The end of PHP 4 is nearby Corina Ciubotaru

Rather surprising news hit the open-source world last week, as PHP 4 will be no longer supported. With PHP 6 due to come next year and PHP 5 already adopted by major users like Yahoo and Facebook, the developers have decided to end the support for PHP 4 on December 31st 2007. They announced also on July 13 that they will only provide security fixes on a case-by-case basis until August 8th 2008 for this 2000-released software. PHP is used to create more complex web pages such as catalogs and is an open-source creation; therefore developers don’t have the means necessary to support three versions of the program, including next year’s release. Nevertheless, they will help website administrators make the transition by providing a Migration guide for PHP 5 and two more guides, PHP 5.0 to PHP 5.1 and PHP 5.1 to PHP 5.2. Though some don’t think this was a necessary measure, because the next version hasn’t quite caught on as expected; Andi Gutmans from Zend, a start-up company that distributes PHP, claims that 80% of Zend clients have passed to version 5 but that there are still lots of useful sites using PHP 4, which lead to smaller statistics for version 5. Developers advise users to take the remaining time to upgrade to the next version of PHP. PHP 5 has already been on the market for three years so everyone is familiar with it, and now it’s just a matter of time before they will finally start to make good use of it.

related story: http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-6196973.html

by Corina Ciubotaru for SigEx Telecom (http://sigex.com)

SigEx Telecom is quickly becoming the leading telebroadcasting communications provider allowing people to easily talk, view, upload and share video clips through free online TV broadcasting, free unlimited global calls, websites, blogs, video-mails and SMS. SigEx Telecom captures many add-on services for its clients generating royalties and fees in a broad spectrum of marketing services including public relations and promotions.