Embed Notice

@sebastian I'm not sure I have the answers, but I do have opinions.

I would kickoff the RFC discussions now but target the November 2028 PHP version for any changes, personally. (Whether that's 8.7 or 9.0.)

This would give distros a full year to vet the changes, and it could land in LTS releases for some distros by 2030.

While 2030 for those distros wouldn't hit the 2029 aspiration that e.g. Google committed to, the PHP language would be ready ahead of some 2035 goals. And those distros could always make an exception to their usual policies for the sake of security, so this musing might be too pessimistic.

The key/ciphertext/signature sizes are mostly an issue for network-level cryptography, while application-layer uses tend to be more tolerant.