Changelog News 112

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+**Jerod Santo:**
+
+A dear friend of mine fell prey to a post-acquisition layoff (alongside ~30% of the company!) and is looking for work. He's a super-solid Network Engineer (taught me much that I know about layers 2 & 3) with decades of experience. I'll take any leads you might have, please hit me up!
+
+Ok, let's get into this week's news.
+
+**Break:**
+
+**Jerod Santo:**
+
+[Why GitHub actually won](https://blog.gitbutler.com/why-github-actually-won/)
+
+Scott Chacon writes up his insider's take on why GitHub became the de facto code collaboration site. Here's the quick version:
+
+>   I can boil it down to exactly two reasons that happened to resonate with each other at the perfect frequency.
+>
+>   1. GitHub started at the right time
+>   2. GitHub had good taste
+>
+>   All four GitHub cofounders had flops both before and after GitHub. Chris and PJ couldn’t quite make FamSpam work before GitHub, Tom and I couldn’t quite make Chatterbug explode after GitHub. I think both of these ventures had good taste and great product, but it wasn’t the right place or time or market or whatever for them to become GitHub level.
+
+One of the problems with success is that so much of it relies on timing... which is one of the big things we *cannot* control. What we can control, however, is _what_ we decide to build:
+
+>   We cared about the developer experience and had the creativity to throw away assumptions about what it was supposed to be and build how we wanted to work. Everyone else tried to build what they thought they could sell to advertisers or CTOs.
+
+This strategy is commonplace today, but it was avant garde back in 2008. Definitely read Scott's entire post of the full history lesson on what developer tooling looked like when GitHub entered the scene.
+
+
+**Break:**
+
+**Jerod Santo:**
+
+[The Open Source Pledge](https://osspledge.com/)
+
+Chad Whitacre and our long-time sponsors/friends at Sentry have been leading the way on corporate open source support for awhile, now they've created a pledge for other orgs to join them in putting their money where their source is:
+
+>   Whether you're a CEO, CFO, CTO, or just a dev, your company surely depends on Open Source software. It's time to pay the maintainers...
+>
+>   Our companies feast at the Open Source table year after year. Through the Open Source Pledge, we pay the maintainers of the software we consume. This prevents the maintainer burnout that flares up in high-profile security incidents such as XZ, Log4j, and Heartbleed.
+
+Send the link to decision makers in your org and join the growing [list of member companies](https://osspledge.com/members/).
+
+
+**Break:**
+
+**Jerod Santo:**
+
+[My dead father is “writing” me notes again](https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/09/my-dead-father-is-writing-me-notes-again/)
+
+_File this one under: "AI... things are getting weird"_
+
+Benj Edwards used an image synthesis model to reproduce his late father's handwriting. He fed it a bunch of journals his dad left behind and now "part of him will live on in a dynamic way that was impossible a decade ago." I have a feeling this is just the beginning of a trend that will end with people "recreating" their dead loved ones almost entirely. Benj's thoughts after accomplishing this goal:
+
+>   The results astounded me and raised deep questions about ethics, the authenticity of media artifacts, and the personal meaning behind handwriting itself.
+
+**Break:**
+
+**Jerod Santo:**
+
+It's now time for Sponsored News!
+
+[WarpStream lets you bring your own cloud](https://www.warpstream.com/byoc)
+
+WarpStream's BYOC deployment model for Kafka-compat data streaming gives you the best of both worlds between self-hosted & cloud. This model also give you **a lot of zeros** (that's a good thing)
+
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+
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+
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+
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+
+**Here's a non-zero** - WarpStream works in every cloud! They have native support for AWS S3, GCP GCS & Azure Blob Storage. It also works with any cloud or self-hosted solution that has an S3-compatible object storage.
+
+Head to [warpstream.com/byoc](https://warpstream.com/byoc) to learn more and get started for free.
+
+**Break:**
+
+**Jerod Santo:**
+
+[Look out, kids: PHP is the new JavaScript](https://www.mux.com/blog/php-is-the-new-javascript)
+
+Dave Kiss explains the "current hype and traction" that PHP is getting (mostly on X & a few YouTube channels):
+
+>   But there’s been a palpable shift in the air. You can sense it. People seem… excited about PHP.
+>
+>   What happened? Well. Laravel happened (and has been happening).
+
+He goes on to build a trivial Laravel app (with help from Cursor) and sums up the experience:
+
+>   Am I a convert? A newly-minted PHP Web Artisan? You bet your bottom `$dollar` I am. Depending on how critical you are of my AI coding approach, you might argue that I've still literally never touched a Laravel application. But I'll tell ya what: Laravel makes PHP fun again. I am here for it. Maybe you should be, too.
+
+**Break:**
+
+**Jerod Santo:**
+
+[Laravel raises a $57 million Series A](https://fortune.com/2024/09/05/laravel-raises-57-million-series-a-from-accel/)
+
+Speaking of PHP... Taylor Otwell & the Laravel team have decided to take a BIG step with their wildly successful web framework.
+
+>   Otwell is originally from Arkansas and early in his career worked at a trucking company as a programmer, where he was first exposed to open source. He still lives in Arkansas and, rather than a rip-roaring growth story, Otwell started Laravel as a personal project more than a decade ago, as he sought to build something he wanted.
+
+Taylor didn't just build something _he_ wanted... he built something that has brought success to (hundreds of?) thousands of developers all around the world. Here's hoping he can navigate venture-funded open source as well as he's done so far!
+
+**Break:**
+
+**Jerod Santo:**
+
+That's the news for now, but give the companion Changelog Newsletter a quick scan for even more stories worth your attention, such as Lucas da Costa on going open source as a VC-backed company, a customizable select element for the web is in the works, and RedMonk's latest programming language rankings.
+
+Sign up, if you haven't yet, at changelog.com/news
+
+We have some great episodes coming up this week:
+
+- On Wednesday: Jimmy Miller tells us about [the best, worst codebase](https://jimmyhmiller.github.io/ugliest-beautiful-codebase)
+- and On Friday: Gerhard Lazu is back for [Kaizen 16](https://github.com/thechangelog/changelog.com/discussions/520)
+
+Have a great week! Leave us a 5-star review if you dig our work, and I'll talk to you again real soon.