Lessons From PHP 4.4 End-of-Life Announcement
by Reuven Lerner - Aug. 13, 2008Comments (6)- Related Blog Posts
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The developers of PHP announced last week that PHP version 4.4.9 is now available. This would not be remarkable in and of itself, except that the developers also indicated that this would be the last release of PHP 4.4.
If PHP were commercial software, its "end of life" would be cause for panic in some quarters. After all, companies don't often like to change software that is crucial to their infrastructure, and having the end of life imposed on them often causes trouble. For example, Windows XP reached its official end of life more than 1 month ago, meaning that Microsoft will no longer offer updates, bug fixes, and security patches for the operating system. Never mind that many people prefer XP to Vista; Microsoft has spoken, and no further updates will be made available.
The end of life of an open-source project works differently, of course. It does mean that the official development group will no longer spend time and energy fixing bugs in these old versions. But that's where the similarities between proprietary and open-source software ends: If the open-source software fails to work correctly, you (as the end user) always have the option to patch it, bringing it up to date by examining the software updates that came out for newer versions. Indeed, there's nothing stopping you from keeping a supposedly obsolete open-source project going forever, if you have enough time and energy.
That said, the open-source model demands a community, and also demands that community leaders decide where to put their efforts. It's impossible to maintain all versions of all programs forever, especially in the case of a language like PHP, which has changed so dramatically from version 4 to 5, and is about to change dramatically again, when version 6 is released. The community, which means the active users of an open-source product, determines the features, release schedule, and policies -- so it's probably safe to assume that anyone who really requires support for PHP 4.4 has made their point known to the general community, and understands that they lost this vote.
There are thus two lessons to be learned from PHP's end of life: First, that there's never a true end to support for an open source project, because you can always support it yourself -- although the trade-offs involved in such self-support might not be worthwhile. Secondly, the best way to influence what decisions will be made on an open-source project is to get involved. Only by getting involved and becoming a part of the community can you hope to influence it, and thus not be surprised or burned by decisions made by the community's leaders.
