Jeff Madsen has a post on his site where he shares his opinions about Open Source software and companies giving back to the projects they use and love. His basic idea is that they're "screwing themselves" if they're not contributing for a few different reasons.

This will be a short piece, so I’m not going to go down [the] rabbit hole right now [of project timing], but tell me one thing: When a construction company is handed a one-of-a-kind blueprint of a new house, do they respond, “Well, golly gee! This has never been built before? - ?I have no idea how long it would take”?

[...] If you are good at creating software estimates, you probably already know the Joel Spolsky guide to making (somewhat) accurate ones. Break it down into small bits that you can understand. [...] Now…here’s where we start honing in on my point. I may have lied to you a little bit above?—?that construction team may not know how long it takes to build a stud wall with wiring [...] because they use bloody pre-fab for everything these days!

Relating this back to Open Source, he links these "pre-fab" items back to Composer packages, Node modules, etc and how they can help make things more efficient (more than writing it all yourself). A lot of companies see OSS as a way to get free software they don't have to create or maintain. Unfortunately they don't take into account the work behind them and how nothing ever fits 100% so you end up making modifications. If you contributed those modifications back to the project that could mean never having to do it again in your own work.

He ends with a few recommendations for companies looking to contribute these fixes and suggestions back to projects including providing monetary support or looking at paid versions over free ones.

On the "24 Days in December" advent calendar there's an article posted from Kalle Sommer Nielsen that talks about some ways that you can give back to PHP including documentation updates, contributing to the core code and just helping out the community in general.

PHP has a tremendous community behind it, that community consists of you and me, and millions of others that help promote PHP by continuing to develop awesome applications that power some of the biggest websites in the world, but within this community exists a relatively small community that actively develops PHP, such as making it run on your favorite platform or making your favorite extensions compile and work or even keeps the documentation up-to-date. Today I want to dwell into that community, and perhaps giving you flavor enough to contribute back to PHP with code.

The article suggests several places you can give back including:

• updating and adding changes to the PHP manual documentation
• participating in the various project mailing lists
• reviewing pull requests on the project's GitHub repository
• writing tests for the untested parts of the language

Kalle wraps up the article talking about his own experience with the language over the years and how it ended up that he was the one to remove register_globals from the language one day.

In the latest post to his site Larry Garfield makes a charge to the community - both Drupal and the wider PHP community - to gave back in 2016 and make an effort to contribute in some way back to the projects you use and love.

At the end of 2014, I wrote a follow-up for Acquia's Future of PHP series. In that, I called on people to Build Bridges between communities through not just visiting them, but building with them. Build and launch a real project with some toolkit that's not your usual go-to tool, and then documenting and sharing that knowledge with others.

While recording another episode of the Acquia Podcast with JAM (who seems to like having me on for some reason), he asked me what was next. What was the next 2016 challenge to help build a more robust PHP community?

This one should be easy, right? Give back.

He suggests not only that you get out and give back but that you also do it in somewhat unfamiliar territory. He points out that with most of the software we use we're "standing on the shoulders of giants" and without these people giving their time to help the project, it wouldn't be where it is. He includes a few suggestions of things to think about when looking for a place to contribute:

• look for projects "affiliated" with the ones you usually contribute to
• if you've never contributed before, there's an even wider range of options (frameworks, extensions, libraries, etc)
• report bugs if you don't feel like you can contribute code

He does include a reminder that not all projects and communities will be a good fit for you and how you'd like to contribute, so find a good fit and then dig in.

Three contributions, to three projects, in any way, that is new to you. That's the ask. That's #PHPGivesBack2016. And then talk about it. Giving back is something to be proud of so be proud of it, and encourage others to do so as well.

It's 2009 and several in the PHP community have already started posting their own looks back at last year - here's the list so far:

• Jani Hartikainen: Best of 2008
• Sara Golemon: 2008 Lookback
• Ivo Jansch: Goodbye 2008!
• Stefan Koopmanschap: A look back
• Web Builder Zone: A Year In Retrospect - Web Builder Zone's Top 10 For 2008
• Matthew Weier O'Phinney: 2008: The year in review
• Zend Developer Zone: Year-End Conference Round-Up
• Rob Allen: 2008 end-of-year wrap-up
• Matthew Turland: Another Year, Another Summary
• Travis Swicegood: 2008: a retrospective
• Andi Gutmans: Happy New Year!
• Michelangelo van Dam: Looking back to 2008
• Keith Casey: 2008 Year End Summary
• Chuck Burgess: Looking Back...2008

Keep checking back for more great posts as they're added! Have a post you want on the list? let us know!

