RE: PHP on .NET DLR

Btw, Silverlight is not an open-standard and not cross-platform. While I
see advantages of having the PHP syntax work on Silverlight (and it'd be
nice if someone does it), I think the open-source community should not
support Silverlight.
It's bad for the industry. We are better off supporting Ajax and the
OpenAjax alliance (http://www.openajax.org/) then a proprietary
technology. The last thing we need in this industry is to have one
vendor gain control of the Web. Ajax today is far from perfect but the
solution is to make enhancements as open-standards and not in a
proprietary way.

That said, from a PHP point-of-view our stance has always been to
interoperate with as many popular technologies as possible, whether
open-source, open-standard or proprietary. So I think in this context
it'd be good to consider supporting things like Silverlight or MS Ajax
(http://www.codeplex.com/phpmsajax) but not as the technology we want to
encourage to "win".

Andi=20

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Rasmus Lerdorf [mailto:[email protected]]=20
> Sent: Friday, August 10, 2007 10:10 AM
> To: K T Ligesh
> Cc: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: PHP on .NET DLR
>=20
> Beyond tech demos, which major web site has a Silverlight=20
> frontend today?  About as many as Adobe Air, I would expect. =20
> But regardless, PHP is firmly entrenched as a scalable=20
> server-side web platform.  That's where our focus is and=20
> probably always will be.  I don't actually see a problem with=20
> a Silverlight/Ruby client speaking to a PHP server-side=20
> script.  Most RIA work today is cross-language in the sense=20
> that you have client-side Javascript connection to=20
> server-side PHP.  PHP doesn't need to be everywhere.
>=20
> But again, it comes down to the level of interest amongst=20
> developers out there.  If there really is that much interest,=20
> you shouldn't need the Phalanger guys.  Developers would be=20
> lined up to help make this happen.
>=20
> I appreciate your enthusiasm for the Silverlight platform,=20
> but you need to recognize that there is a very large group of=20
> people out there who still have no idea what it is, and an=20
> even larger group who know what it is but have no use for it.=20
>  Until that changes, you are fighting an uphill battle.  It=20
> also doesn't help that the open source community is heavily=20
> Linux and OSX oriented and most of us can't even see=20
> Silverlight working while Adobe Air works fine on our platform.
>=20
> Compare: http://labs.infragistics.com/silverlight/
>     and: http://www.matchmine.com/
>=20
> for example.  The first is a Silverlight app, the second an=20
> Adobe Air one.  The first doesn't work at all on Firefox/OSX=20
> while the second works fine.
>=20
> -Rasmus
>=20
> K T Ligesh wrote:
> > On Fri, Aug 10, 2007 at 08:59:24AM -0700, Rasmus Lerdorf wrote:
> >> K T Ligesh wrote:
> >>
> >>>  PHP on .NET has a 1000 reasons. Phalanger is already=20
> there. Why are you letting it die?
> >> Personally because it doesn't solve any problem I have.  I build=20
> >> large scalable web sites.
> >=20
> >  It will. You should create a silverlight frontend for at=20
> least some of the yahoo interface. It will be interesting. It=20
> will be really nice if you can do it in PHP itself. I have=20
> checked the Phalanger examples, and it is extraordinarily=20
> trivial. I think writing a silverlight client for existing=20
> apps would be a matter of days work in PHP, especially if=20
> they are already ajax aware.
> >=20
> >  Unless of course, yahoo has a strict No-MS policy, I think=20
> it wouldn't hurt Yahoo to have an optional fancy graphical=20
> frontend. Yahoo interfaces are very drab now. So maybe=20
> _yahoo_ will sponsor this? :-) hehe.
> >=20
> >=20
> >=20
> >> But this is open source.  It doesn't matter what I think.  Open=20
> >> Source moves with the interest of the contributors.  If a=20
> couple of=20
> >> developers joined the project tomorrow to make PHP work great with=20
> >> Silverlight, then it would happen.  Just like how PHP got=20
> support for=20
> >> just about everything else.  Either an existing PHP=20
> developer needed=20
> >> it, or someone from the outside needed it badly enough to join the=20
> >> project and make sure it happened.  If either happens in=20
> this case,=20
> >> then PHP will get Silverlight support.
> >=20
> >  You will be able to write silverlight client in PHP and=20
> stream the data from a linux/apache/php server.  and it can=20
> always be made optional.=20
> >=20
> >> So, if you really want to see Silverlight support in PHP,=20
> you need to=20
> >> go looking for someone who is interested in volunteering=20
> their time=20
> >> to make it happen and remind them that PHP is a very open=20
> open source=20
> >> project and it really isn't hard to contribute to it.
> >>
> >=20
> >  It was there. PHalanger was working nicely, and I was=20
> planning on contributing once I could get my development=20
> environment--based on vim/screen/xterm/mutt--ported to=20
> windows, which became possible only with Vista. But the=20
> Phalanger devs got hired by MS, and then they were not=20
> allowed to work on the project, which is really strange,=20
> considering that MS has nothing to lose but a lot to gain=20
> from Phalanger. The problem is again that the situation is=20
> not neutral. If it was, then PHP was the first language on=20
> .NET, even ahead of python. Phalanger had it working much=20
> before the ironpython got their first production release out.
> >=20
> >  And even now, there do exist a maintainer for phalanger,=20
> but it is not being taken seriously--in contrast to the=20
> enthusiasm that ironRuby has generated in the Ruby community.=20
> I can't still understand how a pre-alpha release of IronRuby=20
> is greeted much more enthusiastically, while the fully=20
> working phalanger is abandoned.
> >=20
> >  What we need is to get MS let the old developers--Tomas=20
> and Lada--back to working on Phalanger. I am still trying to=20
> figure what actually made MS purposefully scuttle Phalanger=20
> by snatching the devs.
> >=20
>=20