This is a follow-up to the PHP 5 thread from a week or two ago. It looks like some momentum is building. Ken Rickard, Robert Douglas, and I have been talking with some of the Jooma folks, and have a working draft of the "core statement and justification". That is, what the goal is and why it is. Joomla's development team is discussing the matter and is leaning yes. Based on the earlier thread here I am hoping that there isn't much objection to Drupal participating in the "Go PHP5" effort. :-) So far Joomla is leaning yes, CakePHP is interested, and I had a positive first response from Typo3. Robert Douglas has volunteered himself to setup a web site for it. I'm not sure how Dries wants to handle the question of Drupal's participation (by vote, by consensus, or by fiat). Dries? Anyway, here's the working statement. Consider this an official recommendation that Drupal commit to participating in this effort. ------------------------------------ PHP 4 has served the web developer community for seven years now, and served it well. However, it also shows its age. Most of PHP 4's shortcomings have been addressed by PHP 5, released three years ago, but the transition from PHP 4 to PHP 5 has been slow for a number of reasons. PHP developers cannot leverage PHP 5's full potential without dropping support for PHP 4, but PHP 4 is still installed on a majority of shared web hosts and users would then be forced to switch to a different application. Web hosts cannot upgrade their servers to PHP 5 without making it impossible for their users to run PHP 4-targeted web apps, and have no incentive to go to the effort of testing and deploying PHP 5 while most web apps are still compatible with PHP 4 and the PHP development team still provides maintenance support for PHP 4. The PHP development team, of course, can't drop maintenance support for PHP 4 while most web hosts still run PHP 4. It is a dangerous cycle, and one that needs to be broken. The open source PHP developer community has decided that it is indeed now time to move forward, together. Therefore, the listed open source PHP projects have all agreed that effective 5 February 2008, any new feature release will have a minimum required PHP version no older than PHP 5.2.0. It is our believe that this will allow web hosts a reason to upgrade and the PHP development team the ability to retire PHP 4 and focus efforts on PHP 5 and the forthcoming PHP 6, all without penalizing any existing project for being "first out of the gate". ------------------------------------ Notes: - I chose the date because I figure that will be 7-8 months after we officially announce this thing, which I believe should be sufficient time for web hosts. It also comes out to 5/2/2008 (using European convention), and I just like inside references like that. :-) - This does not preclude any project from moving before the deadline date, or from supporting older versions for however long they wish to. That's up to each project. - PHP 5.2 is already the most widely installed version of PHP 5, based on the latest published stats. I know at least two web hosts I work with that either have jumped or are in the process of jumping from PHP 4 straight to PHP 5.2. By the target date it will have been out for nearly a year and a half. It also adds a number of new and useful core features (filter_input, json, a stable PDO, etc.). It's a good version to target. Thoughts? Comments? Support? Rotten tomatoes? -- Larry Garfield AIM: LOLG42 larry@garfieldtech.com ICQ: 6817012 "If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it." -- Thomas Jefferson