A link from RootPrompt.org this morning leads us to an article that answers some of the questions a lot of developers out there have been having - why aren't Apache 2.0 and PHP friends?

It seems that one of the key features of Apache 2 is the new threaded worker module which uses threads to serve more requests more efficiently than 1.3's multi-process based server. While the core Zend engine of PHP is thread-safe many of the critical libraries that PHP relies on for its advanced functionality (image processing, database connectivity and so forth) are not, and are unlikely to become so any time in the future. In a threaded environment PHP is likely to suffer from all kinds of unpredictable bugs.

Apparently, according to this comment on Slashdot, the reasoning behind it is that "while the core Zend engine of PHP is thread-safe many of the critical libraries that PHP relies on for its advanced functionality (image processing, database connectivity and so forth) are not, and are unlikely to become so any time in the future". What does this mean for PHP developers sticking to their guns with Apache 1.3.x? Well, good news - from all indicators, the 1.3.x series will continue and be supported for a long time to come...