The SitePoint PHP blog has a post from the godfather of the PHP community Cal Evans about paying the price for open source - giving back to Open Source projects that you use every day.

Back in the early days of Open Source – when Dinosaurs roamed the earth and Rasmus was a young man – there were two types of open source projects we talked about: those that didn’t cost any money, and those that gave you the freedom to redistribute and modify the code.

[...] Fast forward a few dozen years and here we are, Open Source is now an ecosystem, not a user group that you and five friends attend, or a magazine to which you subscribe. The problem is that most of us have stopped talking about the different types of open source, we just assume it is both.

He talks about how PHP is technically both kinds of free but also points out that open source will potentially die out (as it is now) without one major piece - users contributing back, giving their time and effort to keep it (and related projects) free. He talks about how you can give back, and not necessarily monetarily. He talks about one of his own experiences with giving back (to WordPress) when his work wasn't accepted, but he also points out that even though it may be rejected it doesn't mean you should stop.

What ever project you are working with, take the time to give back. Don’t let Open Source die in our generation.

Preserve this great concept; this ecosystem that we have helped build and that has allowed us to build so much. If you are a developer, find your favorite project and give back. If you run a company or a team of developers, give them time on your dime to give back to a project. Help keep the Open Source ecosystem thriving for the next generation of developers.

According to this new post to the Dutch PHP Conference blog, the schedule and ticket prices for this year's event will be published next week (sometime between the 19th - 25th).

In our previous blogposts we announced that we would publish the schedule on 15th February. It seems however that this date was a bit too optimistic, and that we need a bit more time to get everything in order. So hang in there, the schedule will be published next week! If you want to be first in the know, make sure you follow @dpcon on twitter.

They've already posted the prices for the tickets though:

• Tutorial Day: 350 Euro (Regular), 297,50 Euro (Early Bird)
• Conference Days: 350 Euro (Regular), 297,50 Euro (Early Bird)
• Full conference: 630 Euro (Regular), 535,50 Euro (Early Bird)

The Early Bird prices are only good from the start of registration until April 15th, so keep an eye out for their announcements about the opening of their registration. You can get more information about the conference from the event's website.

As a reminder, the PHP UK Conference (2012) still has their "Blind Bird" tickets on sale until the 4th of December for £90:

Purchase blindbird 2012 conference registration(s) for Friday 24th and/or Saturday 25th February - available at this price until 4th December 2011. After this time the earlybird 2012 conference registration for Friday 24th February will be available at £120/£210 excluding VAT, with only the full price of £140/£250 excluding VAT available from 3rd January 2012.

The conference is two days in London with over 30 talks and 25 speakers. The schedule hasn't bene released yet (hence the "blind bird" pricing) but if it's anything like previous years, it will be packed with excellent sessions on a variety of subjects, from beginner to intermediate.

If you want to get in on the Early Bird pricing for this year's CodeWorks conference (East and West coast tours), you better hurry - today's the last day the discount will be available!

Don't miss your chance to get a discounted ticket to the Code Works '11 tour. Order today and save 20% off of each ticket. Find the city nearest you in the tours below and order your ticket today and join us as sparks fly!

Cities on the route for this touring conference this year include Nashville, Baltimore, Seattle, Portland and Austin. Prices jump up to $100 USD for a single ticket and $90 for group tickets after today, so get yours at the discount price while you can.

The folks over at Zend would like to remind you that the deadline for Early Bird pricing on ZendCon conference tickets is coming soon - September 16th!

The Zend PHP Conference (ZendCon) will be held October 17-20, 2011, at the Convention Center in Santa Clara, California. [...] The conference opening keynote will be given by Andi Gutmans, CEO and co-founder of Zend, who will be joined onstage by Michael Crandell, CEO and co-founder of RightScale.

Other keynotes include ones from Jeff Barr (Amazon), Hugh Williams (eBay) and Dwight Merriman (founder of 10gen). You an find out more about these sessions and lots of others packed into this great multi-day conference over on the ZendCon site. Register now to get the Early Bird pricing ($200 USD off the regular ticket price for the full event).

On the Zend Developer Zone today Cal Evans reminds you about the alumni discounts you can get for this year's ZendCon if you've attended the conference in the past years.

Ah the memories of ZendCon...there are just so many of them. Great session, Keynotes that inspire you to think, and some of the parties can only be described as epic. Alumni, you know what I mean, so join us again and continue the tradition. You know why you should be there, you've done it before and experienced it yourself. So don't put off registering any longer.

The discounts can give you anywhere from $50 USD to $100 USD off the ticket price and if you get tickets before September 10th you can get these discounts off of the already discounted Early Bird prices. You can get your tickets here.

As Johanna Cherry and Derick Rethans have a reminder for those wanting to get in on the Early Bird pricing for this year's PHP UK Conference 2010.

Today (Dec 31st, 2009) is the last chance for £100 registration to #phpuk2010 next month is £110!

You can find out more about the conference and what's included in the registration on the conference website or just reserve your spot immediately!

In this new post to his blog Juozas Kaziukenas takes a look at one method for getting the information out of a remote page - parsing it with PHP and XPath (assuming the page is correctly formatted).

When I was writing about how I use web scraping, I was still hadn’t tried using Xpath (shame on me). [...] It turned out, that using Xpath is extremely easy, really. When you master it, you can do everything in seconds. Yes, you need to know how XML works and how to write correct Xpath queries (brief explanation of Xpath syntax is available at W3Schools), but hey - these topics are in 1st year of university.

He includes both some sample code (to fetch a titles and prices for cameras from bhphotovideo.com) and a link to a XPath checker you can use to ensure that your query is correctly formatted. It's good that he also includes a quick reminder about the ethical issue with web scraping - it could be considered stealing depending on where the information comes from and who is providing it.

Sameer has posted the second part of his series looking at refactoring with a spotlight on the Extract method.

The ‘Extract Method’ is one of the most common refactorings you will ever do. It is also one you will frequently see implemented on the Refactor tool menu on various IDE’s. What this method basically does is to take a group of related code and convert it to a function with a appropriate name that easily explains the purpose of the code.

He gives a code example - converting hotel room price to points based on the currency its requested in - both with and without the Extract method in use.