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Comment by Ayesh | Hacker News Reader

Huge shout-out to the PHP Foundation for this.

Last year, it received close to 680K USD, and managed this security audit, sponsored 10 developers, and paid for various expenses. For a language that runs close to 75% of the web, it certainly deserves more funding.

Some of the recent initiatives from the Foundation (https://thephp.foundation/blog/2025/03/31/transparency-and-i...) :

- All PHP versions now receive a total of 4 years of security updates; 2 bug fixes + 2 security, up from 3.

- PIE: A replacement for PECL, to easily install PHP extensions (C, C++ compiled, not PHP packages).

- The security audit.

(I'm one of the PHP Core team and a volunteer at the foundation, happy to answer any questions, but almost all of the work is public)

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>>> Last year, it received close to 680K USD, and managed this security audit, sponsored 10 developers, and paid for various expenses. For a language that runs close to 75% of the web, it certainly deserves more funding.

Wow, Automattic itself donated more than half of it: Silver Sponsor $387,500 USD

Why many donors with more than USD 24K and USD 100K still listed as Silver sponsor?

Source: https://opencollective.com/phpfoundation/contribute/major-sp...

Why does Laravel have a dude with a Hawaiian shirt, though? Heh

It's the creator of Laravel, Taylor Otwell

People are calling him savior of PHP. :D

Is it true, though? Serious question, I don’t participate much in PHP topics.

I'm a heavy PHP & Laravel developer and I speak for myself and a few close friends around my in my network who are like me. We all consider Laravel the reason we are still within the PHP scene and didn't move away. So in a sense I think it is true.

That said, the recent changes around Laravel (being bought out and becoming more and more commercial) is not something I (we) consider a good thing. Not necessarily a bad thing, but we all know that a OSS framework becoming commercial doesn't usually end well.

My take: no. He just has a cult following.

It's hyperbole, but like so often, there's a grain of it truth somewhere.

Also, like most things, Laravel is built on the shoulders of others. It sometimes makes hard things easy to access (ppl like this) and hides complexity away, clouding how things actually work (ppl don't like this).

I primarily use Laravel but like to think I code in a generalist if way as to not get stuck in its system.

Laravel (when it started) was mostly built upon Symphony components, which in turn was inspired by Java frameworks.

It's about as divisive as saviours in any other population.

> "savior"

Ehh, I don't think I'd ever use that word but he had a huge impact on reinvigorating the PHP ecosystem as a whole with Laravel. I remember playing with early versions of Laravel on my own and having my eyes opened to a better way to structure/write code.

Shame his financial contribution doesn't really match up. $34k is pretty darn low considering how much money Laravel makes. Even worse when you see much smaller operatons like Private Packagist have donated more than Laravel and Symfony combined.

Crazy that Automattic only makes 4,843,750 a year (and donates 8% to the PHP foundation).

Automattic has annual revenue of over $700m where did you get that number from?

"had annual revenue" at this rate given their legal troubles

Ah, sorry, I assumed they contributed 8% to PHP just like they've asked WP Engine to contribute 8% (of their revenue) to them.

They are referring to the dispute between Matt Mullenweg / Automattic vs WP Engine.

Mullenweg has been demanding 8% of WP Engine’s revenue, access to their books, and the ability to direct their staff on what to work on. For context, Mullenweg is maintainer of WordPress and WordPress.org, and CEO of WP Engine’s direct competitor, Automattic. The dispute has turned very nasty and included a lot of unhinged behaviour from Mullenweg. WP Engine is currently suing him for a bunch of things, including extortion.

davidandgoliath is basically saying that if Mullenweg thinks he is owed 8% of WP Engine’s revenue, presumably Mullenweg is donating 8% of Automattic’s revenue to the PHP Foundation, making their revenue only ~$5MM/yr. Obviously Automatic’s revenues are vastly higher than that and this is just a tongue in cheek way of pointing out hypocrisy.

Revenue is not profit.

While the 8% is probably a dig, the donation of .06% of revenue is going to be a much higher proportion of profits. No idea what their profits or margins are (a quick search does not provide useful info)

That's since 2021 not last year.

In the GP's transparency report link, it said:

Overall, 658 organizations and individuals sponsored the foundation in 2024 through on Open Collective and GitHub Sponsors.

and in the Open Collective link, it is stated that Automattic donated those amount.

If you click on their name you can see the transactions. That's the total amount donated since 2021.

It feels pretty off that Laravel and Symfony, arguably the two largest benefactories to PHP being in such a good position have donated so little. Those contribution values are lifetime, Laravel hasn't funded it for over 3 years now, meanwhile its a multimillion dollar business with a huge amount of financial backing.

I know its all donations and not expected, but them kicking in ~$30k a month would realistically be nothing to them, but benefit the PHP foundation massively. The same goes for Symfony.

How's Symfony making money? Aren't they just OSS?

On the other hand Laravel has VC backing and sells services.

It's backed by SensioLabs (same creators as Symfony), plus theres a ton of sponsorship across the whole Symfony ecosystem. Every release is sponsored by multiple companies for example: https://symfony.com/backers

Symfony itself also had a round of funding many years ago when it wasn't rolling in cash, around $7 million if I recall.

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