Wednesday, November 01, 2006

M$ Zend?

Zend the PHP development frame work have stuck a partnership with Microsoft. For me this looks like a move by Microsofts to dominate the WEB Server market. As PHP runs on around 22 million Web sites and is used inside 15,000 companies. Why Zend ?, Zend is a key promoter and developer of of PHP.

A lot of development of PHP based web sites is done by individuals; but mostly when it comes to hosting maybe 90% of them host them on Linux or BSD based servers. One major reason being the performance. Also there is few hosting companies and people who recommend PHP based sites to be hosted on Windows Servers. How ever this is not a news which will be very welcomed by the open source community. There will be others who might take this as a positive move too. Maybe the road to PHP#? :P So next will be mySQL? Maybe Microsoft has finally started to realize that ASP sucks ? and that they can't beat the OSS community and its best to join them, if they can't beat them? Who knows. Its a well known fact that Microsoft has used code from the open source communities. Example a lot of the network layer of initial Windows 2000 code used BSD code. Also the new vista has been working hard to mimic the look and feel of Gnome, KDE and even Mac OS X. And yeah the "power shell"? a replacement for the weak CLI in windows. Anyway thats a totally different story, which will lead no where. The best answer is stick to something which you are confabulate and easy with. Thats the best choice for you. Be it Windows, Mac, Linux or daaa! a PS3 (woo, Linux again)?

This move might be something good for most M$ Maldivian developers, who really are used to the M$ stuff. Lately PHP has also gained a lot of popularity as a web development language. We do have a few ASP guys too, but I would say most people still prefer PHP over ASP. I remember a time back in early 1990's foxpro was the thing here. Back then if you tell them about a language like VB they will joke at you. Late 90's that changed and by mid 2005 its now M$ dot NET. Even the government want to move to .NET platform and M$ SQL? People hardly look into other options like Java and Java based frameworks. Same goes for even PHP, I only know a few developers who have worked with PHP frameworks, like Cake and seagull. But these are good options to look into if you are into PHP, makes your life a lot easier. Also there is other alternatives people can look into like Ruby on Rails and Python with Zope. Personally I don't have much experience when it comes to web development, so I don't wanna comment more on the topic. But my guess is the reason why most hardcore developments with PHP is based on *nix hosting is beyond performance issues. There is a lot of advantages that you get on *nix over windows, when it comes to servers.

17 comments:

Anonymous said...

heee hee Microsoft's is always represnted by "$$$$$$" or Evil bad guy in IT world,about MS & Zends collaboration...its bad news for OSS community as windows server is catching up with *nix(in terms of market and revenue).

rxs said...

in the end its not the cool pulic benefiting that has the upper hand eh? its the $$$$

M said...

Oh no... not my PHPrecious!!! Didn't expect to see a day when people would be using pirated versions of PHP.

I guess time to revert back to good old Perl.

Well, Micro$oft always have copied from Unix and Mac environments. Things it cannot mimic are the minimum requirements (have you seen the requirements to install that fat cow of a Vista) and long term performace (M$ Windoze always slows down after running for a couple of months).

I don't know why people have to go for M$ for servers except when the IT Heads are script-kiddies who prefer drag-n-drool with absolutely no idea what the hell they are doing. Bloody annoying when one has to cater for specific requirements.

Anonymous said...

i agree with 'am'. this move will help MS to get PHP developers to migrate (or adopt) Windows Server Systems, thus increasing Microsoft's share.

Besides .NET isnt as weak as you said. in fact it's as powerful as PHP and yet its development is much easier when compared with PHP and Java Servlets. .NET was introduced much later than Java, but still .NET has already taken over Java according to Netcraft. and its a well known fact that Microsoft's technologies like SQL server and IIS dominates corporate networks

chopey said...

Well, I would not agree with the last comment. Yes a lot of development of PHP based stuff might move to Windows. I guess even now it is. Loads of users I know use php and mysql on windows during the local development, but when it comes to hosting they move to *nix. As for .NET being is not as powerful as PHP. Its a totally different two, .NET is a framework and PHP is a scripting language. Obviously .NET is a lot powerful (things like C#, VB.NET) when compared to PHP. But I am not so sure about the ease of development, I mean even comparing ASP stuff and PHP. As for .NET (i assume C#,etc) being better then Java. I would not agree. Java is a very mature language and comes with a lot of backup. What I mean is .NET is fully backed up by M$ and C#, the way I see it has again tried hard to be a "Java Killer", again note that its main objective is to replace Java, or be more like it. This does not mean its better then Java. Java is backed up by Sun, IBM, RedHat and companies like Oracle. Who are very actively involved in Java development.Example is the app's which run on your phones to the Banking applications and Telecom app's developed using Java. Its there is every scale, for almost all environments. As for the cooperate world Java is the thing. Try hunting for jobs as a coder, most of the big companies require you to know java and have a good Java experience. Java rules when it comes to cooperate applications. Things as big as banking apps and telecom billing systems are all mostly Java. And if you really look, there are better frameworks much far ahead then .NET for java. Java stand alone can alone compete with .NET add a bit of backup some extra stuff like JBoss and Java is untouchable. I must agree Java is not mostly as "easy" as VB.NET. An immature driver can't ride a ferrari F1 in a week, but that does not mean the ferrari is inferior. Well this is my view, again I might not be totally right or someone else might have a different view point. But this is how I feel about it.

