Posted by "Richard Lynch" on 09/15/05 02:20

On Tue, September 13, 2005 7:50 pm, Manuel Lemos wrote:
> I also am a bit surprised for the tremendous lack of interest to
> upgrade
> to PHP 5. Ok, I expected that many people would not want to upgrade
> due
> to the nightmare of dealing with backwards incompatible changes, but I
> did not expect that the statistics would be so overwhealming.

I think there are simply no "must have" features in PHP 5.

It's being treated more like a minor incremental release -- something
to be done when a NEW machine or application needs to be
built/written.

> I guess this should ring a lot of bells for those that expect to
> develop
> products targetted to PHP 5, because the numbers seem to show that PHP
> 5
> is a flop, despite PHP 5.0.0 was released more than 1 year ago.

I don't think that makes PHP 5 a "flop"

We had this same issue (and experience) when PHP3 -> PHP4 came around.

People held onto PHP3 a lot longer than the hard-core developers/users
expected.

There is so much FUD in upgrading, that crucial uses simply won't
upgrade until more time passes with no bugs/issues.

My webhost is building new boxes with PHP5 and leaving the old ones
alone with PHP4 -- So his new clients get PHP5, and old sites aren't
broken by any of the rare incompatibilities.

Some of my sites are on 5.

Some are on 4.

I can't tell a difference.

That's a "Good Thing" in that PHP5 *IS* that backwards compatible.

It's a "Bad Thing" in that I'm not gonna bug my host to upgrade or
move my sites to PHP5, since I can't even notice a difference.

'Course I got zero interest in PHP OOP, XML, and any of the new
features of PHP5 anyway, so I might be the exception.

But webhosts will move to 5 when their clients demand it, not the
other way around.

For sure, getting RedHat (et al) to move to PHP5 for default install
is the first big crucial step.

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