Matt Mullenweg (whom I’ve never met and is probably a perfectly nice guy) doesn’t really have much ground to stand on in complaining about PHP4 support getting killed off, if you ask me. PHP5 has been out for three years. Time to move on — either to the latest and greatest PHP or a different platform all together. Get over it.
001 // Matt // 07.19.2007 // 5:37 PM
I never said we should stay on PHP4 forever, just that version 5 isn’t very compelling. The linked entry scrapes the bottom of the barrel of PHP 5 features, and still doesn’t offer anything that would be exciting to our userbase or have a real impact on WordPress’ adoption. We already support PHP5, and we’ll support PHP6 when it comes out, but I’m not interested in dropping support for 4 just because. It doesn’t hold us back.
002 // Jeff Croft // 07.19.2007 // 9:08 PM
Hey Matt: You may well have very good reasons for staying on version four for Wordpress, and I have no problem with that. But, I do think it’s a bit much for you to expect the PHP project to continue to support PHP4, three years after the new version is out. You’ve been around this industry long enough to know that three years is an eternity, especially in open source. No one is stopping you from using PHP4 — and like I said — if it works for you and you have no reason to switch, that’s totally cool by me. But them dropping support for it is also totally cool by me, because three years after the next version is out seems like a totally reasonable timeframe in my mind.
Thanks for responding. Do know it’s not personal — like I said in the link, I’m sure you’re a great guy. :)
003 // Karmadude // 07.20.2007 // 12:09 PM
The way I see it, on one side for the progress of PHP, people need to move on, but on the other side instead of having people switch to something they really don’t want, PHP should have had a better dialog with their user base, and brought out a version that’s more compelling to switch to. Kind of like bringing out a digital camera instead of just another film camera with a few extra features.
On a different note, is there a reason you post the whole url for visit site, instead of What Matt Mullenweg doesn’t know about PHP5, and how it hurts him and his users
or
Visit site
004 // Jeff Croft // 07.20.2007 // 12:14 PM
@Karmadude: I agree completely about PHP needs to be more open to a dialog with its users.
As to why I post the whole URL: I don’t know, I just like to be able to see a URL before I click it sometimes, and I figure other people are the same way. No good reason, I suppose. I just do. :)
005 // Ed Finkler // 07.30.2007 // 11:29 PM
Funny, Matt didn’t describe my post as “scraping the bottom of the barrel of PHP5 features” when he responded to me…