The future of PHP source code language is in the hands of Dmitry Stogov and Nikita Popov. To ensure its preservation, ten companies have come together to form the PHP Foundation to fund these core developers.
Details about the PHP Foundation
Ten companies have grouped up to form the PHP Foundation, a temporary administration that includes the founder of PHP, Rasmus Lerdorf.
The person who triggered the start of this initiative was Nikita Popov, who is a renowned PHP contributor. They want to focus on LLVM in the future. Popov will be leaving her position at JetBrains, working as a software developer for PhpStorm IDE.
Roman Pronskiy, who is the product marketing manager, shared a post introducing this foundation. It featured remarks made by PHP contributor Joe Watkins, stating that “there are certain parts of PHP source code that only a few people understand.” He also explained how PHP’s future is dependent on two leading developers Dmitry Stogov and Nikita Popov.
Stogov works at Zend as a principal engineer and is the only developer who knows about PHP JIT (just in time) compiler, as per Watkins.
If Watkins is right, PHP is at risk, as it is the base for most applications and websites. Since Popov is leaving JetBrains, the company came together with nine other organizations, including Zend, Acquia, Laravel, and Automattic.
About the funding
In March, there was a breach within PHP’s central code repository. Malicious code was added but was fortunately spotted immediately, with the repository being moved to GitHub.
As a result, JetBrains vows to contribute $100,000 out of the $300,000 total goal for the non-profit per year. Its main aim will be to “pay market salaries to PHP core developers.”
PHP is allegedly responsible for 78% of websites and apps. Thus, the $300,000 may seem like a bare minimum investment, as a lot is needed to keep this critical platform running correctly.
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