No those changes would be reserved for major releases. But the removal of the likes of safe_mode, magic quotes and register_globals have been long overdue. The only reason why they have been in there for so long is because it would break code. Backwards compatibility has always been this cute silly idiom of PHP. Which has its good parts and bad parts. I'm glad that it has gotten more mature in that sense. 5.3+ have been a statement of such.