2008 was a great year for the PHP community - lots of growth, enhancements and improvements have lead us to where we are today. The language is stronger than ever and attracting more developers than it ever has. Let's take a look at just some of the things that made 2008 what it was:

• Plenty of criticism and comparisons of PHP
• The rise in popularity of the elePHPants
• Growth in the PHP Women group (like the article contest and their 2nd brithday)
• 2008 - the Year of the Framework
• PEAR Bug Traige event
• Zend Framework's Dojo and AMF integration
• A growing emphasis on unit testing and debugging
• The last release in the PHP 4 series
• Ibuildings launches their Center for Expertise (and Cal Evans is appointed Director)
• Several major companies - like Microsoft and Adobe - show more interest in the PHP community
• Lukas Smith launched his emPHPower iniative
• php|architect launched their C7Y community website
• this site made the move to the Solar Framework
• PHPers participated once again in Google's Summer of Code
• PEAR elctions were held
• The Great Namespace Debate of 2008
• Plenty of podcasts were released - PHP Abstract and the P3 Podcast
• php|architect got a major overhaul of the site, the magazine and the structure of the company
• Zend launched a new certification - Zend Framework Certified Engineer
• Zend buyout rumors (no, it didn't happen)
• the elePHPant World Tour
• Continuing development on PHP 5.3

Conferences

• CakeFest
• PHP Brasil
• PHP London
• Dutch PHP Conference
• Zend/PHP Conference & Expo
• php|tek
• php|works/PyWorks
• PHP Quebec
• PHP Appalachia
• FrOSCon
• International PHP Conference
• PHP Camp
• OpenExpo
• PHP North West
• SymfonyCamp
• PHP Barcelona
• PHP Security Camp

Our own job postings

• Included companies like: CNet Networks, Ibuildings, Ning, InvestorGuide.com, Yahoo! and Schematic
• In places like: Paris, UK, Nashville, Barcelona, New York, Zurich, Dallas and Chicago

In her blog today, Alison Holloway offers a quick tip for developers out there trying to install PHP 5.2.2 on their Windows machine and running into trouble. Maybe it's the same issue?

I've just been setting up PHP 5.2.2 on Windows XP Pro, with Apache 2.0.59. I couldn't get Apache to find the correct php.ini file. It was looking in C:Windows, instead of where I installed PHP. The httpd.conf file told Apache to look in C:Program FilesPHP, but it wasn't. So none of the extensions were loading.

The problem? She wasn't putting in the right kind of slashes into her configuration file. It couldn't find the right path because of it. The issue isn't mentioned in the latest version of the Underground PHP and Oracle Manual (but will be in the future).

In her blog today, Alison Holloway offers a quick tip for developers out there trying to install PHP 5.2.2 on their Windows machine and running into trouble. Maybe it's the same issue?

I've just been setting up PHP 5.2.2 on Windows XP Pro, with Apache 2.0.59. I couldn't get Apache to find the correct php.ini file. It was looking in C:Windows, instead of where I installed PHP. The httpd.conf file told Apache to look in C:Program FilesPHP, but it wasn't. So none of the extensions were loading.

The problem? She wasn't putting in the right kind of slashes into her configuration file. It couldn't find the right path because of it. The issue isn't mentioned in the latest version of the Underground PHP and Oracle Manual (but will be in the future).

In his latest blog post Davey Shafik takes a look back at this past year, 2006, and some of the happenings he experienced during that time.

The yearly look back is now a tradition in the PHP community, I decided this year to lead the pack instead of just hopping on the bandwagon. Of course, it's not official until Derick provides his excellent look back on internals.

There's mentions of his work with the Zend Framework, his book (the Zend Study Guide), and much more. Check out the full post if you'd like to catch up...

In his latest blog post Davey Shafik takes a look back at this past year, 2006, and some of the happenings he experienced during that time.

The yearly look back is now a tradition in the PHP community, I decided this year to lead the pack instead of just hopping on the bandwagon. Of course, it's not official until Derick provides his excellent look back on internals.

There's mentions of his work with the Zend Framework, his book (the Zend Study Guide), and much more. Check out the full post if you'd like to catch up...

Sara Golemon has posted her own look back at the year of 2006 in the PHP:

Well, Davey Shafik started us off with his year-end wrapup so I'll follow suit with mine. The thoughts below are mine and mildly influenced by alcohol. They represent a foggy review of how I experienced the year through the imperfect recollection of mailing list archives.

She covers each month, looking at the people, events, and releases that happened in each. Lots of activity happened on the mailing lists mirroring the happenings in the rest of the PHP community. Check out her great post for the full happenings of the year.