.. articleMetaData:: :Where: Skien, Norway :Date: 20040807 2138 CEST :Tags: php
Devshed published an article by Ian Felton titled " PHP5: Could PHP Soon Be Owned by Sun? " which is as close to paranoia as you can get. A few quotes from the article:
iWrong! We wanted to make a better OO model, and it just ended up being like Java.
iYes, the Zend people has some influence, but there is no way they "own" the PHP source code, nor can they ever make it something non-open source. Why? Because Zend only has a few persons working on the engine, and there are more non-Zend people working on it, nor can Zend force people to stop working on an open-source PHP. If they want, they can fork it into something commercial but that would be a very stupid move.
iWe don't support MySQL less with PHP 5. There are a couple of reasons why the library is no longer bundled: 1. it was often outdated cause all sorts of problems; 2. a lot of people used the external library anyway, because not doing so will cause problems when using another Apache module that makes use of MySQL (such as auth_mysql or mod_perl); 3. we have a policy of not bundling libraries unless there is a really good reason to do it; 4. (the least important) MySQL's client library is now GPL and not LGPL anymore.
Conclusion: It's fine if you write articles about PHP 5, but make sure you check facts and do not spread paranoia about things you have no clue about. Also, PHP can never be commercialized as there is always the option of creating a fork of the BSD-style licensed PHP source and Zend Engine.