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The world of open source coding is an ever-changing one. Software rises and falls in popularity and usage based on a multitude of factors. In this article we will explore the reasons why software becomes abandoned, from active decisions, to lack of usage.

The Strangler Fig Pattern is a gradual migration technique that allows you to progressively replace components from an existing legacy system with a new platform. This is done while both old and new code coexist and operate in parallel during the transition.

The traditional Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern is a tried and tested paradigm for developing web applications. However, recent industry shifts, including growing adoption of async architectures, prove challenging to accommodate in an MVC application. On the other hand, middleware is a high-level architecture that can offer several advantages to MVC, based on your application and development workflow.

The Laminas MVC (Model-View-Controller) framework has proven itself over the years as a viable solution for enterprise applications. Given its versatility, it was seen as a good starting point by many professional PHP developers. However, the Laminas Technical Steering Committee (TSC) have decided to discontinue active development of Laminas MVC.

Laminas MVC is just one item in the Laminas toolbelt. The Laminas components and Mezzio are still in active development.

Nowadays, applications are getting more and more complex. The classic way of executing sequential code, with a single PHP script that accepts a request and outputs the information like we used to do in the PHP4 days, still works for simple apps, but using a modern architecture has many benefits. Enter middleware: intermediary code that processes the request and/or response in various ways before it even reaches your custom code.

In the previous article we used the Mezzio Skeleton Installer to build a very basic application. Let's explore what we can do with it right away.

The current components allow us to build a presentation site with static pages. It may not be much to speak of yet, but we can already create new pages.

On Monday, 3 February 2025, the Technical Steering Committee for the Laminas Project held its monthly meeting. The topics discussed included:

• Creating a major release for laminas-session.
• Setting up email accounts for @getlaminas.org.
• Dropping support for PHP 8.1 in future releases for Laminas packages.
• New design and layout for getlaminas.org.

Creating a site from scratch has always been a daunting task for developers. The difficulty doesn't come so much from the complex coding, but from the imprecise specifications. Even if you start with clear goals in mind, the project can grow exponentially in complexity as time goes by. New technical requirements, new features, bug fixes and refactoring all get in the way of the developer resting on his laurels.

On Monday, 4 November 2024, the Technical Steering Committee for the Laminas Project held its monthly meeting. The topics discussed included:

• Abandoning several Laminas packages.
• Financing of the book Mezzio Essentials.