Didn't IBM also give a load of stuff to Newsforge just last week too, this is a real charm offensive aimed at OSS developers

I'm actually both shocked and pleased that IBM picked up on the PHP phenomenon so fast. I wonder if IBM eventually plans to sever the PHP/MySQL bond that so many of us have come to love. I believe Oracle offers PHP support within its application server already. Hopefully, this will lead to better PHP plugins for Eclipse. However, Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004 already plays nice with PHP and your database of choice (i.e, MySQL, Oracle, SQL Server, etc).

it's pretty evident that IBM sees the value in open source and the money that can be made offering open source support services. IBM is already heavily invested in Linux and Java. So does this mean that it's expanding it's reach now or just trying to get Cloudscape/Derby onto a more level playing field with the likes of MySQL and PostgreSQL?

||| This collaboration reinforces IBM's commitment to the open source community and foundations such as Linux, Apache and Eclipse. |||

and undermines its commitment to Java

For those who ever used it, it looks as though IBM is taking on PHP as a replacement for its old web language -"Net.Data"

I'm fond of Java and Open Source. Linuxfr.org is a french site about Linux and open source softwares where readers can write comments... Everytime I post something about Java, I nearly have the same guys telling me that java is not free so why speaking of it ? why being interested in Java ?

This is a list of reasons that makes me love Java:
- Java covers all our needs. With java, we can do whatever we need to do.
- Big open source players (Apache, Objectweb, Codehaus...)
- Big companies (IBM, Oracle, BEA...)
- Fantastic projects (Derby, Hibernate, JOnAS, C-JDBC...)
- Quality methods implemented earlier than in other langages (Unit testing, aop, build...)
- Good and free IDE (Eclipse, Netbeans)
- Genius are working on it ;), lots of great architects
- write once, run everywhere
- Proved to work (banks, telecoms....)

Guy Steele once said: 'Designing a good programming language isn't just a matter of throwing together a set of features; it's a matter of establishing important principles that the programmer can rely on. It's important to follow those principles as a language is extended. Sometimes the principles themselves can be extended, but only with great care. Here are four examples of important principles in the Java language: local variables are private, you can't violate the type system, the evaluation order goes from left to right, and the "equals" method is symmetric and transitive.'

Bad progammers can make even the best language suck, but PHP really gives you free reign to be more sloppy than most. Yeah, a lot of php apps look slick (phpNuke, phpAdmin, etc) but under the hood they're a mess. :-\

PHP is more widely used, but on small projects. Once you get into something that is being used on a large scale Java is far more common. There are a variety of reasons, a lot of which are historical, and some which are due to the structure of the language. For example I can't see a formal SDLC shop mapping too well to the use of PHP. For a big project this would be a very serious problem.

One good thing that I hope will come out of IBM's PHP support is better tools - solid Eclipse plugins for PHP would be greatly appreciated.

Why doesn't IBM just buy out Zend? Actually, perhaps Novell should?

I suppose there is the question of how much money Zend actually makes, but I would think that the steering power and recognition might be well worth it.

Is the gist of this news item that IBM is abandoning Java for PHP?

After moving away from Java, I couldn't be more pleased with the flexibility in PHP for web development and even shell script replacement.