PHP is a "framework" in the sense that it provides the core mechanisms for doing webby things - accessing query string and POST variables, sending HTTP headers, reading cookies, mapping URLs to executable code.<p>I actually think comparing stand-alone PHP to frameworks like Rails or Django is reasonable, since they all solve the same problem. Of course, such a comparison should also take the existence of higher level PHP libraries and frameworks in to account - it would be silly to criticise PHP for not shipping with an ORM, for example.