Anonymous said...

a reply

.NET being a framework is its main advantage. there even is a project named Phalanger, which ports PHP to .NET! (its available on Codeplex). and there are projects to port Java to .NET

now im not sayin OSS is bad. its just most of them fail( take Oss for example) to impress developers. only a few OSS projects, like Firefox and Apache has been able to catch people's eye. and worse OSS spin-offs like OS X (i say Steve ripped off FreeBSD) hasnt been able to get Windows users to migrate to them.

even scarier, Microsoft has been investing in new markets like Supercomputers (Windows Computer Cluster Server), gaming and portable entertainment market!

so anyone think OSS will ever dominate the software industry?

==Xenos==

Anonymous said...

m says -->* "Micro$oft always have copied from Unix and Mac environments"

come on grow up!!! give some respect to MS,copying is nothing new in this industry even Mac and linux have copied stuff from windows.

m says -->* "don't know why people have to go for M$ for servers except when the IT Heads are script-kiddies who prefer drag-n-drool with absolutely no idea what the hell they are doing."

again your wrong,your saying 31.35%++(yaa its increasing daily fact from IDS and netcraft)of server in the internet are handled by "script-kiddes".

no offence "m" :)

i have seen these kind of arguments in lot of website sites its useless.Windows,linux,mac os X all are great operating systems.in the end its the person who use it,decides whats the best option.
orrr ....java php asp??same story

chopey said...

hmmm! this is fun now. lets see.
".NET being a framework is its main advantage.", the concept of frameworks is not something which is brought by Microsoft. The .NET frame work is just a simple framework like others, taking the advantage of the M$ OS along the way. But Java is more then a simple framework, its a technology which has the virtual machine, the libraries (framework)and also the Application servers. My point being Java is much advance when it comes to comparing with .NET. We now have frameworks for PHP and other languages too like Ruby. Things like rails,zope and seagull. Mostly these are for web developments though. So .NET is just a framework,and M$ has tried to use C# along with .NET to replace Java, which is just a dream.

"there even is a project named Phalanger, which ports PHP to .NET!" hmmm! this will be something stupid if even anyone tried to post the codes from one language to another using some external programs. I've seen it done too, but they don't usually work. Maybe a simple "hello world" code might be exported. But these tools are very much limited. And also .NET is a framework not a Language, So I guess its more appropriate to say there are tools that "try" to convert from other languages to C# or to VB. But then again These tools won't do the job 100% or even close to most codes. "and there are projects to port Java to .NET" , WOW? Again I think same applies.

" only a few OSS projects, like Firefox and Apache has been able to catch people's eye", How about Linux, FreeBSD, PHP, Python, perl, Open Office, JBoss, sendmail, Astrix, etc. Bulk of the Internet is driven by OSS stuff. Admit it or not. Take a look at the ISP's and the hosting SP's. So this not a very right thinking. Companies like NOVELL, IBM are really actively involved in a lot of projects.

"i say Steve ripped off FreeBSD", Just cos you see a BSD on the base of the new MAC OS does not mean its ripped off. If you go into the history you'd know that after Steve left Apple, He started NeXT. Which is a *nix based OS and hardware company. And its well worth to be noted that the FIRST EVER WEB page was hosted on a NeXT machine, and the famous window manager After Step is also based on NeXT. Later Apple bought over NeXT and now the new MacOS X is the result of the take over.

"even scarier, Microsoft has been investing in new markets like Supercomputers (Windows Computer Cluster Server), gaming and portable entertainment market!" ah aah! Take a look at the top 10 Super Computers, What do they run on? Not windows for sure. IBM use to lead this game. They use to use AIX on these machine, now its Linux, Even the NEC's based Super Computers they even use Linux. You will find a very few maybe down the bottom of the top 100 Super Computers running Windows? Or do they?

As for gaming, Yeah Windows rules. I totally agree with this DirectX is really good. But OpenGL is not bad too. But fact is Windows still rules when it comes to gaming. But hold on, What about the new Sony PS3? Did you know it runs Linux? hmmm1 maybe a start? But yeah I agree with you on this one. Windows is the choice for gaming.

