castro writes to point out news of Microsoft striking a multi-year partnership with PHP provider Zend to improve PHP's performance on Windows-based Web servers. From the article: "Rather than marking a sudden change of course, Microsoft is openly engaging in a dialogue with Zend, a key open source promoter, and millions of PHP developers, analysts said."
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Microsoft Partners With Zend

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  • It's a trap ? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by pembo13 ( 770295 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2006 @05:06PM (#16664337) Homepage
    One would think MS has enough languages of their own. None of which I personally like.
    • Re:It's a trap ? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by chroot_james ( 833654 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2006 @05:07PM (#16664375) Homepage
      Don't be silly. They want to make sure that anything where Linux as an alternative is better becomes not better. They're done fighting everyone and are embracing the democratization of innovation and personal preference. The uses of PHP or ASP don't have to be rational for them to make money selling windows server that run both...
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by tacocat ( 527354 )

        yer a nut!

        If what you say is indeed true then this is the first time in some 20+ years that Microsoft is changing from Embrace/Extend/Extinguish to... Sorry, I don't believe it. There is not one company to have survived a partnership with Microsoft. In five years, if Zend is still Zend and PHP is still PHP and not some dot-net extension, you might have a point.

        I view this as the end of Zend and the kiss of death to PHP. If PHP gets better under Windows then it will probably somehow get worse under Lin

        • So what - isn't this what open source is supposed to be about. If MS wants to embrace/extend/extinguish (otherwise known as forking) then that's fine, the GPL allows them to do so. why would you have a problem with PHP.net under a F/OSS licence.

          If it makes PHP better under windows, and adds support for PHP to tools like Visual Studio then all is good. The old PHP will continue to work as before.
    • I personally have to say that I love VB.Net and C#. They are great languages. Now, IIS I have some issues with, but I find it a joy to work in Visual Studio with C# and VB.Net. Certainly better than working in PHP, with any IDE i've tried. I haven't tried Zen yet though. I've been searching for a good IDE. Does anybody have suggestions for a good PHP IDE? I'm currently using Quanta.
    • There is simply no way this can be good for PHP. Microsoft will in some way co-op, patent or otherwise do harm to the project before it's all over with.

      In other news, I'm so terribly glad I migrated to Perl recently :-)
  • This is good news as far as I am concerned. Additional support from a major provider of server OS's to a widely used OPEN SOURCE language can and will help. It is not like PHP is only thing out there now and its flaws are more apparent now with the whole web 2.0 and its corresponding languages. Maybe some support and extra innovation will keep it viable and maintain its developers/users. I know I have been looking to other languages more and more as time goes by.

    What does this mean for ASP though? Short an

    • "ASP?" C'mon, this is 2006...anyone doing pro web dev in Windows these days is using ASP.NET; it's a lot different than the old ASP/Perl/PHP scripting environments.

      (So, you're probably right; if you're still using ASP, not much is going to stop you now.)
    • Maybe some support and extra innovation will keep it viable and maintain its developers/users.

      If PHP developers wanted "innovation", PHP wouldn't have succeeded as much as it did. PHP has succeeded because it's for people to develop web applications with, and to do so with little more than a text editor. It also doesn't look to me like PHP needs more support (and what kind support would Microsoft offer anyway?).

      This is simply what it looks like: Microsoft wants PHP to run better on Windows servers so that
    • by Fozzyuw ( 950608 )

      Hmm... so much PHP hatred. I'm a little surprised here. Although, I cannot disagree with people's claim on how PHP gets used to pump out complete slop by new-to-programming people, what would be the open-source choice if not PHP?

      The only other thing I can think of is JSP, which I started working with once, but soon grew a bit frustrated with trying to get it to work on Windows in a "WAMP" environment. I also found that it was just confusing to organize, and this comes from a programmer who spent most o

      • by jZnat ( 793348 ) *
        Most people seem to like either Ruby [ruby-lang.org] [on Rails [rubyonrails.org]] or Python [python.org] (Django seems to be a good MVC framework, but there are more).
    • by vmfedor ( 586158 )
      Assuming when you say ASP you mean ASP.NET, I don't think there's any competition really. ASP.NET is a competitor of Java, not PHP. Trying to compare PHP and ASP.NET is impossible.

