RE: PHP on .NET DLR

On Wed, Aug 08, 2007 at 10:03:58PM -0700, Andi Gutmans wrote:
> I believe they hired the Phalanger guys:
> http://www.codeplex.com/Wiki/View.a...tName=Phalanger
>
> Andi
>

So would zend or MS undertake the effort to port Phalanger to the DLR? Again
, the work is almost completely finished, all that's needed is to port it to
 DLR. I personally think that the lack of silverlight support can be severel
y damaging to PHP, and PHP
-Siliverlight actually only has benefits. PHP/Ruby/Python are never going to
 be full fledged members of the MS clan, and for an enterprise, it would alw
ays be better to use pure-php-interpreter  for their backend php programs.

But with php on silverlight, we get the option to write silverlight client i
n PHP and then use the pure PHP backend on linux and windows. So at least fo
r clients who are using the MS windows based browsers, all Linux PHP program
mers will be able to deliv
er rich graphics if they want to. We will finally have linux/apache/php deli
vering full multi-media streams to windows clients, all in PHP. I would sure
ly think that Zend only has to benefit in such a scenario.

Yes, there might be some small short term monetary losses for zend since som
e people might use .NET to deploy PHP and may not use Zend's services, but a
gain my personal experience is that, if someone has a real PHP application, 
using anything other than
the orthodox PHP interpreter on Windows/Linux is a folly. Especially conside
ring all the dependencies and the complexities.

Ruby (now with silverlight support) is the most serious competitor to PHP at
 present. This is not merely my personal opinion, but rather just look at al
l the buzz generated by ironRuby. And if php won't catch up, it will definit
ely lose. At least, I pers
onally would switch to ruby, even though I don't like languages that do not 
have curly braces everywhere.

I agree with K T Ligesh.

Ruby (and it's "on Rails") are growing very fast and may really be a
competitor with PHP today. Actually, I don't see why people doesn't link the
idea to port it to DLR. IMHO, looks like that childish war "Windows X
Linux", "Microsoft X OpenSource".

Best regards,
Rodolfo Andrade

----- Original Message -----
From: K T Ligesh
To: Andi Gutmans
Cc: Mike Schinkel ; php-evangelism@lists.php.net
Sent: Thursday, August 09, 2007 11:16 AM
Subject: Re: PHP on .NET DLR


On Wed, Aug 08, 2007 at 10:03:58PM -0700, Andi Gutmans wrote:
> I believe they hired the Phalanger guys:
> http://www.codeplex.com/Wiki/View.a...tName=Phalanger
>
> Andi
>

So would zend or MS undertake the effort to port Phalanger to the DLR?
Again, the work is almost completely finished, all that's needed is to port
it to DLR. I personally think that the lack of silverlight support can be
severely damaging to PHP, and PHP-Siliverlight actually only has benefits.
PHP/Ruby/Python are never going to be full fledged members of the MS clan,
and for an enterprise, it would always be better to use pure-php-interpreter
for their backend php programs.

But with php on silverlight, we get the option to write silverlight client
in PHP and then use the pure PHP backend on linux and windows. So at least
for clients who are using the MS windows based browsers, all Linux PHP
programmers will be able to deliver rich graphics if they want to. We will
finally have linux/apache/php delivering full multi-media streams to windows
clients, all in PHP. I would surely think that Zend only has to benefit in
such a scenario.

Yes, there might be some small short term monetary losses for zend since
some people might use .NET to deploy PHP and may not use Zend's services,
but again my personal experience is that, if someone has a real PHP
application, using anything other than the orthodox PHP interpreter on
Windows/Linux is a folly. Especially considering all the dependencies and
the complexities.

Ruby (now with silverlight support) is the most serious competitor to PHP
at present. This is not merely my personal opinion, but rather just look at
all the buzz generated by ironRuby. And if php won't catch up, it will
definitely lose. At least, I personally would switch to ruby, even though I
don't like languages that do not have curly braces everywhere.

Hi,

So that's it? 'Nobody cares' (tm)? 'You can switch to Ruby if you want to, a
nd nobody's stopping you'? Or am I on the wrong list?

Does the PHP community have any interest in PHP on DLR? IronRuby is going to
 be hosted on RubyForge, so it is going to be a community effort ultimately,
 and that's one of the things that attracted MS. In contrast, the PHP commun
ity is SO hostile to DLR
that they are ignoring a fully finished implementation--phalanger?

