PHP Foundation Update, March 2023
Published on April 3, 2023 by Roman Pronskiy
<?php echo 'Hello world!';
It's been a while since our last update, so today we’d like to shed some light on what the PHP Foundation has been up to in recent months. Topics include changes to the reporting schedule, a new initiative within the Foundation called the Advisory Board, conferences with Foundation members, and other news.
New schedule for the Foundation’s updates and reports
Last year we started by publishing monthly updates, followed by an annual report released in October. Check out the Impact and Transparency Report 2022 if you haven’t yet had a chance to do so.
Now that the Foundation has moved into a phase of steady growth and there are fewer administrative updates, we will publish an update and report once a quarter. The next report, the PHP Foundation 2023 Q1 Report, will come out in April.
As for the technical details and results of the Foundation’s developer team, nothing has changed. Every month Ayesh publishes a PHP Core Roundup where he talks about what’s kept the team busy and the accomplishments of other PHP contributors.
The PHP Foundation is now on GitHub Sponsors
From the very beginning, we used OpenCollective as our financial platform for collecting and distributing funds. We are very happy with and grateful for their service.
For some companies and individuals, though, it’s a lot easier to donate via GitHub Sponsors. To make it easier for them to pitch in, we’ve opened a GitHub Sponsors page: github.com/sponsors/ThePHPF.
We are going to use GitHub Sponsors only to receive financial support. The funds will then be transferred to OpenCollective on a monthly basis, and we’ll continue to pay developers via OpenCollective, as before.
A new benefit for major sponsors – Advisory Board membership
A major goal of the PHP Foundation is to provide a voice for PHP's users in its development, and one initiative is to create an Advisory Board to provide communication between sponsors and the foundation team.
The advisory board's role is to assist in setting priorities for the utilization of the developer time and resources that the foundation provides. In other words, the board helps the foundation determine how best to allocate its funds to support the most critical and beneficial initiatives for the PHP community.
The Advisory Board is a forum for members to discuss shared challenges and propose feedback on developer plans. It provides a platform to exchange ideas and bring forward community concerns. The Foundation will review common requests and sponsor impactful projects, but feedback is provided periodically and not all suggestions will be implemented. It is a shared communication channel for constructive dialogue and common goal-setting.
For the first iteration of the Advisory Board, any company that contributed $10,000 in the early stages of the PHP Foundation will be offered the status of a major sponsor and a seat on the Advisory Board through October 2023. After that, the status and membership will be based on the extent of each member’s contributions and their commitment to continued support.
Currently, membership on the Advisory Board has the following benefits:
- Every month we provide developer plans – a list of tasks that the PHP Foundation developers will work on in the near future. Advisory Board members can discuss these plans among their teams and provide us with feedback that they feel we should consider.
- Advisory board members are welcome to share their pain points or ideas on behalf of their communities or organizations. Suggestions may be discussed by other members and will be considered by the foundation developers.
⚠️ Note: All language decisions go through the established Request for Comments (RFC) process, which is not affiliated with the PHP Foundation. Language decisions are the purview of PHP Internals. It means that some of the PHP Foundation’s efforts may not make it into the language. But with the Advisory Board discussions, we expect increased quality and acceptance rate of the foundation’s RFCs.
We’re also looking into providing some exclusive benefits for individual sponsors and smaller business contributors, as well. What would sound interesting or lucrative to you? Let us know!
Meet us at the conferences
This spring, the PHP Foundation admins and developers will attend a few conferences.
International PHP Conference, May 22–26, Berlin, Germany
- Sebastian Bergmann (thePHP.cc, PHPUnit), Nils Adermann (Packagist Conductors GmbH, Composer), and George Peter Banyard (PHP core developer) will participate in a keynote panel about the PHP Foundation and the State of PHP.
- Benjamin Eberlei (Tideways GmbH, Doctrine) and Nils Adermann will give a presentation entitled The PHP Foundation: Past, Present, and Future.
- George Peter Banyard will present a talk called Contributing to PHP: How?
Benjamin Eberlei, Nils Adermann, and Sebastian Bergmann are members of the PHP Foundation’s administration. George Peter Banyard is one of the PHP core developers paid by the PHP Foundation.
php[tek] 2023, May 16–18, Chicago, USA
- Sara Golemon, PHP Foundation admin, will talk about Funding PHP.
Derick Rethans made it onto the OpenUK’s Honours List for 2023
Congratulations, Derick!
Thank you to our sponsors
Renewed and new sponsorships
We are very grateful to all the sponsors who continue to support the PHP community via the Foundation. Some of the biggest contributors include:
- Automattic
- Private Packagist
- Craft CMS
- Tideways
- Zend by Perforce
- Shopware AG
- Aternos GmbH
- Ardennes-étape
- Cybozu Inc.
- Moodle
- Rakus
- Mercari Inc.
- Spryker
- Les-Tilleuls.coop
Check out the Sponsors section on our website. It now shows all major contributors sorted by donation amount.
Shout-out to non-financial sponsors
Sticker Mule
We’re grateful to Sticker Mule for official PHP Foundation swag, such as stickers and limited-edition T-shirts. You can find stickers at the conferences where we give talks. Logo and sticker designs are under a CC license, so feel free to use them if you’d like to produce your own merch.
Slack
Big thanks to Slack who kindly provided us with a pro plan for the messenger. We’d like to personally thank Matt Brown, Psalm author and PHP community member, for helping arrange this.
Shout-out to everyone for your continued support – the PHP Foundation is all of us!
--
That’s all for today. Follow us on Twitter @ThePHPF or Mastodon phpc.social/@thephpf to get the latest updates from the Foundation.
💜🐘
🎉 1