PHP 6, a revolution or just another evolution?

PHP 6 is on the way. One major feature of this release will be full unicode support with complete backward compatibility (what a mess the php.ini configuration file will turn out to be!).

But, will the core engine differ, will there be something different this time? is it worth a most significant version number jump? PHP 5 has been critisized by many as being a minor evolution to PHP 4 and didn't deserve a version jump, rather than what was initially expected.

See, its not only in PHP, its in all software products, when you jump from Version (X) to Version (X+1) then you'd better be having what justifies this jump, and in my opinion... the only justification is a REVOLUTION (background theme music maestro, plz).

Open Source Hidden Facts

1. Open Source software does not imply free usage. Many commercial companies sell there software in open source form, which simply means that the source code is open.
2. GPL Licensed Software is free for use but CANNOT be used in a commercial product.
3. Any software you write that uses GPL licensed software/code is automatically GPL software, they call this the Viral Aspect of GPL.
4. LGPL is different from GPL and stands for "Lesser GPL".
5. LGPL has the advantage that you can include LGPL software code inside your commercial product and also have it in its compiled form.
6. You must always provide GPL software in its open source form, if you do a project that uses GPL software, then your code should also stay open.
7. Apache License has nothing to do with the Apache Webserver, its just a license type that applies to software.
8. An Apache Licensed Software or Library can be used in a commercial product.
9. A BSD Licensed Software or Library can be used in a commercial product.
10. Although you can't use GPL software in a commercial product, but you can sell GPL software with any amount of money you want. As an example, I can now download a GPL software (eg. Kannel Gateway) and sell it to a company for $400'000, totally legal, totally 7alaal.
11. Some software companies provide software products as "Dual Licenses", this means two licenses and depends on the usage. For example, MySQL provides its database as GPL for internal use and provides a commercial license for commercial usage (that you have to pay for).

A Word on Patents

"How powerful are Microsoft patents? No one really wants to know - including Microsoft. A patent is a powerful weapon, but the best use for a powerful weapon is not to pull the trigger but to sit next to it and act like you're going to pull the trigger. Once you use it, you lose the ability to peer silently into the eyes of your opponents and make them shiver with dread. More importantly, you expose yourself to the possibility that the weapon might not even work."

- Joe Casad, Editor in Chief, Linux Magazine, Jan 2007
Describing the threat Microsoft imposes on the Open Source industry.

Say Hi to Derby.

MySQL, Postgres and now Derby... a new database that adds up to the competition. This time from IBM directly to the opensource community and under the wonderful Apache License.

Now this database is amazingly amazing, it supports transactions, its java based, it has a small footprint (2 Megabytes), it supports full encryption storage, it supports multiple access methods including SQL and low level API calls.

What I like about Derby the most is that it started as a commercial database (known as IBM Cloudscape) and then got released to opensource. This guarantees the best of both worlds; a commercial quality database with full opensource transparency and community support.

My only problem with projects that start as opensource is that you rarely find quality efforts put into them unless they are being sponsored by a big company or are provided with donations.

On the other hand, commercial products, if not thriving for quality, they risk a chance of losing their competition and their business. Not only quality software, but quality documentation and quality support and quality *. With a lot of exceptions here and there, I still believe that commercial products have a greater probability of meeting high quality standards.