Vikingboard

The first beta release of PHP 5.0.0 was released on June 29th 2003, now over four years ago. I remember when PHP 5 was still in the betas, I read articles telling me about all the great new features that would make my life as web application developer so much easier. Now, four years later, I still dream about using those features. PHP 5 still has only a market share of below 20%, and thus we cannot make use of PHP 5’s features for the sake of backwards compatibility (BC) with PHP 4.

The problem is that since no web developer can afford to block out 80% of his potential users, more or less all web applications now has to support PHP 4, leaving no incentive for web hosts to upgrade to a more recent PHP version. We - along with the rest of the GoPHP5 initiative - believe that a group effort is required to force web hosts into adopting and upgrading to PHP 5. If enough software throws away their BC with PHP 4, web hosts will be forced to upgrade. Combine GoPHP5 with the recent announcement from the PHP team that PHP4 soon reaches end-of-life (EOL), and we are really getting confident that this will work.

The Vikingboard development team has therefore decided to join GoPHP5, and as a consequence, we will start accepting features that require PHP5 into our codebase starting with the development of Vikingboard 0.3. The upcoming Vikingboard 0.2 release will not require PHP5, and users who cannot upgrade for some reason is better off sticking to the 0.2 branch, which will be supported until the release of 0.3, some six months later.

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