[zzzzzzzza]

Basically untrue. Replacements for php are better than php. People coming up with those replacements aren't motivated by perpetuating a cartel. The cartel-like aspect is basically a side effect that helps new technologies pick up speed after a certain critical mass of early adopters has already been established. Another reason why people have to migrate to newer stuff is because that's where the good open source devs are, and lots of other people implicitly rely on their work, so once they move somewhere else, their previous ecosystem starts to die (it becomes harder to learn it on a deep level since it becomes much harder to participate deeply in the ecosystem, it doesn't get updated as frequently, etc.)

[minionslave]

That makes sense. There is some churn in the technologies but I would agree that python is far more consistent than PHP.

Maybe the evolving nature of the work requires new tools and technologies.