I'd say this is straight on bogus, if you can't read then simply refresh or submit the form, thus getting invalid captcha and a new one is given, simple.

I see no reason to lower the fuzziness when you can get a very readable captcha, sometimes you can just hit one that gets a bit too fuzzed but then you do what I said above.

With the PHP version part, I'm suprised there isn't a irrelevant choice, unless you are asking for a that only when website is picked ?

Look, it was illegible about 45% of the time.  There certainly is a problem; it rejected my entries twice tonight (out of 6 page loads)--and the text I entered did match what appeared to be on the captcha.

We clearly have a usability problem now, especially since you need to enter a captcha 3 times during bug submission.

Regarding the php version, there is no irrelevant category anymore, and the submission form forces you to choose a php version even when the category is not dependent on the version.

This bug has been fixed in CVS. Since the websites are not directly
updated from the CVS server, the fix might need some time to spread
across the globe to all mirror sites, including PHP.net itself.

Thank you for the report, and for helping us make PHP.net better.