I’d go much further and say PHP is complete crap. However, not because there are all these different forked versions of it. The different features problem it suffers from is the same thing as a particular Java application server lacking a particular image library, or using some other database API, or whatever. Every modern language has this problem, not just PHP.

There are not 3 different forks of PHP, only a number of different versions. Agreed, PHP is very poorly managed, but its managed by a single group.

Predictability and solidity are not really related to closed or open source. There are predictable and solid open source applications/frameworks, and there are unpredictable and flaky closed-source equivalents. This should be pretty clear, but what’s not clear is whether you’re claiming there is a negative correlation there or not, or merely that you may suspect there possibly could be as you go about not defending the original article but implicitly supporting its conclusions.

Flash’s penetration is in part due to its branding, but it’s also due from the fact that it did well a lot of stuff that people wanted to do. There’s actually no evidence that being closed has served it well as a technology, because we don’t have anything to compare it to.

As for open competitors to Flash, they’re of course hamstrung by the fact that Adobe can blow them away by all kinds of tricks using their market dominance and control of the underlying technology. If Flash were an open standard, that would at least be some protection. But why would Adobe want that? They don’t, which is fine for them.

On the other hand, the developer community should want it, because it would create competition (which appears to push techologies along) and brings all the advantages of openness. Some of them do want that, clearly. And if some think it’s not worth Adobe spending energy on instead of developing new features, that’s fine… but to claim (or not claim but persistently imply) that it would be an overall bad thing for everyone is pretty ridiculous.

How about Open Lazlo, or maybe even an Open-Source competitor to Flash?

Niall: PHP is good, but in terms of development it appears to be a huge, disorganised mess, partly due to it being so open. And knowing what features are supported by any given server… Ahhk. I taste bile just by thinking about it.

And now Sun are (supposedly, at least) making Java open source. So much for that argument.