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Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2014 00:35:55 +0300
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To: Peter Cowburn <petercowburn@gmail.com>
Cc: Andrea Faulds <ajf@ajf.me>, PHP Internals <internals@lists.php.net>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [VOTE][RFC] Name of Next Release of PHP
From: zeev@zend.com (Zeev Suraski)

> On 20 =D7=91=D7=99=D7=95=D7=9C 2014, at 18:40, Peter Cowburn <petercowbur=
n@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>  The argument for PHP 6 is very short and reads half-baked.  The
> overwhelming majority of this very short section of the RFC is spent
> describing how naming the release =E2=80=9CPHP 6=E2=80=9D will be a probl=
em, with a very
> wishy-washy conclusion that the author =E2=80=9Cexpects=E2=80=9D and =E2=
=80=9Cthinks=E2=80=9D it won=E2=80=99t end
> up being a problem. The PHP 6 section makes no attempt to provide counter
> points to things mentioned in the following section, nor really attempts =
to
> make *any* strong point at all.

While I'm obviously biased, I have to say that the only arguments for
PHP 6 that came up in all of the discussions that ensued in internals@
(there were several) were that "it's the right thing to do" and
"there's no reason not to do it".  Perhaps another argument was to
'punish' book authors that prematurely published PHP 6 books.

> It also contains, IMO unnecessarily, light-hearted and jokey comments not
> befitting an RFC  =E2=80=94 unless you see the RFC as a joke too ;) =E2=
=80=94 about 6 being
> a failed version in other software, and 7 a lucky number. Seriously?..

I agree with everything Andi said about the perception of version 6,
and I heard people joking about 6 being a graveyard number for
languages too.  PHP 6 is very much associated with failure in many
peoples minds, Perl 6 and to a lesser degree MySQL 6 as well - and as
Andi said, perception matters a lot.

Regarding 7 being a lucky number, I thought it was fairly clear that
it was said in humor, although there's a grain of positive perception
here too...  I left off it being a prime number :)

> The RFC as a whole is very light on trying to summarise, or at least
> provide reference to, the history of "PHP 6=E2=80=9D and discussions arou=
nd it.
> This is disappointing, if the aim was to see a balanced summary of previo=
us
> discussions.  However, this particular gripe is a common issue with our
> RFCs as a whole.

I think that this can be found fairly easily on the web...  But you're
right that there is a hidden assumption that would be voters know the
story.

Zeev