      And if you meant regular old ASP, well, don't use that, use PHP. :)
    • by tacocat ( 527354 )
      Yeah, but PHP isn't all that great when you compare it to mod_perl or rails (different extremes)
    • Why are we freaking out? Apparently you've never heard of something called "embrace and extend".
  • This makes me happy. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by KermodeBear ( 738243 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2006 @05:13PM (#16664483) Homepage
    As a PHP developer this could be a great boon for me. With Microsoft actively getting involved with PHP, perhaps more companies will consider using it. More jobs opportunities for me - whee! Maybe I can get out of Buffalo...

    That said, this confuses me a bit:

    Technical improvements by Zend and Microsoft to make it easier to run PHP on Windows[...]
    Since when was it difficult to run PHP on Windows? I have written code that runs on both Linux and Windows machines, and, like most scripting languages, "it just works". There are a few extensions (like process control) that don't work under Windows - but the need for those extensions is very small. For a vast majority of scripting you don't need to do anything differently under Linux than you do Windows. I wish the article would have gone more in depth about these alleged problems.
    • by dave420 ( 699308 )

      It says in the article:

      '"PHP has always worked on Windows. The problem is that it never performed very well," Andi Gutmans, Zend's co-founder and chief technology officer, said in an interview'

      It seems MS is looking to improve performance, not to get it working in the first place. Any performance gains on any platform is great news for the language.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by MBCook ( 132727 )

      My gut is telling me that this is just to stop customer hemorrhaging. People say "We like PHP and that's what our code is in so we can't use Windows" or "... but Linux is faster" (just a guess). So MS is helping with PHP so people can either switch FROM Linux to Windows and easily keep/develop PHP, or just get better performance for their current code (if there is a very measurable performance hit from running Windows, they'd want that fixed).

      Either way it's good, but that's my guess why they are doing thi

    • Since when was it difficult to run PHP on Windows? I have written code that runs on both Linux and Windows machines, and, like most scripting languages, "it just works". There are a few extensions (like process control) that don't work under Windows - but the need for those extensions is very small. For a vast majority of scripting you don't need to do anything differently under Linux than you do Windows. I wish the article would have gone more in depth about these alleged problems.

      Take this with a grain of
    • Hey - don't knock Buffalo - some of are happy with our new Jumping-Slug Sabres logo (http://www.sabres.com/ [sabres.com]). Really though... You can make plenty of $ in Buffalo (and considering the cost of living here, you'd be a fool to go work in a high-demand area.) Just pick a more in-demand technology...
      • by wizbit ( 122290 )
        some of are happy with our new Jumping-Slug Sabres logo

        I always thought it looked like Barney Rubble's hair, or a furry version of the Chargers logo...
    • by ajs ( 35943 )
      This is probably aimed at improving the build environment for PHP on Windows, OS integration (deeper integration with .Net, etc). These things are important to Windows developers, though not as much to PHP developers who don't think in terms of what box the code runs on.
    • by Xibby ( 232218 )
      Possibly integrating PHP into the Windows Scripting Host similar to Active Perl. That could be interesting as it would expose PHP to WMI and other resources made available via the Windows Scripting Host.

    • Microsoft is notorious for not following set standards and instead doing what it think is right/better/best, causing the development community to work twice as hard to support it in some cases.

      What worries me is that this will turn into some bastardization of PHP that is "tuned" for Windows and then requires hacks or work arounds to get things to work on other platforms.

      What might actually be worse would be features that are only available in PHP running on Windows. *sigh*

      Also, a little OT, I admit
    • Same here I develop PHP in an organization, it's a great language (even better when you know how to program) and it is good news as I will something to point to them to keep them (PHBs) at bay from jumping to Visual Basic or Access because its MS supported.
    • if (!running_on_windows)
      {
      print "Unsupported operating system detected.";
      print "To enjoy the full php experience please visit www.microsoft.com for an upgrade."
      }
    • This means PHP will run on .NET as an ASP.NET language. As a PHP4 guy with a lot of open source code invested in PHP I'm pretty excited about this too, but I would be surprised to not see at least major API changes, and at most some language changes too.

