why is the PHP stuff line "off" by default in ports/lang/php5?

[Gary Kline]

Guys,

Tell me if I'm wrong to be ticked off.  I just learned that my website
has been down for weeks.  My KVM switch doesn't work to let me have
control of the console of my server [ns1|ethic].thought.org.  Whether
it was a cheap KVM switch or whether the '09 Dell 550 is defective is
unknown.  I have a new KVM switch.  I do need direct control of the
console for many reasons, but mostly to portupgrad ports.  

In the months since I first got ethic working, everything _but_ X11
worked.  In late August I upgraded apache and php5, rebooted, and
just-assumed {TM} that apache22 was working.  Weeks ago I did read and
edit my non-blog blog; further reason to assume that everything worked.  

A couple hours ago my web server was not running.  I traced it to a
missing libphp5.so.  I checked the makefile and found the php stuff
defaults to "off". ...I am thinking this is a security risk, but most
of us are reasonably sophisticated about such things ....

Comments, anybody?

-- 
 Gary Kline  kline at thought.org  http://www.thought.org  Public Service Unix
    The 7.83a release of Jottings: http://jottings.thought.org/index.php
                           http://journey.thought.org