Comment 36 for bug 1522422

@Nish: Big thanks for sharing the thoughts of the server team and that you take this issue serious :) Running quite a lot web servers with PHP on Ubuntu LTS and RHEL in prodution, i like give you some short feedback on the mentioned options:

1 & 4: are a no go if Ubuntu Server wants to stay as relevant as it is now in the web server OS market. Although it would probably bring a big boost to Raphaël Hertzog's LTS efforts ;)

2: Is what makes users really happy. It will definitely strengthen Ubuntu's role in the PHP market with more work for Canonical.

3 & 5: While i can fully understand the reasons, both will dissatisfy a lot of people. Given the reduced load impact of PHP 7.0 in data centers and the huge install base of widely used PHP 5.* web apps.

So option 2 is the bravest option for Canonical, but will give you the most user satisfaction. Given that the packaging work by Ondřej and others made this dual stack option possible and AFAIK didn't happen with Canonical involved, you could just keep "standing on the shoulders of giants" as maintenance would be mainly communication, syncing and merging with Debian or out sourcing to Ondřej ;). And for just sticking to that, you should really take feedback from the PHP and security teams at Debian :)

BTW i would love to see option 2 happening, as i am still so happy about the other brave move Canonical made with promoting Nginx to main for trusty. I replaced Apache in so many production environments :)