Re: The ASF Resigns From the JCP Executive Committee

That's a pretty concise synopsis of my position, Thorbjørn. It's much easier to upgrade Java than PHP, and so I think the whole Oracle thing is a tempest in a teapot. My guess is it will be a lot easier to go from SE 6 to SE 7 than it will be to go from PHP5 to PHP6, but we'll have to see.

And yes, it takes some learning to move to power tools. :)

Joe

"Notice the concept? They had to force folks off of PHP4."

Well, sounds like just any other software project where there are developers
_not_ interested in new tools if it requires any kind of updates to their
own code (which is why Java runtime updates is much less of a pain).

All this "this tool is too complex for X" is just another way of saying that
X need a simpler tool. Perhaps a hobby tool or a toy. I also think Java is
very complex, but power has a price and I can live with the fact that I do
not know the complete Java 6 runtime yet. But I'm working on it :)

/Thorbjørn


-----Original Message-----
From: web400-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:web400-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Joe Pluta
Sent: 14. december 2010 06:13
To: Web Enabling the AS400 / iSeries
Subject: Re: [WEB400] The ASF Resigns From the JCP Executive Committee

You don't remember gophp5.org and its knockoff stopphp5.org, do you?
That's okay, either does Mike. :)

In fact, gophp5.org was one of the leading evangelists for PHP5, and on
their very website, they have this paragraph:

"PHP developers cannot leverage PHP 5's full potential without dropping
support for PHP 4, but PHP 4 is still installed on a majority of shared
web hosts and users would then be forced to switch to a different
application."

Reading a little further:

"The PHP developer community has decided that it is indeed now time to
move forward, together. Therefore, the listed software projects have all
agreed that effective February 5th, 2008, any new feature releases will
have a minimum version requirement of at least PHP 5.2.0."

Notice the concept? They had to force folks off of PHP4.

Read the rest of the website. I'm not saying it's any sort of scathing
indictment of PHP. But it will certainly put the issue of Oracle and
the future of Java into some perspective. And I will look on with
interest as PHP6 comes out. It's already been lots of high drama.
Google Jani Taskinen and the PHP6 trunk... March was a high old time for
the PHP language. :)

Joe

About the only PHP battle that I know of was way back in the PHP3 vs. PHP4

days. Many GPL projects retained PHP3 compatibility because PHP3 had a GPL
license option and PHP4 didn't.