Hello Rasmus, Rasmus Resen Amossen wrote: > > > Sure. Modify the Zend Engine so that it can be told to write the parsed > > Cut... > > Yeah! That's more like it! Thnx body! > > More ideas are welcome.
You have just hit one of PHP limitations, the ability provide marketable value to developers efforts. Unlike other languages, there is no officially supported and affordable way to sell applications in binary format, when for other languages that is a trivial thing. No wonder there are so many PHP users moving to the Java world. Sure there is Zend Encoder, but at USD $2400!?!? Get out of here! IMHO that ridiculous pricing only stands because there are no direct competitors to Zend Encoder. I am sure that makes sense for Zend company business model, but that is no good for the PHP community. Regardless the fact PHP is Open Source and so it is free, developing properly supported applications with it also takes a long time and the time and skill of the developers necessary to do it is not free because people just don't live from the air they breathe. So, PHP needs urgently a standalone compiler before more and more people give up on it. What is silly, is that there is already enough free code to do it that just needs to glued and shipped properly. Of course there are always those Open Source die hards that will hit on you, as you already noticed, just because you suggested that PHP could be used for developing closed source applications. Never mind them, they are so obcessed with the idea that all code must be shared that they will hardly tolerate that people try to survive by developing closed source PHP applications. The way I see it, the truth is that if people can't make a living from developing commercial applications in PHP, they will switch to another language. If people want to give their code away to other people, fine, but it is also fine if people want to sell it because intellectual property is a personal matter to those that create it. Anyway, a free/affordable standalone PHP compiler only did not happen because there was not enough critical mass to do it the way it is needed. I have a personal project that aims to bring Web applications *unchanged* to standalone desktop computers (no Web server, no networking) that will let PHP enlarge its market scope to outside the Internet. That project partially overlaps with a project to develop a standalone PHP compiler that can be used to protect the code of those that want to sell it. So, if you or anybody else are interested to join the effort, please mail me privately. I don't advise you to follow-up this subject here. I sense that this is not an issue that some people will want to discuss and promote here. On one side you have Open Source die hards that do not want anybody from profiting from closed source PHP applications. On the other side there is Zend people that are trying to make very high profits of their Zend Encoder and any competitor project could compromise the ability to continue to profit so much from each Zend Encoder license. So, I don't advise anybody to follow-up to not suffer from the typical hostility that sometimes leads to threats to be taken off the list. Regards, Manuel Lemos -- PHP Development Mailing List <http://www.php.net/> To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To contact the list administrators, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
