Re:Ending PHP Support, and the Future of Hack
by onion2k on Thursday September 13, 2018 @02:57AM
(#17976589)
why didn't FB just spend that energy submitting a patch to make PHP faster
The maintainers wouldn't have to accept it, and there are plenty of devs in the community that would have issues with Facebook code making it's way in to the core of a language. If the patch wasn't accepted then Facebook would have to have forked PHP anyway. Rather than bother with the politics and PR downside of their code being rejected, they went straight to creating a fork. It may have been the less optimal technical solution, but like so many technical decisions it was really a business decision in disguise.
The maintainers wouldn't have to accept it, and there are plenty of devs in the community that would have issues with Facebook code making it's way in to the core of a language. If the patch wasn't accepted then Facebook would have to have forked PHP anyway. Rather than bother with the politics and PR downside of their code being rejected, they went straight to creating a fork. It may have been the less optimal technical solution, but like so many technical decisions it was really a business decision in disguise.