On SitePoint today there's a new post from Eran Galperin (of Binpress) about how, if you're jumping immediately to custom software development, you're probably doing it wrong.

Code reuse is largely accepted as "best practice" in our industry. Code reuse has many advantages, such as a smaller code-base which is easier to grok for developers. It's easier to maintain and optimize, since you can make less changes in order to achieve the desired results. Many modern techniques and tools were created in order to better reuse and modularize code. But while we're reusing code, we're duplicating effort. The same code is being written over and over in different places, wasting time and money.

He suggests that custom development should always be a last resort for software development, that there's plenty of other (open source) software out there that meets many of the needs businesses have. In his opinion, component-based development is the future of the industry - pieces that fit together with common interfaces and are larger than the sum of their parts. He sees a "commercial open source" model emerging from the current state of things. This model could result in more well maintained OS projects and more functionality being released as a part of it.

What we have currently is increasing noise, as more and more people have easier access to start programming and publishing their projects. We need to streamline the process and add that missing financial element that makes it sustainable and repeatable.

In a new post on phpRiot.com Quentin Zervaas shows you how to use ionCube Encoder to help protect the applications you've written and their source code.

One of the issues PHP developers face is that PHP is an interpreted language, meaning PHP source code is readable by anybody who downloads your applications. In this article I will show you how to protect your intellectual property by encoding your PHP source code.

With the help of the encoder to can convert your plain-text PHP files into something that only the end user with the correct loader setup can use. He includes a simple "hello world" example showing the before and after of using the encoder. Also included are the commands to encode and decode the scripts manually if you want to handle it that way.

Sandro Groganz has posted an article with some of his thoughts on commercialization of PHP-based applications and how the right marketing can help the great source code shine.

Great source code doesn’t speak for itself. More often than not, it isn’t the better software product that wins in the market. This article explains how a PHP-based product can gain a good position in the market and be made appealing to customers by using marketing communication.

He touches on the differences in business models, the "licensing mix" that can happen when Open Source software is used and how open communication through various media, not just in the code, can help to define those really using the code and help you define where your product fits in the overall software world.

On the Code Beach blog there's a recent post comparing a few of the more popular IDEs that you can write your PHP applications in (not all specifically targeted at PHP, of course).

This is a roundup of the available PHP IDEs both free and commercial. You will find a wide range in pricing (free to $400) and options available on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X including PHPAnywhere which is a web-based IDE.

IDEs in the list include:

• NuSphere PhpED
• PHPEdit
• Dev-PHP
• Komodo Edit
• PHPanywhere

As is mentioned on the Zend Developer Zone, the Zend Server software has finally come out of beta and has made its first release (with a community edition too).

From the recent press release:

Zend Server CE is a completely free version of Zend Server that runs on Linux, Microsoft Windows, and Mac OS X, specifically tuned to address the needs of non-critical server deployments and for developer desktops/laptops everywhere. Zend Server CE comes with the same high-performance opcode caching and easy-to-use PHP administration capabilities as the commercial Zend Server.

You can find out more about the products and find the links for downloads of both the Zend Server Commercial and Zend Server Community Edition from the main Zend Server page on the Zend website.

PHP is always thought of as an open source free spirit that survives on the work that's done by the community around it. While there's no denying the massive amounts of work done by developers of the language, there's also another group that is doing their part to help the language flourish - commercial entities. Scott MacVicar takes a look at a few of them in this new post to his blog.

I thought I’d start with a quick thank you to all those groups and entities involved indirectly with PHP. The PHP project relies on donations to provide our service infrastructure, this is in the form of hardware and hosting from both individual companies and hosting companies to provide collocation.

Besides the hardware support there's also companies willing to allow their employees time to work on the project (such as Pierre from Microsoft). Other companies that have made large contributions include IBM's large amount of testing, Sun's work to improve PHP on Solaris and, of course, Zend's support of the project and the time its employees spend developing the language.

Stuart Herbert looks today at some of the reasoning behind the push to move developers out to PHP5 - specifically that there's a lack of commercial-related discussion about what issues there might be.

What I'm not seeing are the commercial arguments to move to PHP 5 (/me points an accusing finger at the folks from Zend, with whom this discussion has been had before). Businesses will only make the move when there is something to gain from the effort, when the rewards of switching are more than the cost of doing nothing. So let's see if we can find some reasons to chivvy them along!

He breaks the rest of the post into sections:

• Why Move To PHP 5?
• What's The Cost Of Staying On PHP 4?
• What Are The Barriers To Moving To PHP 5?
• How Do I Cover My Costs Of Upgrading?
• What Are The Alternatives To PHP 5?
• Making The Move

Stuart Herbert looks today at some of the reasoning behind the push to move developers out to PHP5 - specifically that there's a lack of commercial-related discussion about what issues there might be.

What I'm not seeing are the commercial arguments to move to PHP 5 (/me points an accusing finger at the folks from Zend, with whom this discussion has been had before). Businesses will only make the move when there is something to gain from the effort, when the rewards of switching are more than the cost of doing nothing. So let's see if we can find some reasons to chivvy them along!

He breaks the rest of the post into sections:

• Why Move To PHP 5?
• What's The Cost Of Staying On PHP 4?
• What Are The Barriers To Moving To PHP 5?
• How Do I Cover My Costs Of Upgrading?
• What Are The Alternatives To PHP 5?
• Making The Move

A press release has been published from Senza Limiti about their acquisition of the PHPScripts.se's Ajax-enabled DataGrid component and intentions to release it under both an Open Source license and a commercial license (like MySQL has done).

The PHP Grid is an Ajax-based table component that shows database information in a good looking, easy to use way. All user actions are performed in real time, on the client side, giving instant feedback and providing a desktop-like user experience. Among its features are Excel support and an automated print function that presents the table in a printable format. It also allows instant editing of database rows.

You can get the complete details on the component from these pages on Senza Limiti's website.

A press release has been published from Senza Limiti about their acquisition of the PHPScripts.se's Ajax-enabled DataGrid component and intentions to release it under both an Open Source license and a commercial license (like MySQL has done).

The PHP Grid is an Ajax-based table component that shows database information in a good looking, easy to use way. All user actions are performed in real time, on the client side, giving instant feedback and providing a desktop-like user experience. Among its features are Excel support and an automated print function that presents the table in a printable format. It also allows instant editing of database rows.

You can get the complete details on the component from these pages on Senza Limiti's website.