"so anyone think OSS will ever dominate the software industry?" Yeah! its already taking over a lot. Take a look at the governments. Example China, India and Germany. They all are pushing into OSS and Linux based platforms. The Indian government is trying hard to move to Linux. Yeah "the poor man's OS"! Take a look at stuff like industries like telecoms/internet, where the OSS stuff plays major roles. OSS is not just a dream by RMS, it stand for "Freedom!" not just "Free". Long live FOSS!

Damn! I must be really crazy!

chopey said...

and yeah here is a nice URL that shows what's running on the supercomputers. Check it out!

http://www.top500.org/stats/27/os/

Anonymous said...

Last big "gun" to migrate to windows cluster server NY stock exchange more & more doing so,Windows server is gaining market.its true :(

chopey said...

PLEASE READ THIS!

" In Nov 1997, 99.2% of the top 500 supercomputers in the world ran Unix.
9 years afterwards, It’s market share has been eroded by Linux which now runs on 73.5% of the top 500 supercomputers.

In 1998 Linux made it’s debut in the Top500 List, an authoritative list of the top 500 supercomputers in the world.
After 1998, it took Linux 7 years to break the magical 50% mark. As of November 2004, it ran on 60.2% of the top 500 supercomputers, in 2006 it nearly reached the 75% mark."

Anonymous said...

yeah this is interstin, especially exchangin opinion with a guru like u.

anywayz i still want to make a couple of points here.

1. how .NET works is that regardless of the program language u use, when it is executed, .NET compiles the program to CLR (Common Language Runtime) code, which is the code thats really executed. so weather u use C#, VB.NET, Python, Perl or PHP the end result is the same, they all get the best performance. the use of CLR also eliminates the programing language barrier since its not only MS languages but PHP, Perl and Python already supports .NET and they perform great! in the case of Java, anyone rarely uses JPython and worse JPython doesnt perform as well as Java istelf.

2. Yeah, *nix dominates computer clusters (supercomputers), but Microsoft stepped into this market only this year and major HPC vendors like IBM (thats right), Dell, HP & NEC has already announced their support for Windows Compute Cluster Server (http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1959297,00.asp)
Now MS just stepped inn. so its a tough ride ahead, but i think they have an excellent chance with these major players.

3. i know that government agencies and departments use *nix, but isnt that weird that well known number of US depts run Windows Server 2003/2000, including NSA!!!
not only that major ISPs like GoDaddy (GoDaddy even runs on windows) provides Windows hosting solutions. even Dhiraagu provides Windows hosting solutions, although they primarily advertise Linux

4. i still disagree with u as to the extent which u say OSS has succeeded. Longtime OSS projects like Linux has failed to impress the home user market. why? a typical home user doesnot understand Linux!
and take Ooo, (in the previous post i hav mistakenly typed OSS instead of Ooo, sorry abt that) for example. MS Office has evolved and has advanced a lot, where as Ooo is simply where it was. need proof, take the recent case of Massachusetts. they did adopt ODF, but in the end they decided to stay with MS Office!

5. and last, why dont we see good development environment like Visual Studio 2005(VS)? weather u are a pro , a newbie or a member of ateam development effort, VS is the best choice? i knw that SharpDevelop, and OSS IDE, but it isnt remotely as good as VS. Why???? if u say VS is not good, i beg to differ. just try, u will find how easy, powerful it is.

now chopey, u are a longtime Linux fan and u got great deal of expertise and experience in OSS and in IT( i think no one knws IT, Linux and OSS better than u in Maldives) and i respect that,

but take the big pictuer into account. do u still think OSS will blossom like MS softwares did???

==Xenos==

chopey said...

Ok my turn . :P

lets take point by point.

for the 1st point. CLR is a concept like JVM which Java uses, only JVM works on all platforms, from your mobile phone (even some microwave) to the F1 cars and everything in between. Where else M$ CLR does not. And why use Jpython and stuff when you can run python directly. If you remember J++ which came with M$ VS 6, was the first attempt by M$ to kill java. C# with .NET is the second. My whole point is .NET is only still trying to be like Java it still has a long way to go. In terms of performance the reason why I got Ferrari F1 was that it even uses Java. And we are talking about speed here, real time applications.

For the 2nd point. I wish M$ all the best. Let see if they can manage to keep the servers up and bring the needed performance and secure enough. Here we can't say much as of now *nix rules, and we need to wait and see how M$ will do.

3rd one. Well all major ISP's and hosting providers need to have Windows, cos there are people who need ASP and windows based hosting, so no choice. But the bulk of the web is still owned by *nix. Again M$ is way behind. So I guess this is again better left to be seen.

