Re: The ASF Resigns From the JCP Executive Committee

Joe,

I have not heard of a "php battle" either and was surprised at the comment. What you list here are grievances about a 7 year old product not being compatible with what is newer. That's the same argument as saying the S/36 RPG should be supported by the most recent version of RPG that came out in V7, after all they are roughly similar time frames. It is a ridiculous argument both for supporting S/36 RPG and worrying about PHP5s compatibility with an earlier version from that long ago. If you want to use PHP4 use it. If you want to use PHP5 use it, but there is no "battle or war" about it. If you need to convert, there are some land mines to avoid. Sobeit. (by the way both are free to you to use, so there's not much room for a complaint)

As to the reasons PHP6 is having some issues with Unicode, that's part of the FOSS process. If a corporation like Oracle or IBM wanted to invest the same level of support to PHP as they do with Java, it would be a problem of the the past, but that is not yet the case. This is NOT a meant as a complaint or wish that IBM would support PHP more than it already does. IBM does support PHP very well, just not to the same level as it does Java. IBM's support for open source in PHP, Linux, Apache, and even Samba is phenomenal and it just does not get the credit it deserves because it actually tries to make a profit on its products.

As to your concern for backwards compatibility, I can think of no better argument for IBM i. BTW: there is a very large group of Java Applications that will not run on today's JVM, they need older version due to compatibility problems, so the argument that Java is backwards compatible any better than PHP is also spurious. Want a specific example? Cisco's Java based applications for managing a Pix Firewall. My Pix 501 still runs fine, but since it's so old I can't load the ADSM client anymore, so it's command line for me there.

Jim Oberholtzer
CEO/Chief Technical Architect
Agile Technology Architects, LLC


On 12/13/2010 4:31 PM, Joe Pluta wrote:

On 12/13/2010 8:22 AM, Mike Pavlak wrote:

> I am not familiar with the "battle" either. Joe, can you site some references from which you are referring?
>

You should be familiar with this stuff, Mike, since you're selling it,
but evidently not so I'll update you.

PHP4 and PHP5 are "compatible" except where they aren't. In fact, a
couple of significant underlying pieces got completely changed. Two big
ones are objects, which in PHP4 were passed by value but in PHP5 are
passed by reference. Another problem which is minor but just painful as
hell is the fact that the classnames in PHP5 are now case sensitive,
whereas in PHP4 everything was always converted to lowercase.

There are other similar issues, enough so that lots of PHP4 code didn't
run under PHP5. Enough problems existed that for years after the
release, people were still recommending PHP4 over PHP5, and a majority
of hosting sites were still on PHP4. Years, you say? Well, yeah. PHP5
is now nearly 7 years old. And out there on the Intertubes, lots of the
example code for PHP is still PHP4, even though PHP4 was officially
discontinued as of the end of 2007.

What's up with PHP6? Well, the move to Unicode didn't go too
swimmingly. In fact, it gummed up the works enough that the PHP6 trunk
was abandoned. So PHP6 is on indefinite hold while PHP5 continues and
the PHP folks decide to come up with a new Unicode strategy. The point
is that I'll be interested to see given the slow uptake of PHP5 how many
years it takes PHP5 sites to get up to PHP6.

But really, don't take my word for it. Read up on the stuff. Read
about PHP6.

My original comment was that if Oracle decides to force a fork on Java,
they will turn it into PHP, in which backwards compatibility is not a
given (take a look at magic quotes or register globals). The loss of
stability may not be as important to a language you use primarily for
scripting, but it's a crucial issue with a true enterprise language like
Java.

Joe