@Dan - I'm not fanboying this. But. I like PHP 5 over PHP 4 for a variety of reasons, and was an early adopter, so I've been using it for ... ages.

But as you said. What Matt said was years ago. Slow adoption ... years. He was correct. It's taken three years. That is pretty fast for these things, but there are reasons.

And Matt DID NOT advocate that 'we' maintain PHP 4 as PHP-lite. Selective quoting there on your part.

I wonder if PHP 5+ should be called something other than PHP. A unique name would have allowed the effort to stand on its own, and not imply something that’s an upgrade from what came before when in many cases it’s just different, not better, from an end-user perspective. Continue to maintain PHP 4 as like a PHP-lite. Make it harder, better, faster, stronger.

Matt was saying that PHP should consider it. Not WordPress.