To be frank, with Silverlight, I don't think anyone has a choice now. The hy
pe is too much, and the number of hits that ironRuby gives on Google is stag
gering, especially considering its nascent pre-alpha state. So PHP will be o
ne of those things that di
dn't adapt to the changes and then loses the war.

There's lot to be learned from history--VHS vs betamax or Redhat vs Caldera.
 Mindshare is the key. You lose that, and then there wont' be anything for a
nyone to monetize.

Thanks for listening.

PHP has historically never chased fads.  We wait and see which platforms
win, and we end up on those simply because we need PHP on those
platforms.  When/if Silverlight becomes a viable platform for real
large-scale deployment, PHP will be on it.  Many PHP sites are small,
but most strive to be the next Yahoo/Facebook/Technorati/Vonage etc. and
at this point I see no sign of any of these major players doing anything
at all with Silverlight.  M$ has a major hurdle on their hands.  I'm not
particularly anti-M$, and I hope they do somehow come up with a way to
make it easy to deploy, manage and monitor in a cost-effective way a
colo full of machines that can run a Silverlight application that takes
a billion hits a day.

Most contributors to the PHP project work on realworld applications.  We
are a very pragmatic bunch.  We build what we need.  We don't build what
we think people might need in 3 years if the stars align correctly.
This approach has worked extremely well for 12 years now.  Right now
nobody working on PHP needs Silverlight, nor has there been a
significant level of interest in it from PHP users.  Perhaps we all have
our heads in the sand and Silverlight will stomp all over everything
else.  Frankly I am seeing more interest in Adobe Air from where I sit
here in Silicon Valley working for the highest-trafficed web site in the
world.  Yet we still deploy more freebsd/linux servers with apache and
PHP than anything else and that won't change for years to come.

-Rasmus

K T Ligesh wrote:
>  Hi,
>
>   So that's it? 'Nobody cares' (tm)? 'You can switch to Ruby if you want t
o, and nobody's stopping you'? Or am I on the wrong list?
>
>   Does the PHP community have any interest in PHP on DLR? IronRuby is going to be 
hosted on RubyForge, so it is going to be a community effort ultimately, and that's 
one of the things that attracted MS. In contrast, the PHP community is SO hostile to
 DL
R that they are ignoring a fully finished implementation--phalanger?
>
>  To be frank, with Silverlight, I don't think anyone has a choice now. The hype is
 too much, and the number of hits that ironRuby gives on Google is staggering, espec
ially considering its nascent pre-alpha state. So PHP will be one of those things th
at
didn't adapt to the changes and then loses the war.
>
>  There's lot to be learned from history--VHS vs betamax or Redhat vs Calde
ra. Mindshare is the key. You lose that, and then there wont' be anything fo
r anyone to monetize.
>
>  Thanks for listening.
>
>

Hi,

Thanks for chipping in. Silverlight is not a fad, because it is simply an ou
tgrowth of a platform that is 10 year old--the .NET. Technology wise, it is 
merely java applets in XAML format. But it provides people already working o
n .NET an easy way to crea
te the gui. Silverlight's most important feature is that it is based on MS's
 greatest strength--the Desktop.


On Fri, Aug 10, 2007 at 07:59:23AM -0700, Rasmus Lerdorf wrote:
> PHP has historically never chased fads.  We wait and see which platforms
> win, and we end up on those simply because we need PHP on those
> platforms.  When/if Silverlight becomes a viable platform for real
> large-scale deployment, PHP will be on it.

Please note that what we need is PHP on .NET, and .NET is a 10 year old plat
form. Silverlight is merely the reason that makes it an absolute necessity. 
.NET is a thriving environment, despite MS's initial blunders--lack of dynam
ic languages, and the inab
ility to replicate the desktop paradigm on web.

But it is more, silverlight is the end result of the 25 year MS hegemony on 
the desktop. And That's something that's undeniable. Silverlight finally bri
ngs the whole MS desktop experience into web, and this is something you cann
ot ignore, considering how
pathetically Unix/Linux fares in the desktop.  If silverlight was something 
really nascent, I would advice a wait and watch strategy, but this is merely
 the addon to something that millions already use productively, that finally
 allows them to take web t
o the next level. And if phalanger didn't exist, my request could be deemed 
unreasonable.

