David Coallier

For quite a while in the PHP Community (And even myself) I have heard people asking about either an online tool to work on cachegrind output files or a
cross platform tool that would have the ability to do what KCacheGrind does on Linux but for Windows and OSX. WinCacheGrind came in the game short after but for people on OSX and even for the ones used to Linux, WinCacheGrind was NOT the same.

Hello everyone, as mentioned a few weeks ago the most awaited Google Summer of Code is back again this year. This being said, once again the PHP Project has been accepted and we have started posting our list of ideas (http://wiki.php.net/gsoc/2008).

So for students that are interested in working with the PHP Project this summer I’d suggest you take a peek at the link pasted above and start looking at what you’d be interested in doing. We have had very good experiences in the past with our students and we are hoping that we will get more of you cool-guys-passionate-brainiacs with us this year again to help in the evolution of the PHP Project. I would, with no hesitation whatsoever, recommend this most valuable experience to any student who would like to get involved a bit more in the industry and see how large development teams behave (Both the good and bad behaviors).

I would like to invite our last year’s student to comment about their own experiences, how they liked it and whatnot. I hope you will apply in a large number this year again!

Thanks to Google Inc. For this opportunity once again

See you soon everyone for another great summer of code!!!

Now that you are in the mood let me tell you about the story of what
happened to me (I am still stunned and still do NOT understand
anything) that gave me “The proof is in the pudding (Andrei’s term)”
that Olivier’s blog post was absolutely nothing else than pure truth.
For the first time in my life I have felt like I WAS the blog post.

As many of you know, this time of the year is usually the PHP Quebec
conference and many php internals and international speakers fly to
Montreal to speak. This year included the usual speakers including
Derick Rethans, Marcus Boerger, Morgan Tocker, John Coggeshall, Ilia
Alshanetsky, Rob Richards, and a great open source colleague of mine
Lukas Smith. (Sorry for those I missed, it’s not on purpose)

This morning (2008/13/03) I saw Lukas on IRC and we said “Hey let’s
meet around 1pm to discuss about the PHP TestFest” (The PHP TestFest
is a project we are starting in order to get a whole lot more PHP
Testers and improve the already great quality of PHP Project and it’s
development)

So around 1h30 I show up to the lounge of the hotel where the
conference is held and meet with Lukas, Derick, Marcus, etc. to speak
about the whole thing. Note that I did not go into ONE single talk,
did not use the internet connection and did not drink the
coffee/juice/water that was there. I stayed in the lounge where sofas
and couches are for the whole 2 hours of my visit.

So after we spoke about this and that, I stayed a bit (always in the
lounge) because I wanted to get the “loginfo.pl - large CVS commit
emailing problem (systems@php.net)” because I wanted to ask the other
guys their opinions and ask a few random perl questions.

Around 3h15pm one of the PHP Quebec person comes to me (which I have
never met) and handles me an envelop. So as anyone, I ask him what’s
in it. He tells me it’s an invoice for attending the conference. I
thought this was a joke of course since I was actually there to see
Lukas and fix a few wrong things in PHP itself… So I opened it and
looked inside. It was absolutely NOT a joke, it was an invoice for the
noble amount of 451,50$.

As you can imagine, I was quite surprised and I was told that it was
because I was on the site of the conference whereas I was actually
visiting a guest of the hotel. But yeah, as you can see on this
invoice, the date is off (by a year…), there are no phone numbers to
call so I am doing a public call for some sort of explanation. Is that
how they want to treat the internal developers? By preventing movement
in the PHP Project? I seriously did not get it.

The part I found quite ironic is I hear through the branches that they
are having money problems and now I get invoiced 450$ for not
attending ONE single talk and only visiting a colleague of mine and no
one verified or even asked for a proof payment when I got it, and
before giving me this invoice no one asked me to leave since I hadn’t
paid? Where did I sign? Why do I get to pay the “php quebec member”
price when the website says they are complete and most obnoxiously
that I am not even a member of this community?

A few weeks back in a user group meeting, Yann Larrivee
(http://ylarrivee.com) said that going to the conference (talks) would
cost as usual but people could meet anyone in the lounge and that
would be free (Which is kind of evident).. A few people that were
there (at the user group meeting) confirmed to me this allegation
(which is most likely false since I got an invoice for being in the
lounge and discussing with a guest).

Of course I called the hotel to know if this was normal behavior and
the girl obviously said no. I was in public place (within the private
place - the hotel) visiting a guest, a customer of that same hotel.

This is the first time I see such disgrace in public and I must admit
that I find this to be both very unprofessional and a great sign of how they consider the whole community.

It is very sad to see the direction this conference is taking and the
way it became “money driven” and how they really not care about what
one does in the community or on the project itself but really only
care if you are a sponsor. I find it, to say the least, disgusting and
repulsive. I mean, I guess they considered "me being in the lounge of the conference area of the hotel" as someone attending the conference. When in fact I was working on a project that is going to attract hype to the project thus more people to their conference.

So that’s a rather expensive conference to … not attend (450$ for 2
hours.. roughly 225$ an hour… ouch).

On the other hand, it gave me the opportunity to find a pub where
there was an internet connection (which was different of the
conference).

(More precisely Lukas Smith) has installed a "wiki" for the project. The url to see the PHP Wiki can be seen at http://wiki.php.net

The wiki is of course not opened to everyone in the world (as wikis are usually a source of big mess) but only to developers that have any type of CVS access on the cvs.php.net server.

So I say my public thanks to Lukas Smith for his contribution. The TODO list from his own wiki should be migrated to the new php wiki. Also thanks to Pierre-Alain Joye for installing a syntax highlighter (code2) and nice urls.

Good job lads!

1. Replace any bison instance with lemon
2. Replace the Zend Engine with a new engine (dreaamminnngg)
3. Move from CVS to SVN (This is not really a summer project, more like a hope)
4. Finish unicode conversion (http://www.php.net/~scoates/unicode/render_func_data.php)
5. FINISH THE TODO LIST for PHP6!

Confirmed, Google Summer of Code will happen again in 2008.

Last year was a great year for the google summer of code and myself. There were great students participating in the projects (MANY projects) and the majority of the students (including mine) worked really hard to achieve top notch code.

I think GSoC is a great opportunity for both open source software and personal experience of the students participating. Personally, I found it fun to introduce my student to a few people in the community to get him involved in different places.

You can see a few links about the "new" GSoC:

http://digg.com/tech_news/Google_Summer_of_Code_on_again (Digg)

http://reddit.com/info/69ym7/comments/ (Reddit)

http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&id=540736 (Slashdot ? Never heard of this website before )

And of course the project's page is : http://tinyurl.com/yqvzbg

I hope you'll help spread the word to that noble cause and to keep helping the open source world.

Thanks to Leslie Hawthorn, Google, the students devoting time and of course the other mentors. Let's have a great 2008 year and a great GSoC !

Hmm, I wonder if I have to sign a CLA to use the word PDOv2... oh well.