On 20 July 2015 at 17:03, Greg Grossmeier greg@wikimedia.org wrote:
<quote name="David Gerard" date="2015-07-20" time="12:04:55 +0100">
If this is all their host provides, however, this will in practice lead only to never-updated MediaWiki running on never-updated PHP.
Not much anyone other than the host or the user can do about that. Certainly nothing we (MW devs and/or WMF) can.
What I'm answering is the proposal that removing support for PHP 5.3 will motivate the user to upgrade their PHP, when that isn't the case.
I recall this has been the conclusion reached on this list previously - that this will cause problems for MW out in the world, and gain it an unwarranted reputation for insecurity as un-upgradeable installations get pwned. Thus, if newer MW still supports older PHP, this results in less pwned MW. The balance is up to you, of course.
- d.