If people are so incompetent that they can't choose a decent host or install a recent PHP (or deploy on anything but mod_php) then there is probably nothing that package maintainers can do to rescue them, no matter how much they want to.
End users need more help but there are lines between "end user" and "needs to learn things" and "stubborn idiot". If you want to write and deploy web apps, it is your JOB to choose a halfway decent host, keep dependencies up to date and deploy with some appropriate technology!
