Matt Mullenweg won’t Upgrade: WordPress and the PHP4 Dilemma

Posted on by John

Last week the folks at PHP.net announced that support for PHP 4 would end at the end of 2007:

The PHP development team hereby announces that support for PHP 4 will continue until the end of this year only. After 2007-12-31 there will be no more releases of PHP 4.4. We will continue to make critical security fixes available on a case-by-case basis until 2008-08-08. Please use the rest of this year to make your application suitable to run on PHP 5.

In parallel, a group of developers working on open source PHP projects have created GoPHP5, a site and community of projects all of which have agreed to drive PHP5 adoption. In order to be listed on the site, the project must:

Make an announcement on your site that by February 5, 2008 you will accept PHP 5.2 features into your codebase and will no longer provide support for lesser PHP versions. (versions or branches of your software already released by that date may continue support for older versions; this resolution applies only to new development.)

The idea is that unless a certain critical mass of key projects begins to require PHP 5, most shared web hosts won’t upgrade the version of PHP they make available to their users. Because the web hosts still run PHP 4, the developers of PHP projects still have to support PHP 4 – but so long as the developers continue to support PHP 4 there is no incentive for the hosting providers to upgrade:

It is a dangerous cycle, and one that needs to be broken. The PHP developer community has decided that it is indeed now time to move forward, together. Therefore, the listed software projects have all agreed that effective February 5th, 2008, any new feature releases will have a minimum version requirement of at least PHP 5.2.0. Furthermore, the listed web hosts have agreed that effective February 5th, 2008, they will include PHP 5.2 (or a more recent version) in their service offer.

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Social Network built on WordPress

Posted on by John

(Via Photo Matt)

Andy Peatling at Blaze New Media posted about a recent project: Chickspeak, a social network for female college students.

In their words, it’s is “an organization for young women created to inspire big dreams, strong values and success in the world”:

Our website exists to be the most entertaining and engaging reflection of women’s life in college, while also providing the support and information necessary to stay healthy, grounded and achieve great heights while in school and well after graduation. We are your voice- your interests and passions, your unique journey and experiences. Updated daily articles are written by women currently in college and cover everything from health and beauty, to relationships, travel, entertainment and much more. We also feature guest writers and columnists who are recognized experts in their fields and who act as advisors to our members. Members can post comments on articles and build relationships with other members and the ChickSpeak Team through forums, personal blogs and private messaging. We are an evolving concept and welcome any woman who’s excited about this to get involved!

What’s most interesting about it for me (not being a femail college student) is how it was built – leveraging WordPress MU as the core, changing the theme to de-emphasize the “blog” functionality and bring member profiles front and center.
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Hyperlocal is People and Technology

Posted on by John

An interesting synchronicity (dare I say even a synergy?) presented itself in two different firefox tabs while catching up on my rss feeds the other day.

In one tab, Andrew McAfee arguing that sometimes “It’s not not about the technology”

In the other, Jeff Jarvis arguing that “Towns are hyperlocal social networks with data (people that is)”

At first glance this might seem like a debate waiting to happen: McAfee arguing that he’s growing weary of hearing people say “It’s Not About the Technology” and Jarvis saying “It’s Not About the Technology.” But if you look at what both are actually saying, a synthesis makes more sense.

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Enterprise Open Source Directory

Posted on by John

At the risk of too much self-promotion (posting two Optaros related entries in one week), I have to at least briefly mention the Optaros Enterprise Open Source Directory, which launched (in beta) at the beginning of the week.

Optaros Enterprise Open Source Directory

This new online community continues and extends the work Optaros did on the print version of the Open Source Catalog at the beginning of 2007, enabling community interaction.

The directory site includes blogs, forums, and case studies

As Seb said:

The EOS Directory bridges the gap between corporations seeking solutions through the Request for Proposal (RFP) process and the open source community which does not participate in expensive and time-consuming RFP processes. Instead, open source software organizations provide free downloads for companies to begin working on a solution. The EOS Directory fills the gap by proving expert and user ratings, case studies, forums and requests for advice for organizations to better choose the right open source software based on functionality, community backing, project trend and maturity of technology.

(Lukas, Matt Asay, and Jack Loftus have blogged about it as well).

It’s in beta, and very much a work in progress – we hope to broaden the community involvement aspects especially, as well as provide better coverage across all categories.

Please do check it out, and provide feedback – here in the comments or (better yet) on the EOS Directory site itself.

We get our Thursdays from a Banana – Clay Shirky on Love

Posted on by John

Via David Weinberger I came to this video on conversation hub from supernova: Clay Shirky on Love, Internet Style.

Go watch it, now. (Direct link to the file – it’s a 14.4 MB MOV file)

Best 10 minutes I’ve spent today. (Apologies in advance to everyone else I spent 10 minutes talking to today.)

Shirky connects together open source, “web 2.0,” and other community-oriented activities under the rubric of love.

A few highlights:

  • From the look on their faces . . . it was as though we had said “we get our Thursdays from a banana”
  • They didn’t care that it worked in practice, because they already knew it wouldn’t work in theory
  • Perl is a shinto shrine. Perl exists not as an edifice but as an act of love
  • In the past we did small things for love, but big things required money. Now we can do big things for love.