By Justin Silverton

Recently, there was an interview with the co-founder of zend technologies, Andi Gutmans. 

Here are some interesting questions addressed:

“InfoWorld: Why do you think PHP is the most popular?

Gutmans: I think because of our very, very strong focus on the Web. We’ve always been the most efficient when it comes to developing Web applications. And also it’s a very, very easy language to pick up. So you don’t have to have to be a software engineer or a computer science graduate to use PHP. I often say that PHP is the Visual Basic of the Web. You can just be kind of an ad hoc developer, no real formal training, and be very, very efficient. ”

I’ve often wondered the same thing myself.  Why is PHP so popular?  Wikipedia states that it is currently the 3rd most popular language on the web.  It might have to do with it’s ease of use.  Because it’s type-less and has many web-related features built-in, a beginner can easily pick it up and start coding applications. 

It also might have to do with the nature of the open source community.  The fact that PHP is open source means that when you use it to build your applications, you aren’t at the mercy of any one corporation.  The problem with utilizing proprietary technologies built by large corporations is that when they change the standards, you are forced to comply (and could possibly lose support).  Open source means a community of support that could be around much longer than the the previous version.

“InfoWorld: What is your take on the Oracle announcement last week about supporting Red Hat Linux?  Do you think this is a death knell for Red Hat?

Gutmans: I’m not sure. If Oracle succeeds, I don’t know if it’s a death knell. I think still a lot of vendors are going to prefer kind of the best-of-breed vendor for Linux. But [Red Hat] could lose some business, especially the Oracle business. [Red Had has] got some pricing pressure… There’s obviously another option, which is that Oracle is just trying to drive down the price [of Red Hat stock]. And maybe this is a one- to two-year plan to actually acquire Red Hat. ”

Oracle has shown the volatility of a business based on open source (Redhat’s stock price dropped shortly after the announcement of their interest in the distro).  Since Redhat’s core business is based on something any company could do, a larger company (one with more resources and money) has a chance of beating them at their own game.

Redhat isn’t gone yet, however.  They still have a lot going for them.  Many of the features and additions found in the latest redhat distribution are created by the developers hired by the corporation, which will take awhile for oracle to replicate.