In the last week the PHP community got good news for all people suffering from safe_mode problems! The "safe mode" feature will be completely removed in PHP 6.
The discussion reads: "As safe_mode is a name that gives the wrong signals as making PHP safe, we all
agreed that we should remove this function. It can never be made totally safe
as there will always be ways to circumvent safe_mode through libraries. This
kind of functionality also better belongs in the web server or other security
scheme." Source: Minutes PHP Developers Meeting
In this point I totally agree with the PHP developers. In the same meeting the team decided to drop support for a register_globals switch (always "off" then) and magic_quotes (GPC and runtime, always off then).
All these settings are the most common reason for problems in web applications, because they are different on each server and developers must care for each case.
