Open Source/freeware Design, Is It About Time To Drop Support For Php 5.2 Users?

[Hall of Famer]

Well I am designing a software to be used by many users who may have freehosts, sharedhosts or VPS. There are some awesome features only available in PHP 5.3 I want to use for my softeare, such as namespace and about 80% of DateTime methods. A problem is that a few users still have hosting packages that run with PHP 5.2.17, but I wonder if it is about time to drop support for these PHP 5.2 users? I mean, is it a good practive to require users to have PHP 5.3+ on their server for application design nowadays? What do you think?

[NomadicJosh]

This is a diffucult and one that I had to deal with not too long ago. For myself, any new PHP application I code requires PHP 5.3+. Anything that users currently use, I try not to bring the majority at a disadvantage.

[KevinM1]

Why not? Symfony is 5.3.3+.

[Hall of Famer]

This is a diffucult and one that I had to deal with not too long ago. For myself, any new PHP application I code requires PHP 5.3+. Anything that users currently use, I try not to bring the majority at a disadvantage.

 

Well actually many webhosts such as HostGator and Bluehost already enable PHP 5.3 as an option for users, although the default version is still PHP 5.2.17. Users can edit or add a line in config file to use PHP 5.3. For freehosts you cant really help, some do not even have a working PDO lol.