On Fri, Nov 26, 2010 at 8:15 PM, Zeev Suraski <z...@zend.com> wrote: > I'll begin again by saying I don't feel strongly about renaming 5.4 as 7.0, > but there are some important points worth bringing up: > > 1. The motivation for changing major version numbers was *never* BC breakage. > It was substantial language changes/additions and sometimes substantial > underlying engine changes. BC breakage was typically a side effect of that.
No, but it was the main reasons. > 2. Marketing does not equate Evil. There's nothing bad about making good > moves that improve the perception of PHP in its userbase or the world at > large. Turning the current trunk version into a major version can be > perceived as a 'marketing' move - but that doesn't mean it's not legit. > Other than showing that the PHP project is moving along, there's also the > warm-fuzzy-feeling aspect, and based on the last couple of days it's clear > I'm not the only one that feels bad about being stuck in 5.x for over 6 years > with no change in sight. Right, and it was not meant badly. Only that it has no technical or features-wise reasons to do so but brings its lots of risks with it. > 3. The motivation to skip 6 doesn't stem from marketing at all. The main > motivation is that there's a VERY concrete perception amongst many users > about what PHP 6 is. Leaving the very small conference crowd for a second: nobody never ever heard of php6 before the total fiasco a couple of months ago. > What we call that version, whether it's PHP 5.4, PHP 7.0 or even PHP 3000, > shouldn't change the way we discuss contents for it. The fact I want to call > the very same thing we intend to release with a different name has absolutely > nothing to do with the pains we experimented with 5.3 or 6.0. Let say I know us too good and I don't think moving it to a major version will be of any help. > We can agree to disagree (and again - whatever - I'm fine with 5.4!), Right, but I really don't like that the feelings, wishes, requests and will of most of the active developers seem to be totally ignored by a couple of us. That's not what I like to see in a project like php.net. There is clearly a need to change the way we work, communicate and decide things (be releases, features, etc.). Like it or not, that's a fact. Other example, you do not want this type hinting, but what do you do to change that? Why do you simply ignore it? > but no need to invent unrelated horror stories :) Invent horror stories? Maybe you should take a bit more parts of the day to day releases and development to see that they are not invented stories :). Cheers, -- Pierre @pierrejoye | http://blog.thepimp.net | http://www.libgd.org -- PHP Internals - PHP Runtime Development Mailing List To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
