In this new post to his blog Pádraic Brady has proposed a "combining of forces" in the PHP community centered around promoting best practices in the security of PHP applications.

Once you start to dig around PHP Security in earnest, you begin to notice trends and patterns in how programmers behave and accumulate knowledge. The most obvious feature of PHP culture is that we do not have an active “leadership” in security. There is no appeal to authority in PHP security debates, only personal opinions informed by a nebulous entity called “They”. There are individuals that I have learned to trust and that’s about as far as we can go. [...] In the PHP community, the Authorative Knowedge for PHP Security is derived from a concensus. A concensus based on published articles, the practices of libraries and frameworks, printed books, and the vague meandering thoughts of whoever you follow on Twitter. In other words, our current Authorative Knowledge is you.

He notes that this "everyman security expert" hasn't proven to be the best method for increasing the overall security awareness of PHP developers, so he's proposing something different: the "PHP Security Technical Group (SECTG)".

It’s a group of members who share a common interest in sharing information, performing research, publishing articles/newsletters, and generally taking advantage of resource pooling without giving up their individual interests – all towards accomplishing some common goal, i.e. creating or emphasising new Authorative Knowledge. The phrase “Unofficial” is implicit in the group name – this is not an official PHP entity.

If you're interesting in joining in on the cause, you can sign up for the mailing list and get more information as it comes.

In a new post to his blog Marco Tabini poses an interesting question - is PHP running out of itches to scratch in the evolution of the language?

think it’s fair to say that the pace at which PHP core is being developed has slowed down considerably over the past couple of years, while the development of many projects based on it, like programming and application frameworks, has sped up and continues to grow at a fast pace. But this doesn’t mean that we’re running out of steam. The PHP ecosystem is simply refocusing outside of core, where it has a lot more freedom of action.

He suggests two reasons as to why this slowdown might be happening - first that there's not a sense of strong leadership in the core development group (a feature of the project done on purpose) and the change to move new library support out to PECL and PEAR instead of directly into the core of the language.

The risk facing us, as I see it, is not that Drupal, or WordPress, or whoever may decide to fork PHP or abandon it altogether. Rather, the problem is that there is no real way for these projects to provide upstream positive feedback to PHP core.

Chris Roane has a new post to his blog today talking about a quality he sees as one of the more valuable in PHP developers - leadership. He suggests, though, that if it's not there from the start, it can be learned.

Until recently, I thought leadership was a gift that you either had or did not have. I still believe it is something you can learn and get better at, but I’m now realizing that leadership is something we all have to some capacity. In fact, to be a successful PHP programmer, you have to be a good leader.

He relates it back to you being the "leader" of your own life, you being the one to make the decisions outside of the office too. This can translate back into your work in things like his example - making accurate estimates of development times and how much work it would take to make that happen.

This type of PHP programmer is valuable because they do not need someone constantly babysitting them. They can be trusted and people can depend on them confidently. If you are a manager, these are the people you want to manage because they will make you look good.

Michael Babker has a new post to his blog talking about how recent opinions might be the death of Joomla! and how, unless things change, it could take its toll on the project.

It's quite obvious that the state of Joomla! is not one of stability, as evidenced by recent threads on the Joomla! Bug Squad. Threads such as Help in admin menu, Thanks but no thanks, and The purpose and tone of the bug squad list all demonstrate that there is a severe rift between the leadership and the community, and within members of the community as well. Simply put, now is not the time for the Joomla! community, especially the volunteers of the Joomla! Bug Squad, to fall apart.

In his opinion, the Joomla community can't continue to function like this without causing the project to collapse under itself. Pushing away the new developers just wanting to help and putting egos ahead of good contributions only hurts things.

The Joomla! Project CAN NOT go on in this state. Chasing away the volunteers will not do anything productive. Putting your own ego before the collective Joomla! ego will not do anything productive. Not having an open mind will not do anything productive. And being overly offended by the use of a certain term by a non-English speaker certainly will not do anything productive. Change needs to happen.

Following up on the announcements of the standards group being formed and meeting at this year's php|tek conference, Keith Casey has posted some of how own thoughts about why he thinks that the group's approach might not be such a bad thing.

Something happened at php|tek 2009. Okay, lots of stuff happened. I mean something big happened at php|tek 2009. A group representing a number of different frameworks got together and agreed to... well, they agreed to talk. What came out was the PHP Standards Group.

He lists three things about the group that have stuck in his mind and wanted to share - that the group is lead by amazingly smart people, that they're dealing with a problem that's been taken on and lost many times and that he doesn't think they're being elitist (without cause) about who is in the group, just selective on the grounds of necessity.

The Zend Developer Zone has a new post covering the leadership change that just happened in the world of the Zend Framework. Mike Naberezny has moved forward to pursue other things and Jayson Minard has stepped up to fill the spot left. The post also shares the (lengthy) email that Jayson sent out to the list getting all of his ideas and intentions out in the open.

Jayson goes on to talk about himself a bit, his programming past and some of his more current work as the Editor in Chief of the Zend Developer Zone. He also mentions some of the future plans for the framework, including:

• the standardization of the proposal process
• a more consistent release model
• mapping out the scope/purpose/exclusions for each part of the framwork
• plans to handle the growth of user feedback on the project
• and using the Zend Developer Zone to share more information/updates/proposals/etc pertaining to the project

The Zend Developer Zone has a new post covering the leadership change that just happened in the world of the Zend Framework. Mike Naberezny has moved forward to pursue other things and Jayson Minard has stepped up to fill the spot left. The post also shares the (lengthy) email that Jayson sent out to the list getting all of his ideas and intentions out in the open.

Jayson goes on to talk about himself a bit, his programming past and some of his more current work as the Editor in Chief of the Zend Developer Zone. He also mentions some of the future plans for the framework, including:

• the standardization of the proposal process
• a more consistent release model
• mapping out the scope/purpose/exclusions for each part of the framwork
• plans to handle the growth of user feedback on the project
• and using the Zend Developer Zone to share more information/updates/proposals/etc pertaining to the project