I don't know. Apache 2 to me is much easier to tweak and modify.
Probably because it's much more modular. I mean they finally took a
bulk of the conf stuff out of the main file, and made them includes!!
Finally!! But I've been running 2.0 (well, 2.2) since it's come out,
and not once has it failed on me (without my own intervention). Right
now it's just a preference thing. But I can't see Apache 1 being
developed past 1.4 (if that).
In general I also wonder - do distros keep their PHP4 also up to date?
I don't use Linux (except for hosting) so I don't get to play much with RPMs and packages. But I can say that it's much better to compile it from source since each system is slightly different. So I've never put time into actually installing an RPM version of php, I've always compiled from source.
~Brett