[wp-hackers] WordPress moving to PHP 5.3x?

[Mike Schinkel]

Hi All,

We are working to release several large plugins targeting professional site builders and we are trying to decide if we can require PHP 5.3 or not.  PHP 5.3 would allow us to create a cleaner interface for our libraries but we don't want to make a plugin that a significant percentage of professional site builders could or will not use.  

I posted this question on Twitter last week and had several people tell me they work on projects where the clients provide them an environment they cannot change and often those environments can be running < PHP 5.3. This caused us to think we should limit ourselves to PHP 5.2.4x.

Then today someone on our team found KeyRing[1] which "requires PHP 5.3+ to work, because it makes use of some modern features in PHP like late static binding and abstract classes."[2].  This plugin's authors include Automattic and 3 others who I think are Automattic employees so I'm wondering it this is a (semi-official) statement of support for 5.3?

So the specific questions are:

- How soon is it likely for WordPress to move to 5.3, especially considering how much debate was had moving from 4 to 5.x?
- Is assuming 5.3 a moot point for most professional site builders starting new sites?  Or are there still a lot of prescribed environments where the client forces <5.3?
- Why did KeyRing choose 5.3?  Was it really needed, or just preference?  Did they paint 5.2 out of the picture on purpose, or was if a detail they really didn't think about?
 
Thanks in advance for any helpful comments on these questions.

-Mike

P.S. I'm asking these questions to only help my team make decisions, not to advocate for any specific direction.

[1] http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/keyring/
[2] http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/keyring/faq/