How the PHP Foundation Advanced Core Development and Community Support in 2024

As of early 2025, the PHP Foundation consists of eight volunteer board members, one JetBrains‑sponsored executive director, and ten part‑time or full‑time developers who contribute significantly to the PHP language and its extensions.

In 2024 the foundation received $683,550 in donations and investments, and its primary work remained strengthening maintenance of the PHP core hosted in the php/php-src GitHub repository, which underpins the PHP interpreter used by all PHP users.

The ten contracted developers performed a large share of code commits and reviews for the language.

Key 2024 Achievements

Completed a project funded by the Sovereign Tech Agency.

Expanded the development team.

Increased contributions to the PHP core.

Enhanced community engagement and sponsor relationships.

The foundation plans to spend up to $900,000 in 2025 on salaries and expenses, seeking additional sponsorship to sustain and grow its work.

Mission

The PHP Foundation’s mission is to ensure the long‑term prosperity of the PHP language, focusing on improving the language for users, providing high‑quality maintenance, retaining and onboarding contributors, and raising PHP’s public profile.

Sponsors

Major financial supporters in 2024 (donations of $12,000 or more) included Sovereign Tech Agency, JetBrains, Automattic, Laravel, GoDaddy.com, Craft CMS, Private Packagist, Cybozu, Tideways, Mercari Inc., pixiv Inc., Sentry, Manychat, Perforce’s Zend, Les‑Tilleuls.coop, CH Studio, and Aternos GmbH. Overall, 658 organizations and individuals contributed via Open Collective and GitHub Sponsors.

Projects for Sovereign Tech Agency

PECL Overhaul

The legacy PECL/PEAR system was outdated and vulnerable to supply‑chain attacks. The foundation rewrote the installer, creating PIE (PHP Extension Installer), which uses the native PHP toolchain and Packagist infrastructure. See https://github.com/php/pie for progress.

PHP‑FPM Web Service Tool (WST)

WST is a CLI application for testing PHP‑FPM integration across servers and configurations, currently hosted under the wstool/wst GitHub organization, with plans to migrate to the official PHP organization.

Security Audit

An external security audit of the PHP core, conducted by OSTIF and Quarkslab, is under review and will be published on the foundation’s site once completed.

Documentation Improvements

The foundation made progressive documentation enhancements and security reviews, focusing on high‑impact pages. A new Wasm‑based PHP runner (thanks to Les‑Tilleuls.coop) enables live execution of code examples, and an automated cleanup script removed roughly 2,000 low‑quality comments.

Infrastructure Updates

In collaboration with Neighbourhoodie Software, the foundation consolidated scripts supporting PHP’s network infrastructure into robust Ansible playbooks, improving maintainability and recovery.

Team and Staffing

Renewals: The 2023 team of six developers was renewed for 2024 with increased work hours.

Team Expansion: After a failed 2023 hire, four new developers (David Carlier, James Titcumb, Saki Takamachi, Shivam Mathur) joined in 2024.

Hiring Pause: Budget constraints led to a temporary hiring freeze in October 2024.

2025 Team: Ten developers (Arnaud Le Blanc, David Carlier, Derick Rethans, Gina Peter Banyard, Ilija Tovilo, Jakub Zelenka, James Titcumb, Máté Kocsis, Saki Takamachi, Shivam Mathur) continue core development.

2024 Goal Review

Organizational Goals

Introduce new major sponsors – partially achieved.

Explore strategic partnerships – completed (e.g., collaboration with Sentry).

Develop advisory board – not yet completed.

Grow community – completed (expanded Slack and Discord presence).

Technical Goals

Maintain and develop PHP core – completed.

Deliver Sovereign Tech Agency projects – completed.

Improve RFC quality – completed.

Research and surveys – partially completed (quantitative study with JetBrains, no community survey).

Define a roadmap for foundation‑sponsored PHP changes – not completed.

Impact and Contributions

The foundation’s developers contributed to code commits, pull‑request reviews, RFCs, and documentation. In 2024, PHP‑Foundation commits rose to 1,976 (up from 784 in 2023), and pull‑request reviews reached 1,278.

Security contributions included four security releases, with most issues resolved by Niels Dossche (11), Jakub Zelenka (6), and Arnaud Le Blanc (1). Documentation security issues were also addressed.

Future Outlook (2025)

The core mission remains maintaining and developing PHP to keep it the premier platform for web applications and APIs. Key challenges include securing sustainable sponsorship and ensuring developers can focus on high‑value tasks.

Organizational goals: secure funding, launch “PHP 30” anniversary with JetBrains, expand social media reach, improve website traffic, establish an ambassador program, prepare “PHP Next” marketing, modernize the PHP website.

Technical goals: continue core maintenance, integrate modern HTTP server features, address developer experience pain points for newcomers.