      PHP.NET is long overdue though, kudos MS!
    • When you install PHP on a Windows server it's painfully obvious that it was developed for UNIX and ported. Now that's fine, but a real, proper port is one that feels like it was developed naively on Windows. Things like a nice GUI installer that handles all the configuration automatically and just asks the couple questions needed, a control panel snap-in to configure it rather than a text file, having stderr dumped some place more useful than a dialogue box on the console (make it fun to debug remote).

      None
    • by mgblst ( 80109 )
      If you know PHP, you can do pretty much anything, Python, asp, C#, coldfusion - they aren't that much different. Once you get the basic, it isn't that hard to move around (coming from someone who has done asp, coldfusion, ASP.NET in the last year for 3 different jobs)
  • php is a very popular language (even if, in my opinion, a badly structured one), thus by making Windows the most popular platform for it, you've suddenly got an increase in demand. Microsoft don't do anything for free, and this is no exception.
  • by Karem Lore ( 649920 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2006 @05:35PM (#16664851)
    Microsoft has just announced a new language said to potentially drive the future of the web...

    drum roll

    drum roll

    PHP Sharp, or PHP# for short...

  • Special MS PHP? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by pestilence669 ( 823950 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2006 @05:39PM (#16664921)
    This isn't good news for any party. Is this the beginning of a "special" PHP version for Windows? It's not as far fetched as it sounds.

    C++ in Visual Studio is not exactly standards compliant. It's definitely Microsoft specific, as is their: HTML, CSS, XML, Java, TCP/IP stack, HTTP negotiation, LDAP, kerberos, DNS, DHCP, etc., etc. Every "standard" and language they adopt gets altered, even when completely unnecessary.

    What on earth will they do to PHP? Assimilate it into .NET?

    What PHP really needs is a MS SQL driver that doesn't leak memory and cause access violations. Microsoft hasn't supported their C library in years. PHP doesn't need any "help" from Microsoft, IMHO.
    • by nuzak ( 959558 )
      > What on earth will they do to PHP? Assimilate it into .NET?

      Quite possibly. It's already been assimilated into Java [caucho.com]
    • C++ in Visual Studio is not exactly standards compliant. It's definitely Microsoft specific

      Do you have any idea what you're talking about? VC 8 is right on par with GCC 4.0 in terms of C++ '99 (and 2003 rev) compliance. Yes they have some extensions, but so does GCC and pretty much every other compiler out there. Hell, GCC probably has more extensions than VC does. Obviously if portability is a concern, you don't use vendor specific extensions -- regardless of what vendor it is.

      What PHP really needs is a M

      • Yes, I do have a really good idea of what I'm talking about. I'm not quoting the spec sheets, I actively use both compilers with exceptionally large codebases. I have quite a bit of experience creating portable code between GCC and VC8 and Intel's compiler.

        I'm not talking about vendor specific extensions, of which there are many. I'm talking about actual deviations from the C++ standard. Microsoft has made big strides, and this is the closest they've come so far to a truely standard C++ compiler, but VC8 st
    • What on earth will they do to PHP? Assimilate it into .NET?
      As a .NET developer, I sure hope not. We already have one curse which is VB, another such would be too much.
  • by greenpotatochip ( 958150 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2006 @05:48PM (#16665041) Journal
    holy vulnerable software batman, the riddler and the joker have joined forces!
  • that they are afraid that Zend will sue them because "Zune" is so similar--so they're making nice.
  • This is squarely aimed against OSS and all it stands for.
    Desktop Linux hasn't caught on. Not yet. But PHP has. Like it or not, PHP has turned into the king of the server-side. MS must have noticed how much it's gnawing at ASPs marketshare (Just did a comment on that [slashdot.org] the other day). PHP even has turned into a brigdehead for Linux at this point. That they'd team up with Zend is an unexpected but somewhat fitting move.
    I've never really known what to make of Zend. Their PHP groundwork is fair enough, but all-i
    • by Decaff ( 42676 )
      Like it or not, PHP has turned into the king of the server-side

      Not quite yet.

      From dice.com - one of the best known IT job sites.

      Today, out of around 96,000 jobs:

      Java or J2EE 16,777
      ASP 3165
      PHP 1216
      Ruby on Rails 350

      Yes, I know jobs aren't that accurate as a measure of technology use, and there are a lot of smaller PHP projects, and so on, but we are talking about a ratio of Java : PHP of more than 10:1.

