PHP.net has announced that they will stop development of PHP4 at the end of this year, and end security updates on 2008-08.

PHP 4.0 was release in May of 2000

by 2004 when the first version of PHP 5.0 was released, PHP 4 had achieved complete dominance and was completely ubiquitous in both script and hosting support.

Fast forward 3 more years and

PHP 5 has been

a complete flop

single-digit percentages or at best the low teens

Some misguided app makers felt so sorry for PHP 5 they decided to create the world’s ugliest advocacy site and turn their apps in to protest pieces at the expense of their users.

Now the PHP core team seems to have decided that

the boost their failing product needs is to kill off their successful one

Even hosted PHP-powered services

like 30boxes, Digg, Flickr, and WordPress.com, have been slow to move.