Active support for php 5 has ended

Although the version is still widely used, active support for php 5 has been discontinued. Php 5.6.30 will be released at the beginning of January with some bug fixes, after that only possible security updates will follow until December 31, 2018.

Active support for each minor version of php ends two years after release, after which there is another two years of security support. Php 5.6 was released on August 28, 2014 and active support was extended for four months because it was the latest version of php 5.

Thephp.cc explains that the php release schedule therefore means that php 5.6 is no longer actively supported and the security support will also stop on December 31, 2018. According to the company, more and more frameworks, components and other tools are moving to remove support for PHP 5 and organizations should move to PHP 7.

Heise cites statistics from W3tech that describe that of the websites surveyed, only 2.5 percent are running PHP 7, while php 5.6 is still in use at 21 percent. Statistics from packagist.org show a slightly rosier picture: in November 2016 php 7.0 and 7.1 would have accounted for a share of 36 percent, but here too php 5.6 is still well represented at 37 percent.