Comment 17 for bug 191251

Just to weigh in, I think its ridiculous that package maintainers would refuse to enable something that offers no additional security risk, and that users depend on (probably more and more as the language matures).

I'd also like to point out this portion of the Ubuntu code of conduct

"Be considerate. Our work will be used by other people, and we in turn will depend on the work of others. Any decision we take will affect users and colleagues, and we should take those consequences into account when making decisions. Ubuntu has millions of users and thousands of contributors. Even if it's not obvious at the time, our contributions to Ubuntu will impact the work of others. For example, changes to code, infrastructure, policy, documentation and translations during a release may negatively impact others' work."

In this case, I don't think we're considering the users' position, or how this negatively affects PHP by making it hard for users to utilize embedded PHP on our platform. The derision of PHP is also fairly inconsiderate to its developers and users.

Given that large libraries of software are in fact being written in PHP now, its reasonable to think that one may want to embed PHP inside something else.

So, I'd like to reiterate the question as to why this can't be part of the php5 package in main (and, hopefully, Debian)

"... I believe it should not spread outside it's niche - serving web pages. I am free to do so, since I can decide what I want to support. Packaging is not just simple process of throwing some scripts in debian/ directory, it also means you have to take care of bugreports and that you actually care about quality of the final distribution."

Can anyone recommend a solution that allows users in need of embedded php to move forward without adding to the burden of php maintenance? It really does sound as if you, Ondrej, would prefer that users not use PHP at all (whether on the web or not). This is unfortunate, truly.

I don't think parallel maintenance actually helps. If bugs are found in PHP via another package, as Chuck suggested originally, they will still affect the main package, but may never be reported or fixed in it. Parallel maintenance works for something tiny like an imap extension, but this is another entry point to PHP, and so really must ride along with php.

To follow my own suggestion, here is a recommendation for moving forward while this bug remains in limbo:

Paul, until this is resolved, I'd suggest you maintain a patched php5 package in a PPA, at least then you'd have Ubuntu packages available for your users. I'd recommend forming a team on Launchpad as the owner of this PPA, so that anyone who needs to use embedded PHP can apply for membership, contribute, and upload to the PPA. This is actually quite trivial to do, and would definitely provide a path forward, though not a great one.