I'd suggest something close to what Rasmus suggested: a) We make a clear statement on PHP.net that at the end of the year we plan to discontinue bug fixes for PHP 4 except for security fixes. b) We will discontinue supporting PHP 4 on 8/8/8 (because it sounds good and gives people about a year).
I also suggest to move PHP 4 downloads to the museum. I suggest though to make a clear visible link from php.net/downloads.php to the museum and make a clear statement that PHP 4 has moved (I am sure there are still many who look for it for application compatibiity reasons). A year may seem a long time but it isn't when a company has to port a big application over. Also don't forget that one of the reasons so many people dislike Microsoft is because they constantly screw customers with support for older versions. There's nothing wrong with us being better on this front even if it comes at the expense of adoption of newer versions. Also I think just making the above mentioned statements and moving the downloads will have an immediate impact and won't linger things for another year. Andi > -----Original Message----- > From: Rasmus Lerdorf [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Friday, July 06, 2007 8:59 AM > To: Antony Dovgal > Cc: Derick Rethans; PHP Developers Mailing List > Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] RIP PHP 4? > > Antony Dovgal wrote: > > On 06.07.2007 19:07, Rasmus Lerdorf wrote: > >> 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? > >> > >> 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. > > > > To me it means in the first place that we can add a canned > answer to > > the bugtracker which would say "PHP4 is not supported > anymore, install PHP5" > > and close all PHP4 only reports. > > > > So no bug-fixes, no releases except for ones fixing > critical security > > problems. > > And even that should be ceased either in say.. 1 or 2 years. > > When was the last time we did a PHP4-only bug fix? > > My fear is that the impact of the no-more-support statement is hurt > when we qualify it with the fact that nothing is really changing. > > I'd be more in favour of a statement that put a final death date on it > which means no new releases of any sort. We could still say > security-fixes only by the end of the year and then death by 08/08/08 > or something like that. > > -Rasmus > > -- > PHP Internals - PHP Runtime Development Mailing List To unsubscribe, > visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php > > -- PHP Internals - PHP Runtime Development Mailing List To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
