Building a Better PHP with HHVM and Hack: Part 1 | Hacker News Reader

Building a Better PHP with HHVM and Hack: Part 1

blog.engineyard.com

46 pointsduggan5 comments

Would this benefit you if you ran a large Wordpress site for example?

For example if you already had nginx/varnish setup and optimised, would it be worth setting this up to squeeze some more performance out of it?

It's weird they're not just calling this a fork of PHP.

You're not really allowed to as part of the PHP terms. (IANAL)

http://www.php.net/license/3_01.txt

  3. The name "PHP" must not be used to endorse or promote products
     derived from this software without prior written permission. For
     written permission, please contact group@php.net.
  
  4. Products derived from this software may not be called "PHP", nor
     may "PHP" appear in their name, without prior written permission
     from group@php.net.  You may indicate that your software works in
     conjunction with PHP by saying "Foo for PHP" instead of calling
     it "PHP Foo" or "phpfoo"

It's closely tied to and originated from HHVM, which is not a fork of the standard PHP engine. Since Hack will only run on HHVM (and related), it's not really a fork of PHP. Hack is simply a subset of PHP that's been extended.

It's weird they're not just calling this the future of PHP.

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