It’s official: Zend has “Partnered” with Microsoft. The official press release is here. When Microsoft “partners” with a competitor (ASP, ASP.NET vs PHP, Zend Core) I can’t help but feel suspicious and uneasy.

Here is a list of competing companies that have “partnered” with Microsoft in the past (first four items in the list taken from a Slashdot posting):

• Netscape
• Palm
• Symantec and McAfee
• Sendo
• Sybase
• Fox Software
• IBM
• Borland
• Sun Microsystems

There are more but these are those that I can remember off the top of my head. Some will note that some of these companies did not have an “official” partnership, but only had Microsoft “work closely” with them to make their products “work better under Windows”.

I guess the people running Zend should read Sun Tzu’s “Art of War” and highlight the phrase:

Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.

I hope, in the long run, Zend does not get added to this list.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 1st, 2006 at 6:02 pm and is filed under Code and Consequences, PHP. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.