yes, this is of course a big deal for some people, esp if you're using proprietary software that's built against the "original" abi. of course if you're only using OSS extensions, you can simply recompile them against the new api/abi and there's no drawback.
That's not only about OSS vs. proprietary - even if you use only OSS extensions, but you do not compile everything from the source on each install (and have many platforms to install on - such as big organization with dozens of servers), you might have trouble.
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Stanislav Malyshev, Zend Software Architect
stas@zend.com http://www.zend.com/
(408)253-8829 MSN: stas@zend.com