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PHP is the base technology for Facebook and Gutmans (below, left) would obviously like that fact to be recognised and known by the common man. He is not a shareholder in Facebook but the halo effect that its success will have is bound to be a positive for his own company.
There are a number of smaller companies - like Zynga - which have benefitted from the growth of Facebook and Zend had relationships with some of them, Gutmans said.
Facebook would be a point of proof that PHP was up to the task of supporting such a massive site, and could drive other companies to PHP, he added.
Right now, many companies were using Java and .NET but something that was faster was needed in areas like mobile where the user experience was paramount, he said.
Gutmans did not think that PHP had any more security issues compared to Java and .NET. In any case, he added, PHP was much faster in providing hot-fixes when issues surfaced.
He emphasised that the superiority of PHP was not because of the licensing, but rather because it was a rapidly developing language and able to scale. No better example was needed of its ability to scale than the fact it was able to cope with the demands of the hundreds of millions who used Facebook every day.
Gutmans agreed that a great deal of Facebook's success after the IPO would depend on how well the company was able to monetise the assets it had. The company needed to build a platform that businesses could leverage, else things would begin to go south.
On the contribution made by Facebook to open source, Gutmans said it was as good as any other company, and often better, in releasing the source for improvements it coded for PHP.
