And this is not new, as from what I know WP refused to participate in the Go PHP 5 project (https://gophp5.org/).
This was before my time, so maybe I am wrong. But when as a project you have a pattern of not pushing the ecosystem *forward* you will, quite naturally, be seen as holding it backwards.
> WordPress doesn’t need much from the language and has always been conservative in adopting language features. Server performance and security are what pull WordPress in; language features are pushed harder by frameworks like Laravel.
I'd love to hear the opinion of some of the other PHP CMS and eShop platforms as this seems like a whack justification. Because if you didn't need much from the language, upgrading *should* be easy and straightforward. As the surface you rely on is minimal.