The HHVM project (an alternative PHP runtime from Facebook) has made a major announcement on their blog - beginning with version 3.24 they'll no longer be trying to keep parity with the PHP language now that it has moved into PHP 7.

The HHVM team is happy about the direction PHP has taken with PHP7, and we’re proud of the role we’ve played in pushing the language and runtime to where they are today. Since the PHP community is finally saying goodbye to PHP5, we’ve decided to do so as well.

Our next LTS release, 3.24, will be cut about four months from now and will receive support for one year thereafter. It will also be the last HHVM release that commits to PHP5 support. This aligns with PHP’s own timeline of sunsetting PHP5 at the end of 2018.

[...] PHP7 is charting a new course away from PHP5, and we want to do the same, via a renewed focus on Hack. Consequently, HHVM will not aim to target PHP7. The HHVM team believes that we have a clear path toward making Hack a fantastic language for web development, untethered from its PHP origins. We’d do ourselves and our users a disservice by positioning HHVM as an uncommon, less well-documented, less compatible PHP7 runtime.

The post then lists out some of their goals for the HHVM/Hack projects moving forward including reinvesting in open source and staying focused on their needs for the platform and language. It then talks about some of the upcoming changes you can expect around support of current versions of popular PHP tools and work on tools created specifically for Hack.

That Podcast, hosted by PHP community members Beau Simensen and Dave Marshall, has released their latest episode: Episode 15: The first one where we follow-up on our goals for 2015.

Beau and Dave discuss Beau's recent trip to PHP Benelux, That Podcast Merchandise, our progress with our newly formed habits for 2015, fitness, finances, writing, reading, Superbowl and family things.

Topics (and people) mentioned in this latest episode include:

• @coderabbi
• Beau's "Decorating Applications with Stack" talk from #phpbnl15
• Test Data Builders
• Working Effectively with Unit Tests
• in-page audio player or by downloading the mp3 of the show. Be sure to subscribe to their feed too if you enjoy the show!

In this new post Leonid Mamchenkov looks at the latest version of a PHP framework that's been around since the PHP4 days, CakePHP, and some of the improvements that will come with version three.

Currently, I am at the start of a couple of projects, which require a bit of the future support. CakePHP 2.x can handle the job now, but I’m looking more into the next 3-5 years. And that’s why I’m looking at CakePHP 3, which is still in the early development stage, with an alpha release coming not too long from now (have a look at the CakePHP 3 roadmap document). Let’s have a look at the high level goals for CakePHP 3.

Among the items he mentions are things like:

• The adoption of broader PHP community standards
• An increase in modularity
• Developing for PHP 5.4+
• Composer support (and using PSR-4 autoloading)
• The removal of some more complex, brittle code in favor of simpler, easier to extend options

Check out the roadmap and migration guides for full information.

Anna Filina has a quick new post to her site today with some helpful tips on how to motivate your developers (and coworkers) to make for the best end result.

When developers are not motivated, progress is slow and quality is low. This ultimately affects company revenues and can lead to reduced opportunities for all employees. Motivation leads in the opposite direction: wealth and happiness. The first thing to understand about motivation is that it’s internal. We can’t force someone to become motivated, but we can still have a strong influence. Here are my top three picks to increase motivation from my presentation at IPC 2013 in Berlin.

Her top three are:

• Setting goals for the group and a purpose for making it good
• Focus on the "small wins" sometimes to keep motivation high
• Let developers use their full range of talents, don't force them into one niche

On the ThinkPHP blog there's a quick note about a study they've done on the relevance of business goals in the architecture of PHP applications.

PHP software developers and system integrators actually play an important role in running the world's largest web infrastructures. From Facebook, Gruner & Jahr, Kabel Deutschland and Lufthansa to a diversity of corporations, they all trust PHP and the respective systems built with it. It is not questionable that these systems provide a solid software architecture. The point of interest is how these architectures are aligned to the fast pace of changing business goals, which categories of business goals are considered during architecture creation and which means are utilised in projects.

The study (a 24-page study, in English) looks at some of the current strategies businesses are using in their application development, how to consider the right business goals and putting an emphasis on quality and capability of your organization. The study is free, but you'll need to register to get a copy emailed to you.

In this new post on Zak Greant's blog, he takes a look at some comments made about the eZ partner program he helped to develop and his responses to clear up some issues.

In a blog post yesterday, CMS expert and Optarian Seth Gottlieb wonders about the eZ partner program.

Gottlieb made comments about it seeming to be a good system, but not quite understanding how it would work when applied. Zak comes back with comments on the reasoning behind the program, how it works to benefit the partner, and how they see those partners, both in giving credit and their involvement with the projects.

For more information on the eZ partner program, check out this page on the eZ website.

In this new post on Zak Greant's blog, he takes a look at some comments made about the eZ partner program he helped to develop and his responses to clear up some issues.

In a blog post yesterday, CMS expert and Optarian Seth Gottlieb wonders about the eZ partner program.

Gottlieb made comments about it seeming to be a good system, but not quite understanding how it would work when applied. Zak comes back with comments on the reasoning behind the program, how it works to benefit the partner, and how they see those partners, both in giving credit and their involvement with the projects.

For more information on the eZ partner program, check out this page on the eZ website.