This issue was experienced only by users running PHP 5.2 - those on 5.3 had no issue. An update was released today that makes it work on both.

We do test extensively, nearly 2 months of development and testing went into the release, and a lot of long days and late nights for many of us over the past week. I guess one thing we missed was testing on a version of PHP that was discontinued over a year ago, and shouldn't be used anymore by anyone. If your host uses outdated software, that isn't something we have much control over.

Like I said, we missed it, then fixed it as soon we became aware. The PHP website states in January of last year that it's no longer supported and 5.3 should be used. I'll take their word for it regardless of how many people aren't aware of it. Why hosts continue to force people to use it is a mystery I will never understand.

If you're deploying updated software to live websites without doing any of your own testing before hand then the consequences are yours alone. It would take maybe 5 minutes to download a backup of the gantry folder from your website, install the new version, then upload the backup if you had an issue.

Bottom line is no matter how extensively we test, every user has a different scenario, a different setup, different plugins ECT. We can't accommodate every different possibility. If you're worried about time and money, doing proper testing of your own and performing updates, backups and maintenance in a proper way will save you a lot headaches.