At the Zend/PHP conference this morning in San Jose, Microsoft and Zend announced a technical collaboration agreement to improve overall performance and stability of PHP running on Windows Server 2003 and Windows "Longhorn" server. Specifically, Microsoft engineers will work very closely with engineers from Zend to focus on areas of improvement. Additionally, Zend will be establishing a Windows Server testing lab at their facility, in which they will conduct regular testing of PHP running on Windows to evaluate improvements.

The improvements that result from the collaboration will be submitted under the PHP license directly to the PHP community thorough www.php.net, as well as added to Zend's Core product line for Windows (which will be made available for free from Zend).

The agreement has already rendered some results (wow, that's fast). The core initial work was demonstrated this morning my Bill Hilf (MS) and Zeev Suraski (Zend). Tune into Port 25 for more info…