I don't know how things are driven here, but I assume that OSS projects
don't merge stuff into master until tests pass: it's as simple as that.
That's your blocker right there, regardless of voting or any other
discussion going on.
There’s a huge difference between a major code changes as we line up for a
new major version – one that requires widespread testing and community
support – and the relatively minor changes we’ve had here ever since PHP 5.
So from my POV at least, that assumption is incorrect.
Zeev