I realize the decision on the PERL version may be upsetting to some but this does go along with making the program better. It might seem like a cruel business decision but in the long run, just like this deal, it will be for the best.
With both versions being developed I had to keep the same feature set in each one because it would have been way to confusing to have different features in each version. PHP offers alot of things that I just was unable to do in PERL. The main one being templates. The first attempt I made at this under PERL failed quite miserably when trying to make it run under mod_perl and be somewhat user friendly. PHP will not have this problem. This is going to be a very major undertaking but I've already been experimenting with templates in PHP and they are way easier to create than when I tried them with PERL.
I'll also be able to do some automated scripts for installation and upgrading (which will be one of the first things I will be adding). Again, this could probably be done in PERL as well but the setup is much more complicated with all of the requirements that went along with the PERL version.
You'll also see a much more efficient development cycle. Maintaining both versions was quite time consuming due to developing/porting features and especially tracking bugs down in both versions. I am hoping beta periods will be much quicker and bugs will be fixed on a more timely basis as well.
