Stuart Herbert opines that the PHP community lacks a resource that makes a business case for PHP. The latest post on his blog explains that, as part of his work, Stuart sells software written in various languages. During pre-sales they often have to face queries from IT staff—with a preference for Java or .Net—over their choice of PHP.

As per Stuart’s experience, a majority of business people still believes that open source is inherently insecure, and that PHP has incurable problems. As a result of such skepticism, it becomes tough for Independent Software Vendor (ISV) to sell PHP-related software to businesses.

Since a central resource that contains business-oriented answers to ‘Why PHP’ isn’t available yet, Stuart suggests that a central resource that contains business-oriented answers to ‘Why PHP’ will help promote the advantages of PHP, highlight success stories from vertical markets, and also put rest to the doubts about the security aspects of PHP.

On a related note, the Cover Story of the latest issue of PHP Magazine will help those who find themselves at a loss for words to explain what open source is, to a guy in a business suit. The article, by Lukas Smith, aims to help you better understand open source by harnessing the unique experiences that economists have made over the last centuries and applying it to open source. It explains economic principles and key terms as well as how they apply to the many individuals and companies involved in the open source relational database market.