> On Sep 19, 2017, at 8:21 AM, C. Scott Ananian <[email protected]> wrote: > >> On Mon, Sep 18, 2017 at 9:51 PM, Chad <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> I see zero reason for us to go through all the formalities, unless we want >> to really. I have yet to see anyone (on list, or on IRC anywhere at all >> today) where anyone suggested (2) was a good idea at all. It's a >> horrifically bad idea. >> > > Technically, I did outline the arguments for (2), earlier on this thread. > It was a bit allegorical, though: > https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Developer_Summit/2018/Writing_Tips/Examples#Example_of_a_.22medium_level.22_position_statement > This should be seriously considered, not just dismissed. > > I agree the short timeline seems to push us toward reverting to Zend. But > it is worth having a meaningful discussion about the long-term outlook. > Which VM is likely to be better supported in 15 years' time? Which VM > would we rather adopt and maintain indefinitely ourselves, if needed -- > since in a 15 yr timeframe it's entirely possible that (a) Facebook could > abandon Hack/HHVM, or (b) the PHP Zend team could implode. Maintaining > control over our core runtime is important; I think we should at least > discuss long-term contingencies if either goes down. Obviously, our future > was most stable when we (briefly!) had a choice between two strong > runtimes... but that opportunity seems to be vanishing. Practically > speaking, it's not really a choice between "lock-in" and "no lock in" -- we > have to choose to align our futures with either Zend Technologies Ltd or > Facebook. One of these is *much* better funded than the other. It is > likely that the project with the most funding will continue to have the > better performance. > > There are other big users of HHVM -- do we know what other members of the > larger community are doing? We've heard that Phabricator intends to follow > PHP 7. Etsy also shifted to HHVM, do we know what their plans are? > --scott
This is what I want to know as well: who is the community of HHVM users outside of us? What are their own internal reactions? Keep in mind that businesses like Etsy don't have to support third party downstream users as we do; "I guess we'll use Hack now" is a more plausible response than it would be for us. But if others are indeed like us and are balking at the plan to drop PHP, it would be worth looking into how we can pool resources to "save" HHVM, or create a runtime that maintains the performance improvements of HHVM while maintaining PHP support. Incidentally, how much work has been done on incorporating HHVM's improvements back into Zend? > > -- > (http://cscott.net) > _______________________________________________ > Wikitech-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
