I definitely can understand your point. Yes, I will have alot more time to spend on the actual development. But still, keeping both versions in development my time is split. As I mentioned, the feature set would always need to remain the same because it would be virtually impossible for me to keep both versions going with a different feature set as it would no longer be a straight port when adding features from one to another.
As for customer useage. There have been alot of current customers that have switched from PERL to the PHP version because PHP is easier on the server under high traffic. And the vast majority of new customers are going with the PHP version.
I have spent alot of time in the past on optimizing the code for speed. I haven't had the time to get into mysql optimizations but this is one thing I've suggested that we do spend some time on, setup a forum for, etc. Speed is definitely a focus. Which is another reason PHP is the logical version to focus on. Most everyone wants templates. Dynamic templates under PERL, especially mod_perl is virtually impossible to do without some major slowdown issues.
This is why I said it was logical. I think everyone wants to have the best product for the money they spend. And instead of only getting 50% of my development time on the product they purchase they will get 100%.
