Zend has issued a press release today announcing their split from the PHP group in order to pursue their own branch of the popular web development language.

Andi Gutmans, Co-founder and Vice President of Zend, is quoted as saying: It's about time we finally made the move. All of those people whining constantly about 'PHP is broken here - make it better' and 'Why can't you fix my favorite function so it works better?' Frankly, we at Zend are tired of it, and we're not gonna take it anymore.

Neither Zeev Suraski or Marc Andreessen could be reached for comment on this branch, but sources say that the entire company is behind this move. Branching off to create their own "Zend PHP" allows them to integrate their recently released (preview version) of Framework more closely and give it the power it needs to surpass the original PHP distribution.