Thanks for the report.

Though I can certainly see the confusion, the "defaults" referred to in both the referenced documentation and php.ini describethe hard-coded defaults in the php binary - in other words, what setting would take effect if php.ini was absent.  The php.ini default used here is exactly as per the upstream recommended "production" configuration for 5.3.2.  (php.ini is little changed from upstream)

This change should indeed have been mentioned in the release notes, I'm sorry this was missed.

We can use this bug to track the request for an update for 5.3.3.

Making focus on the update/rebase to php-5.3.3, it would be great tu support this version, specially for incompatible change wich will be make future migrations difficult:

http://www.php.net/archive/2010.php#id2010-07-22-2

we have been waitting rhel6 for our web hosting clluster, but we prefer to use redhat packages, in other way we will have to be using third party repos, thing that we don't like, just let know if a ticket in the redhat customer portal will increase priority in this.
rhel6 will be running for a while, is better to have latest php now, if don't  rhel6 php package will start aging very quickly in festures...
best regards

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    New Contents:
see http://www.php.net/archive/2010.php#id2010-07-22-2

An advisory has been issued which should help the problem
described in this bug report. This report is therefore being
closed with a resolution of ERRATA. For more information
on therefore solution and/or where to find the updated files,
please follow the link below. You may reopen this bug report
if the solution does not work for you.

http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHBA-2011-0615.html