4th one. Yeah Linux was doing badly at the desktop, until now. Take a look at Gnome, KDE and Distro's like Ubuntu. It rocks. And yeah heard of the one lap top per child project? It also will go for Linux as the choice of OS (desktop). Well if you wanna say M$ is good, take a look at Mac OS X on desktop. M$ is way behind, true most people use Windows on PC's. Like you said M$ stepped into the Supercomputing, Linux just stepped into the Desktop, lets see where it goes too. Yeah M$ Office is a good product. I agree on that. Its one of the best developments of M$ unlike Winbows. But Open Office is good, I mean It has all the things needed in it. I work in an office where there is M$ Office, and I can keep up with them. Open and write to M$ format and can do anything others are able to do. Now I am not into doing scientific research like rocket science from Excel, so I don't need much power. Excel is damn advanced, But for a normal tom, dick and herry Open Office is more then you would ask for. Plus its FREE. Why pay for the extra load that you don't use? Again Plus point and credit should be given for M$ Office. Its a good product. Brovo Billy and team. Least you made something good.

Last no. 5. wow wow wow. Did you have a look at eclipse? and Netbeans? these are damn good IDE's. I mean damn good. Where it is just more then a simple IDE. Its like a dream come true for most developers . Eclipse is amazing. It can do modeling (UML) to development and also fully customizable.You some times need to step into the other side and look at things and how they work. I've spend a few years with VB and VS, maybe like 9 years. Did not go very much into .NET but did work on it for like 3 years. I know the limitations and frustrations and also the good sides of it. But personally, Now I wonder why I wasted my time on M$ VS all those years. They say you have to ride the wave to feel it, I guess they are right. Anyway I think when it comes to IDE's I'd say VS is good, but eclipse and others rock too.

"but take the big pictuer into account. do u still think OSS will blossom like MS softwares did???" , for that its a big YES. It already has. Mostly M$ s/w is limited to the home and small office environments. When it comes to major developments and applications, Others still dominate. Well the IT industry is not boxed with in the "home and small office" environment. There is a bigger world out there. They use to say the network is the computer; today it is. And the network is driven by a lot of people, and M$ holds a very small share in it. Thats the bigger picture when you step out of the box. If you take a look at M$ its all ripped off from people and the hobbyists. Even there very first DOS was someone else's development which Billy bought off, take a look at hotmail, and yeah until really recent hotmail too was running on FreeBSD; even after M$ take over. I wonder if they still do? :P If I can recall correctly even C# was not originally done by them. How abt IE?, yeah its also a bought off development. Yeah! if they can they would have bought over Linux too. :) OSS is taken over the world. Take a look at all those web sites? and al the email servers? Wot do most of them run? apache? sendmail? FreeBSD? Linux? Yeah and how about all the animated movies we watch now. Recently most of them have been randered on Linux and some very good ones have even been developed on Linux, proving the wide use of Linux even in entertainment, where speed and performance really matters. Maybe they might have used M$ world for the documentation and excel for the budgeting. Which is where M$ is really strong. As for the normal "end user" desktop; yeah its just started.

END.

Anonymous said...

dude read this!!!
at Washington post
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB116249026689311557-helTbrheLKgbaJ5iO5z40ZFCiOs_20061109.html?mod=blogs

at Slashdot
http://linux.slashdot.org/linux/06/11/02/1957252.shtml

nder the pact, which isn't final, Microsoft will offer sales support of Suse Linux, a version of the operating system sold by Novell. The two companies have also agreed to develop technologies to make it easier for users to run both Suse Linux and Microsoft's Windows on their computers

==Xenos==

Anonymous said...

hot talking haaa..nobodys goonaa win anyway....

just heard this

"Microsoft and Novell Announce Broad Collaboration on Windows and Linux Interoperability and Support"

http://news.com.com/Microsoft+makes+Linux+pact+with+Novell/2100-1016_3-6132119.html?tag=nefd.lede

What is microsoft up to?

M said...

Anyone who thinks that Micro$oft is God's gift to mankind should be made to explain Vista's EULA.

And just because some people opt for committing suicide does not mean that it is the best option.

chopey said...

"# Mono, OpenOffice and Samba

* Under the patent agreement, customers will receive coverage for Mono, Samba, and OpenOffice as well as .NET and Windows Server.
* All of these technologies will be improved upon during the 5 years of the agreement and there are some limits on the coverage that would be provided for future technologies added to these offerings.
* The collaboration framework we have put in place allows us to work on complex subjects such as this where intellectual property and innovation are important parts of the conversation.
* Novell customers can use these technologies, secure in the knowledge that Microsoft and Novell are working together to offer the best possible joint solution."

Yeap, seem M$ realized that .NET will die unless the framework runs on *nix most specifically Linux. Where most enterprise apps are, there is money. And a lot of them run on Java and Linux as the OS. So to tap into this the solution is Mono. Fully back it up, and they can save dot NET. This move is likely to bring that change, or at least its hoped by M$. It started with PHP, now its the whole Linux. Just as i said before; they will buy Linux if they can, since they can't this is the way to go about it. So you can see that now. Good move. End of the world is near. :P