Hi Manuel,
Great post. I enjoyed the part where you said it would be a good idea to
do some 'competition' with php programmers, sponsored by some company.
For example, most times when I want a php script, either I go to
Hotscripts.com or Sourceforge.net.
Sf.net, by rebound, makes me remind of VA Linux. It is a good example of
how to brand your name on the Open source community, by helping it.
But back to the contests, I wish there was a large corporation that would
promote it between developers. Something like:
1) We want to build a website for our B2B strategies.
Then release the plan and specs for the whole world. Anyone can try to
build. Only one scripting language allowed, any database, or something
around these lines.. Later on, costs/time of
development/features/security/etc... would be considered, and a 'winner'
would be chosen.
That would be hard to happen, since the folks at large corporations that
make these kind of decisions hire a 'team' based on various aspects,
specially what they heard that exists and recommendation of
friends/companies.
Analisys of 'case-studies' is hardly done. They won't browse the web to
look for other solutions, either they will open the New York Times and read
'x-y-z did their site with (anything but php)'.
So, what we need is to spread the word to the world that php was, and it
is, used on large sucessful projects. By gaining larger clients, media will
follow.
But this opens a question, how to make the large corp see php (and of
course, the people who use it) as something worth?
Basically, have another large corp to use it. How to get out of this loop?
This circle where something to happen it needs itself to happen?
Maybe it is necessary to, contrary to what the community uncosciusly
believes, empower with resources only ONE 'thing', either a company or a
group of person.
The common descentralization of power on open source might have to be
reviewed, but as always, carefully planned to produce results.
At least, it is an idea ;-)
--
Julio Nobrega
A hora está chegando:
http://toca.sourceforge.net
"Manuel Lemos" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
[EMAIL PROTECTED]">news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> Hello,
>
> Christopher Cm Allen wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > I'm afraid that PHP is not yet very credible in that world. The truth
is
> > > there is not great marketing force behind PHP like there is Sun behind
> > > Java or Microsoft behind .Net
> >
> > Good point, and how does one go about marketing a language that is
> > open-source?
>
> If you don't know it is because you are not very motivated to do it. So,
> the first step is to convince and motivate yourself that PHP needs to be
> marketed.
>
> As for what to do, instead of suggesting new ideas, I would rather
> recall some old ideas that always seemed to work well.
>
> For instance, provide PHP users compensation. It does not need to be
> financial compensation. It may be moral compensation as long as it is
> real compensation.
>
> For instance, if I am not mistaken, Guido Van Rossum, the Python
> creator, sponsored a contest to develop software development tools with
> cash prizes. Only a few won, but the contest attracted a lot of people
> and was even mentioned in prestiged software development magazines like
> Dr. Dobbs. This required some investment, but if you look around you
> will not have much trouble to find a sponsor.
>
> Another point is that they managed to get the media on their side. It
> seems that in the PHP community there is little effort to appeal to
> media. That is a major waste of oppiortunity because they can provide
> some much marketing for free.
>
> One free way to provide compensation to any PHP user is to promote their
> work. 2 years ago I started a repository of PHP Classes of objects that
> basically allow anybody to contribute regardless of the quality and
> utility that you may attribute to what is contributed.
>
> The point is that once users that anybody can have some fame to have his
> work exposed to a large PHP audience (over 40.000 subscribers), they
> want to contribute as well and the site grows thanks to the moral
> compensation that it offers to any PHP user.
>
> There are other class repositories, like the official PHP PEAR
> repository, but the scope is different because the contributions are not
> accepted arbitrarily, so you don't get as many contributors.
>
> Other than that, PHP resources sites like these should be officially
> linked altogether with things like Web rings. It would cause a much
> better impression to newcomers or ceptic people as it would make PHP
> more credible exposing the real level of support that the whole PHP
> community can provide. Unfortunately, the maintainers of PHP main site
> and Zend site do not seem to agree that it would be a good idea to
> promote other PHP resources sites with banners to pointing to them like
> what is done with Web rings.
>
>
> Ok, these are just a few ideas that would help PHP to be better
> marketed. They are not new and have already been discussed before. It is
> up to the people that have more active roles in the PHP community to
> open their minds and pick them up.
>
>
> > I do it by not allowing FP like extensions on my server's. All of my
custom
> > apps are php or if need be I switch to C/perl.
> > If I get pushed hard enough I will do c++ :)
> >
> > By your own words though , the volume of users of a non-marketed php,
> > compared to the users of marketed Java et al. speaks for itself.
> > Php holds its own..
>
> But for how long?
>
>
> > What if a group of developers/designers started marketing PHP?
>
> Marketing does wonders. I should not need to to tell you that. One
> problem seems to be some people in the PHP community have some kind of
> aversion to the idea of that somebody can make money from free software.
> That way you are ruling out people that can do a lot of good to the
> growth of the PHP market. I think it is a matter of being more open
> minded. The more opportunities you provide to others, the greater are
> the chances that opportunities benefit your goals, in this case a a
> wider acceptance of PHP making it more credible to people that basically
> ignore it.
>
> ok, that's just me trying to be more constructive. :-)
>
> Regards,
> Manuel Lemos
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