CiviCRM - next version? Getting fit for future...
Sorry if this ticket is too general but I don't know where to go with my concerns.
We just updated our servers to PHP 8.0 (which was released im November 2020) and then I found some warnings in the logs about deprecated code. To find the reasons for these I diged into the code basis of CiviCRM and I found out that CiviCRM relys on very old frameworks (e.g. Smarty version 2.6 from the year 2016) or on frameworks not really actively maintained (zetacomponents/mail from the year 2020). Just two examples but I feel if I would check the other dependencies there might be some more old frameworks.
The tip for now from the Civi-community: stay on PHP 7.4 - which will reach end of life by November this year. Even PHP 8.0 will just receive security updates until November this year so that from November on PHP 8.1 would be the correct version - on which CiviCRM is absolutely not working as I already tested.
Now I got very concerned about the next years. We heavily use CiviCRM in our daily work for the administration of thousands of donators and newsletter subscribers and for the newsletter sending so that CiviCRM is the main tool of our daily work. And now CiviCRM already feels a little bit like a dinosaur to me - especially compared with Drupal 9 I am working with in general. I fear that CiviCRM cannot keep up with the ongoing developments of PHP (and JavaScript).
My question: are there any plans for updating the dependencies? Maybe even a plan to change to more modern frameworks like Twig? I found a roadmap where Form Builder, CiviCRM Standalone and UI Improvements are listed but this feels just like some new features based on the current code basis.