RE: [PHP4BETA] Re: [PHP-DEV] Re: [PHP4BETA] PHP 4.0.0 Release pac kaged

Rasmus,

> >> This may not affect you if you don't do Web development 
> for a living. But
> >> that affects many of us that are specialized in PHP based 
> Web development
> >> and loose work opportunities every day because PHP is not 
> even very well
> >> known among paying clients, and even among those that know 
> it, PHP is not
> >> credible enough because it carries the bad reputation of 
> less professional
> >> free software development.
> >> 
> >> This bad reputation has to be reversed at least for PHP, 
> or else we will
> >> keep suffering from its consequences every day.

When I started dealing with the development of internet applications around
5 years ago, I was under the belief that free software was definitely not
what I wanted to base my development toolset on.  The company I worked for
went out and purchased HP servers with Netscape web serving software,
Oracle, NT servers, SQLServers etc. all at a huge cost but under the
impression that they were the best solutions because they were done by
professionals programmers and large corporations.  We received more manuals
and books than anyone can imagine.  Netscape alone was 7 manuals, HP servers
another 15, Oracle 20, etc..  We had a entire bookcase full of these manuals
and documentation.  We laughed at other ASP's who were using LINUX and other
free things, they just didn't know what they were doing.  No matter what
anybody would have said to me at the time, I would have told them they were
nuts and wouldn't have even considered using open source software.  Do to
disagreements with my partners, I sold out of this company.  It was the best
thing that ever happened to me.

I was soon looking at starting another ASP company and did.  I was again
traveling down the corporate path of large corporations and anti- open
source software.  Then I had a meeting with the guy who has the domain
god.net.  During this meeting, my eyes were opened to LINUX and open- source
in general.  This is what it took for me to begin considering open- source
software as a viable solution.  From that point on, we made the move to
using open source software as our core development and production platform.
We have been using PHP/MySQL for around 3 years now and are enjoying ongoing
success.  Our company now hosts several large (1,000,000+ hits per day) US
Television sites on LINUX clusters running PHP4! and MySQL.  Every page on
these sites is a PHP enabled page.  Many of these stations are owned by
large corporations that have a similar mentality as I once did.  The bottom
line is we have been able to deliver a good product quickly which puts to
rest any fears they have.  None of these people are going to know if PHP has
a bad reputation or not.  It has nothing to do with it.

> >> 
> >> This bad reputation has to be reversed at least for PHP, 
> or else we will
> >> keep suffering from its consequences every day.

I guess we will keep suffering the consequences of success using PHP4.
Whether it is a released version or not, we put it through are own testing
to certify it good.  Why should we rely on the efforts of the volunteers of
the PHP project.  It is not only the responsible thing to do for your
clients, but the right way to give back to the community that has made this
possible.

I sure hope the developers do not get discourage and know that there are
many others like me that really appreciate what you do.  We are not always
the most vocal or outspoken, but we do exist.

The things that people complain about can actually be solved by themselves.
Write some documentation or fix the code and submit a patch.  Be an ACTIVE
part of making PHP better and encourage the people that devote their
personal time to the project.

Sincerely,

John Hamlik