David Coallier has issued a challenge to all PHP developers in Ireland and in Europe to "stand up" and offer to share their knowledge with others in the local communities:

Now is the time to prove that we are all friends and Open Source Passionate after all. This is something I have been pondering on meeting all technological groups together instead of being divided, but I believe this push from Laura is exactly what Ireland needed in order to make it's outstanding Technological IQ even higher than it already is.

He's talking specifically about one opportunity - the Ireland Open Source Technology Conference 2008 happening in May, 2008.

On his blog today, Stefan Mischook has posted his take on some of the killer PHP projects that are out there:

Part of PHP's power is actually found in the variety of open source (free to use) PHP based applications. I'm talking about things like blogs, web frameworks, forums, CMS' etc. I was just thinking, that a list of 'killer' PHP open source projects would be useful

There four on his list so far - WordPress, the Zend Framework, Drupal and Punbb.

To be totally honest about it, we've seen much of the good stuff coming out of the PHP world, in the last few years. PHP developers are leap-frogging ahead with regards to their level of skill and the quality of code they produce.

On the Zend Developer Zone today, Andi Gutmans has written up a new post that, in light of a recent announcement from Microsoft about "going open source" with some of their products, asks what it means for the web and for the PHP community specifically.

Today Microsoft announced a significant initiative which aims to provide the developer community with access to a large number of Microsoft protocols and file formats. [...] With Microsoft opening up their specifications under the OSP, open-source communities like Zend Framework are now able to build such solutions without fear of litigation. There are many other areas where it will benefit open-source projects including Samba (SMB), FreeTDS (SQL Server), Mono (.NET), and others...

He shares his thoughts on the winners (Microsoft themselves, Open Source community) and losers (Microsoft's competitors, Linux) on the deal and the beneficial impact he thinks it will all have on the PHP.

ActiveState, developers of the Komodo IDE have launched a new project - the Open Komodo Project - in an effort to create an open source editing platform:

ActiveState is pleased to announce the creation of the Open Komodo Project, a new initiative to create an open source platform and promote open standards. The Open Komodo Project will support the open web and web standards, fill a need for developer tools in the open web technology stack, and drive further innovation for Komodo IDE and Komodo Edit.

They want to create a framework for development that integrates with other software (like Firefox) and makes development of both simple applications and complex, rich applications simple. Check out the full press release for more information or just head straight to the project's homepage to get started.