The /Dev/Hell podcast, hosted by PHP community members Chris Hartjes and Ed Finkler, has posted their latest - and last - episode of 2016: Episode #38 - Brand Dilution as a Source of Happiness.

Welcome to our end-of-year episode! It has been probably the most gratifying year in a long time for both Chris and Ed. Chris' work at Mozilla has really changed his perspective on the value of the open web and his future. Ed finally got the chance to sink his teeth into a true leadership role at GraphStory and with a lot of help OSMI became a non-profit poised to continue doing excellent work in the field of bringing awareness to mental health issues.

Crazy travel schedules, the last TrueNorthPHP, Chris and Ed laughing about things more than usual, and a very passionate non-testing-related speech from Chris can be found in this final episode of 2016.

You can listen to this latest episode either using the in-page audio player or by downloading the mp3 directly. If you enjoy the show, be sure to subscribe to their feed and follow them on Twitter for updates when new shoes are released.

On 7PHP.com today Khayrattee Wasseem has posted an interview with Musketeers.me about their recent move to being the owners of the php|architect brand and all of its products/events.

If you were having a sky-diving on planet Mars since the past months, or if you were too enthusiastic in getting lost within The Hobbit’s World – wake up Sid! There’s news concerning PHP Land! On “its” 10th birthday, last December 2012, your “PHP Magazine for PHP Professionals“ (The one & only PHP|Architect) announced on its portal that it’s brand, owned by BlueParabola, is being ‘safely & soundly‘ handed over to The PHP Musketeers aka Musketeers.me for a smooth and more dynamic life.

In the interview they talk about things like:

• The motivation behind the acquisition
• Positives and negatives of the brand as they see them
• Future plans for the magazine and brand
• What they see as the overall goals for php|architect
• What kind of challenges they see in the road ahead

You can read the full interview here and find out more about this change on the php|architect site.

In his latest blog entry, Marco Tabini talks about how we, the community, have "failed the PHP brand" through its overuse (such as in application names of things written in the language).

This is, I believe, a major point of failure for the PHP community. As many have pointed out to me more than once (not that I had anything to do with it, or that I would be able to do anything about it), allowing PHP-related applications to contain the word "PHP" is a major mistake, because it dilutes the value of the brand itself by allowing the quality of PHP to be associated with the value of products that have nothing to do with PHP proper.

He mentions that searches for things like "php vulnerabilities" come up more with things for apps written in PHP and less with results about PHP itself. He even suggests that there isn't a really useful application type that has a PHP-written option that doesn't use the PHP "brand" in its title. He finishes it off with three simple rules that he suggests will help to dilute the PHP brand - don't use it in your application title, always reference that PHP is a trademark of the PHP group (and that there's no association between you), and use the PHP logo in only a descriptive way.

In his latest blog entry, Marco Tabini talks about how we, the community, have "failed the PHP brand" through its overuse (such as in application names of things written in the language).

This is, I believe, a major point of failure for the PHP community. As many have pointed out to me more than once (not that I had anything to do with it, or that I would be able to do anything about it), allowing PHP-related applications to contain the word "PHP" is a major mistake, because it dilutes the value of the brand itself by allowing the quality of PHP to be associated with the value of products that have nothing to do with PHP proper.

He mentions that searches for things like "php vulnerabilities" come up more with things for apps written in PHP and less with results about PHP itself. He even suggests that there isn't a really useful application type that has a PHP-written option that doesn't use the PHP "brand" in its title. He finishes it off with three simple rules that he suggests will help to dilute the PHP brand - don't use it in your application title, always reference that PHP is a trademark of the PHP group (and that there's no association between you), and use the PHP logo in only a descriptive way.