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Cc: jani.taskinen@iki.fi,
 "Rasmus Lerdorf" <rasmus@lerdorf.com>,
 internals@lists.php.net
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Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2007 08:45:05 -0400
To: Pierre <pierre.php@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] What is the use of "unicode.semantics" in PHP 6?
From: ilia@prohost.org (Ilia Alshanetsky)

IMHO the big difference between the 4.x to 5.x migration and the one  
from 5.x to 6.x is who do the changes benefit. I think Rasmus made a  
very true and correct statement, PHP 6, who's main offering (at least  
right now) is unicode support is mostly for the 3-4% of the user base  
inside large companies like Yahoo that need to deploy multi-language  
applications and have full control over their environment. For the  
average joe, PHP 6 is not needed because as a rule they develop for 1  
locale, which is something PHP can already do quite well, if the #s  
of PHP based sites are to be taken into account. This means that  
there is absolutely nothing of value that the average use has to gain  
by moving from 5.x aside from drop in speed, which I am sure will be  
a winner for hosting companies and guaranteed BC breaks. From that  
perspective, I think PHP 6 adoption will be very slow, even compared  
to the luckster 5.x adoption rates, which only in the last year have  
began to pickup steam.

Given that it is the case I think PHP 5 will be supported for a very  
long time and eventually may even take a life of its own simply due  
to the large user base it will have, that has nothing to gain by  
moving to PHP 6. Keeping in mind that aside from unicode any other  
features/additions of PHP 6 could be easily ported to PHP 5 by one  
who is interested in them.



On 20-Jun-07, at 7:32 AM, Pierre wrote:

> On 6/20/07, Jani Taskinen <jani.taskinen@sci.fi> wrote:
>> What I think Ilia said (between the lines) is that basically we're  
>> forking PHP.
>>
>> Perhaps we really need to accept the fact that this has already  
>> happened..
>> It started with the CPR for PHP_4_4 branch and same is now  
>> continuing with
>> the PHP_5_2 branch. If the support for PHP 4 was _officially_  
>> dropped by release
>> of PHP 5, the adoption of PHP 5 would have been quicker than it  
>> has been so far.
>
> You are right, that's one of the only way to "force" the move, the
> only one I can imagine at least.
>
> A realistic way to do it is to say that 5.x will not be supported 2
> years (or so) after the first stable release of php6. That's still
> ~5-10 years with a maintained php5.x (ok, 5.0.x was born dead ;).
>
> (No need to say that php4 support should have been stopped already)
>
> --Pierre

Ilia Alshanetsky