>
> There is a *huge* number of extensions inside companies. Even though
> these are "hidden" we still force them to upgrade.
>
> > Reading such stats http://w3techs.com/technologies/details/pl-php/5/allI
> > wonder what is with the 5.5 adoption? If that data don't lie, despite the
> > amount of work done on 5.5, including PECL, it's not that wide spread as
> > one would wish. At least, it's being adapted slowly. Do we expect 5.6
> > adoption to be any faster?
>
> "hidden" extensions could be part of the reason for the low 5.5 % on
*nix. Hidden extensions aren't done much on Windows and though 5.5 adoption
is still lower on Windows than we'd like, its much higher than 1%.
Also, many web servers aren't upgraded that often, and some distro package
managers don't include 5.5 or 5.5 as the default version, so that also
hurts adoption. Many web servers aren't run by people interested in
upgrading a lot: either the web site isn't very popular (so they don't need
performance), or they are more interested in stability (using an older
build thats been proven over time).
64 bit platform improvements need to be done in a major revision (5.6, 5.7)
and since many users take a few years to upgrade, if we don't do it in 5.6,
many users won't see it for several years (doing it in 5.6 with the
multi-year upgrade cycle we've seen also gives more time to port
extensions, test, etc... before many users would want use it anyway)