Core development of PHP will be carried out by PHP Foundation in future

The development of PHP will be carried out by the new PHP Foundation in the future. Several companies, including lead developer Nikita Popov’s JetBrains, have joined that foundation.

Popov leaves JetBrains to fully focus on developing compiler LLVM. Popov was one of the main developers of PHP. His departure is therefore an important reason to place the programming language in a foundation, which is called the PHP Foundation. In addition to JetBrains, Laravel, Acquia, Zend and Automattic will also participate in this, the foundation writes in a blog. The PHP Foundation will be a nonprofit that will take care of the core development of PHP, although details are still lacking. The foundation is set up under the Open Collective model, which also houses other programming languages ​​and frameworks such as Vue.js and Open Web Docs.

The PHP Foundation’s first priority, according to the founders, is to raise money. The foundation hopes to raise $300,000 in donations annually, with JetBrains adding another $100,000. The foundation aims to ‘offer competitive salaries’ to core developers for the language. “The more we raise, the more developers can work on PHP full-time,” the founders write. Initially, those developers are not given contracts for an indefinite period. The foundation warns that the board can always fire them.

The foundation starts with a temporary board. The composition of a permanent board will come once the foundation is up and running. Nikita Popov is one of the board members. The foundation says the current process for RFC will continue and important decisions around the core will be left to the PHP Internals community.