[development] Go PHP 5, Go!

[Gerhard Killesreiter]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Dries Buytaert schrieb:
> 
> On 18 Jun 2007, at 16:49, Larry Garfield wrote:

>>
>> That is precisely the intent of the GoPHP5 effort. :-)  Change the
>> curve so that it's not 20%-30%, but 50%+.  That pushes past the
>> tipping point, and PHP 4 can more quickly go the direction of PHP 3. 
>> To do that, though, requires market pressure.  We're trying to be that
>> market pressure.
> 
> Sure, I understand that much.  The question is: what if we fail to bend
> the curve?
> 
> My guess is that all Drupal installations take up at most 0.5% of PHP's
> total install base.  That doesn't make for a lot of "bending power",
> does it?  Add a dozen of other systems, and it might add up to 10% of
> PHP's total install base?

The power lies in the fact that if the gophp5 effort succeeds, there
will be no "other place" for users to run to. This means that they will
either have to stick with the latest php compatible version or they have
to change hosters in order to find a host that supports php5.

> Are we willing to take this bet and to leave most of our users behind
> when we failed to significantly bend the curve 6 months down the road?

We won't leave them behind. Drupal 6 will still be available.

> Clearly, being able to use PHP5 would help us help our users. Not
> providing an upgrade path for 70-80% of our install base seems to be at
> odd with that.  It certainly has something kamikaze-like.
> 
> Will people remember gophp5.org two weeks from now after it fell of the
> Digg main page?  Just asking.
> 
> I'm all for pushing PHP5, but I'm not sure I want to take such an
> extreme stance.  As I mentioned in my blog post, let's start by making
> some features PHP5 only.  Like, let's rewrite the aggregator module with
> PHP5's simplified XML parser API.  That's disruptive too, but at least
> we'd be shooting ourselves in the foot, rather than through the head.

If we feel that in Feb 08 PHP5 is still not as widely supported as we'd
like, we could extend the Drupal 6 life cycle.

Cheers,
	Gerhard

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQFGdrGPfg6TFvELooQRAuInAJ4gWOI/DSiQIj/o44B701AkerVzgwCgy5fd
6M6q0f3htMiPuRC0UPQHD58=
=wbGC
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----