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Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2007 19:33:52 +0200 (CEST)
To: Rasmus Lerdorf <rasmus@lerdorf.com>
cc: PHP Developers Mailing List <internals@lists.php.net>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] RIP PHP 4?
From: derick@php.net (Derick Rethans)

On Fri, 6 Jul 2007, Rasmus Lerdorf wrote:

> Derick Rethans wrote:
> > Ladies, Gentlemen, Kings and Princesses,
> > 
> > With the nice PHP 5 / PHP 6 unicode semantics thread under way I am 
> > trying to gauge what people feel about dropping support for PHP 4 at the 
> > end of this year. That does not mean that we will not fix security 
> > issues, we have to as the install base is too large, but that would be 
> > the only thing that would warrant a new release. I already sort of 
> > mentioned this on april 1st, but I think we should come with a slightly 
> > more official statement. Your votes please (only -1 and +1 are 
> > allowed)!
> 
> I'm breaking your vote only rule.  I don't really understand what
> dropping support means if we will still release security fixes.  That's
> the mode we have been in for at least a year, so what would change at
> the end of the year?

Actually, that's not the current mode. Normal bug fixes are backported 
as well at this moment. Dropping support would mean that we won't do 
that anymore.

> Dropping support to me means PHP 4 becomes like PHP 3.  No new releases
> for any reason, and I don't think we can realistically do that yet.
> Saying we are dropping support and then continuing on with the status
> quo seems odd to me.

Besides it not being totally the same, I think that giving out a 
statement "No more bug fixes after 2007-12-31" and "No more security 
fixes after 2008-08-08" gives a *very* clear statement that it's the end 
for PHP 4. That will perhaps drive the increase of PHP 5.2 support, and 
that should be our main goal as we can not keep supporting PHP 4 for 
ever.

regards,
Derick