The stable version of FUDforum 2.7.7RC2 is now available for download. This releases' focus has been primarily bug fixing with a fair number of small issues being resolved. The install script can be found here and the upgrade script here. The release announcement detailing all of the major changes can be found here.

If you've been reading the internals list or the blogs of various PHP developers you probably know that the work on the new minor PHP branch, 5.3 has started now that the key feature list of the release has been established by a public vote on the internals list about a week ago. Some of those features, like namespaces, late static binding, __callStatic and several others have already made into the CVS. As per our tradition of changing Release Masters for every minor release, a new masochist, ;-) Johannes Schlüter will be taking of the role of RM for PHP 5.3 from me. I will continue to RM 5.2.X release, which has 1-2 releases in it still and will be actively maintained up until 5.3.0 is released into the wild, something that should happen early next year. I've been release mastering PHP 5 for almost two years now, all the way back since 5.1.0 and it has been quite challenging and interesting time, and its time for new blood so to speak. I want to congratulate Johannes on his new role that will hopefully...

After a somewhat extended release cycle PHP 5.2.4 is finally out! A fairly extensive list of changes this time with over 120 bug fixes and a fair number of small security fixes and improvements. You can find the abbreviated details about the release here and the full boring details in the ChangeLog.

The first RC of 5.2.4 was just released and is now available for download here: http://downloads.php.net/ilia/php-5.2.4RC1.tar.bz2 (md5sum: 43e28d2aa55b6c8bcd67da16e24b225a) This release have been long in the making so the changelog is a bit intimidating, so we definitely need a lot of testing for this release. I would like to ask everyone to give this RC a shot and see how it behaves with their code and hopefully not find any regressions. If you do find any, please let us know.

I've been so busy last few weeks I didn't get a chance to blog about the acceptance of my talk for ZendCon. So, here it is now, better late then never. This year has been quite busy in terms of security when it comes to PHP, the language and many changes were done to make the language better when it comes to security. The talk will try to summarize the many happenings in the PHP security world in to a quick one hour talk, so it should be quite an interesting challenge :)