      PHP is very popular, and will remain so, but to claim it is 'king' of the server-side is wildly exaggerating
      • If I wanted to start a flame war, I might point out that it might just be that Java is 10x harder to implement and takes 10x the resources, thus 10x the job availability. :)
    • by Maul ( 83993 )
      My thoughts on this are pretty similar to yours. PHP is a part of a very popular "solution" that is currently built entirely off of open source. People with little to no coding skills can easily set up a web site using Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP. There are literally thousands of freely available webb apps built off of "LAMP" that are fairly customizable. Zero software licensing costs. Thousands of successful web sites are making money right now using open source solutions, and Microsoft certainly wants
    • Hopefully MS will wake up and stop forcefeeding people their "dotnet visionary strategy initiative" bullshit, because it's patented. Sometimes you just don't care about pedantry, sometimes you just want to get stuff done fast and easy. Dotnet isn't the way. I look at the same webcode in dotnet, asp, php, perl, etc, and of all the perl code is the shortest but also too cryptic - it doesn't feel human to me, because I don't know perl - but other than that php is the least complicated "human readable" way to a
  • Seems microsoft has chosen another target to 'embrace, extend, destroy'.
  • Oh god (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Mancat ( 831487 )
    Do you think that Microsoft would just like to improve IIS' PHP support? You know, so that they might attract more web developers to the IIS platform naturally?

    God no. They must be trying to destroy it.

    Slashdot logic.
  • A good thing (Score:4, Informative)

    by talonyx ( 125221 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2006 @06:46PM (#16665817)
    PHP is licensed under the GPL, so we don't need to worry about an MS-proprietary version of it. They'd have to reimplement the system from scratch, and who would bother to do that when they have ASP.NET?

    I for one would love to see .NET support for PHP so I could use it to write native Windows GUI programs, access ODBC in a more robust fashion, and get more access to Windows-internal stuff that is so easy to do on Unix but so hard to do on Windows.
    A bit of performance would be nice, but chances are I will keep running my servers on Debian simply because that's all they are: brainless webservers with muscle and nothing holding them back.
    • PHP is not GPLed (Score:2, Informative)

      by VolkerLanz ( 1005127 )

      PHP is licensed under the GPL, so we don't need to worry about an MS-proprietary version of it.

      PHP is not licensed under the GPL. It comes with its own license, called "The PHP License" (3.0 in the sources I have here). Looks like a BSD-like license to me at a quick glance.

      I vaguely remember PHP not being GPLed the reason that MySQL made an exception in their licensing of the database to allow PHP to work and talk with it (MySQL consider communication over TCP/IP as derivative work, IIRC).

    • I for one would love to see .NET support for PHP so I could use it to write native Windows GUI programs, access ODBC in a more robust fashion, and get more access to Windows-internal stuff that is so easy to do on Unix but so hard to do on Windows.
      Why would you even want to do GUI or system programming in PHP??
  • Sun to control PHP? [slashdot.org]

    but it still doesn't answer whether there will be windows only PHP extensions. Will it be another java type fiasco, this time with incompatible PHP's? I certainly hope not. If this is MS's way of screwing it up so badly that people say "screw PHP", kinda like MS did with CSS and IE, that would royally suck. Zend, and all PHP developers should be very wary.
  • See the pretty charts [eweek.com] and the article [eweek.com].

    Pretty much, EWeek found that the OSS stacks run best on Windows. Now, is this because EWeek ran everything without tuning? Possibly. But then again, so do most folks, so the results are pretty valid.

    I bet that someone at MS was reading that, too.

    jh
  • Getting in the dicussion a bit late but oh well.

    This is clearly their way to infiltrate the open source LAMP stack:

        * W indows
        * I nternet Information Server
        * M S SQL
        * P HP

    Clearly, the acronym of the future :-P
  • A Quick, Painless Tutorial on the Python Language [ucdavis.edu]

    No, this is not off topic. Friends don't let friends use Visual PHP#.net.

  • Just to keep PHP services to migrate from buggy Windows to BSD/Linux. Anyway, this press release doesn't say any concrete things (When PHP wasn't usable under Windows?), so it is smell like PR dunk to give breathing space for Windows 2003 Server and Vista server.

    Of course, just my imho,
    Peter.

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