InfoWorld: What were the main goals in the development of PHP?

Gutmans: The main goal is being the best Web development language. The big advantage of PHP is that we are solely focused on the Web and Web services. And that is what makes the language so powerful. We don't try [to] be a general-purpose language.

InfoWorld: Is Zend profitable these days, leveraging open source technology like PHP?

Gutmans: Currently we're still in the investment stage. In the summer, we completed Series D round [financing], a $20 million round. And so we are still investing in growing the business.

InfoWorld: How does PHP compare to other scripting languages such as AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), Ruby, Perl, Python, JavaScript? AJAX is not a language per se. How does PHP compare to all these others?