Recapitulating:

a) We have a 10 year old platform the .NET, which while not optimal presentl
y, is still being used by a large number of developers.

b) Now, MS has finally given them something that can leverage MS's 25 year D
esktop experience.

c) PHP can _trivially_ take advantage of both of them--all that's needed is 
to have the community show interest in phalanger, and not let it die. Also, 
the DLR makes porting Dynamic languages very trivial. IT only took MS a coup
le of months to get Ruby o
n DLR.

d) Ruby--now with silverlight--has everything that PHP has--cross platform, 
dynamic, web ready, and now it has become even more compelling, because of P
HP community's hostility towards the DLR.

e) There are a 1000 other benefits to getting PHP on dotnet. One is that man
y VB folks who are used to the procedural style of the old VB6, would start 
loving PHP and will move to it, considering how complex and different VB.net
 is from VB6.

PHP on .NET has a 1000 reasons. Phalanger is already there. Why are you lett
ing it die?

Thanks again for your input.

K T Ligesh wrote:

>  PHP on .NET has a 1000 reasons. Phalanger is already there. Why are you letting i
t die?

Personally because it doesn't solve any problem I have.  I build large
scalable web sites.  But this is open source.  It doesn't matter what I
think.  Open Source moves with the interest of the contributors.  If a
couple of developers joined the project tomorrow to make PHP work great
with Silverlight, then it would happen.  Just like how PHP got support
for just about everything else.  Either an existing PHP developer needed
it, or someone from the outside needed it badly enough to join the
project and make sure it happened.  If either happens in this case, then
PHP will get Silverlight support.

So, if you really want to see Silverlight support in PHP, you need to go
looking for someone who is interested in volunteering their time to make
it happen and remind them that PHP is a very open open source project
and it really isn't hard to contribute to it.

-Rasmus

Just my 2c worth here. Why on earth would I want to learn
.NET technology when I have all I need (and more) on Linux?

Regards

Keith

On Fri, 10 Aug 2007, K T Ligesh wrote:

> To: Rasmus Lerdorf <rasmus@lerdorf.com>
> From: K T Ligesh <ligesh@lxlabs.com>
> Subject: Re: PHP on .NET DLR
>
> On Fri, Aug 10, 2007 at 10:10:28AM -0700, Rasmus Lerdorf wrote: 

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On Fri, Aug 10, 2007 at 08:59:33PM +0100, Keith Roberts wrote:
> Just my 2c worth here. Why on earth would I want to learn
> .NET technology when I have all I need (and more) on Linux?
>
> Regards
>
> Keith

You mean, what other reason other than that 90% of the desktop and 30% of th
e websites run on Windows? The idea anywhere is not 'learning', but deliveri
ng stuff that people find useful. There are no boundaries for that.

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:rasmus@lerdorf.com]=20
> Sent: Friday, August 10, 2007 10:10 AM
> To: K T Ligesh
> Cc: php-evangelism@lists.php.net
> 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: 
> there. Why are you letting it die? 
> 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. 
> 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. 
> couple of=20 
> support for=20 
> developer needed=20 
> this case,=20 
> stream the data from a linux/apache/php server.  and it can=20
> always be made optional.=20 
> you need to=20 
> their time=20 
> open source=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. 
> 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. 
> 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

The point here is not about promoting or not promoting Silverlight. The poin
t here is your commitment to the php developers, and whether you will do you
r best to ensure that they can maximize their productivity.

On Fri, Aug 10, 2007 at 03:08:42PM -0700, Andi Gutmans wrote:
> 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.

What we need is PHP on .NET. Silverlight is merely one of the reasons. The e
gregious activity you are talking about--promoting silverlight--is being car
ried out by Mono, who have already ported it to Linux. PHP on the platform w
ill have little impact on
the platform itself, but on the other hand will help the existing PHP devs t
o use their skillset on yet another field.  If you want to resist SL owing t
o its lack of adherence to open standards, then you should get Novell to sto
p porting it to Linux. PHP
on .NET is a completely different topic. It just gives existing PHP develope
rs an additional and OPTIONAL interface to play around with. It won't really
 help the adoption of the platform, which is a client side technology.



> 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.

Again, php on dotnet is not involved in any of the above nefarious activitie
s. MS already has python and ruby on .NET, so as such, one more language is 
not going to dramatically change anything.  Your argument also makes it appe
ar that python and ruby ar
e less opensource because they enthusiastically welcomed their addition to t
he DLR.


>
> 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".

OK, we already have PHPAjax and everything. So when are we going to show the
 same courtesy to .NET?


Thanks.