PHP’s object model was re-written from the ground up and mimics the abstract properties of Java’s object method. There are private and protected members and methods, abstract classes and interfaces, in practice, identical to Java’s object model. The extent of the influence that Sun has on PHP today is clear. If you have experience with Java and PHP, reading the details of the object model at http://www.php.net/manual/en/migration5.oop.php reveals the absolute cloning of the Java object model within PHP 5. From throwing exceptions to static variables, PHP 5’s object model mimics Java in concept all the way to the syntactical level.

This is great for enterprise developer’s using Sun products, but with the release of PHP 5, what does this mean for the half-a-million PHP developers worldwide who have depended on PHP for open-source development and for the developers whose ideas and efforts have brought PHP up through the ranks from its inception in 1995? When PHP goodies were bundled with Sun’s web server on November 4th, 2003, with a $775 price tag, PHP began down the path of corporate ownership. For years developers have eagerly contributed their ideas and efforts to be a part of the success of PHP. Now that all the hard work and volunteering has paid off and PHP is a worldwide success, it appears that PHP could soon be another corporate shill owned by Sun, MySQL, Borland and Macromedia, if not on paper, then by direct influence on the people at Zend. Of course it will remain open source so that the half-million developers can continue to contribute their time and genius to its success, but if those thousands of contributions lead to direct financial gain for companies whose coffers are already overflowing and are simultaneously using those contributions to manufacture software with price tags out-of-reach to anyone but corporations, is PHP still the language developers should be focusing on for use in the open-source community?