Welcoming Elizabeth Barron as the New Executive Director of the PHP Foundation
thephp.foundationPrecise info about the PHP foundation is hard to find. They have an annual budget of ≈500k USD, half of it assigned to developers[^1]. From a 2024 presentation video, they claim that the foundation has a "language impact" of 43% on the PHP core, with 57% for "other developers" ; but the graph does not state the metric used[^2].
But I could not find an answer to the most obvious questions:
What did they do last year? There is no annual public report of their activity.
Do they pay developers to work on whatever they want on the PHP core? Or does the foundation have an internal roadmap and assign tasks to developers?
[^1]: https://opencollective.com/phpfoundation#category-BUDGET
[^2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XE4g1Tl6RQw at 06:45
> What did they do last year? There is no annual public report of their activity.
There is[1][2][3], the one for 2025 just isn't out yet.
[1]: https://thephp.foundation/blog/2025/03/31/transparency-and-i...
[2]: https://thephp.foundation/blog/2024/02/26/transparency-and-i...
[3]: https://thephp.foundation/blog/2022/11/22/transparency-and-i...
Does this answer your question?
https://thephp.foundation/blog/2025/12/02/can-we-count-on-yo...
They are probably asking for a proper annual finances and activities report just like this one for Wikimedia https://wikimediafoundation.org/annualreports/2023-2024-annu... .
Liz is one of the most genuine and thoughtful people I ever worked with. The software world would be a better place if more people like her were running the show. Best of luck to her.
"Elizabeth brings a rare combination of deep roots in the PHP community and proven leadership in open-source governance. She co-founded a volunteer-based nonprofit dedicated to supporting women and non-binary individuals in the PHP industry, served as Community Manager at GitHub where she led developer outreach programs including the Patchwork initiative, and has been active in CHAOSS – a project focused on open-source community health metrics."
Tells us everything we need to know. Hopefully this leads to the US government dumping PHP, which is a good thing.
What's your concern here? That she lead nonprofits? She seems overly qualified to run a separate nonprofit to me.
Why would the government dump any programming language for anything non security related, let alone for the actions of a third party nonprofit? PHP is still governed my a committee of approved voters like always, not by the PHP foundation.
>What's your concern here? That she lead nonprofits?
They chose a religious zealot to lead their project. All I saw was virtue signaling and DEI initiatives. That's so 2021.
>Why would the government dump any programming language for anything non security related, let alone for the actions of a third party nonprofit?
PHP is enough of a security nightmare for anyone to dump it. Considering how anti-DEI/woke the current administration is, it'll be an easy choice.
This is amazing news. More trans people means more inclusive programming communities.
Sometimes, but not necessarily. It depends on the competence of the DEI "figurehead".
Some communities had a figurehead installed by committee who provoked negative reactions due to bad decisions. Sometimes the leadership arose naturally or just turned out very competent.
And frequently, the trans or gay or whoever is called incompetent and DEI regardless of "naturally" they rose and how good decisions they make. Their decisions arw bad faith twisted for ideological reasons.
And no one even worry about someone not rising naturally when he is not demographic, regardless of level of nepotism and good old boys network that got him in.
She's not a figurehead, she's trans herself
The pope is not a figurehead, he is Catholic himself!
There are so many generalities and so much hand-waving in your comment that it's really hard for me to understand what situations or which people you're referring to. It would be much improved with some specifics.
One wonders if some trans people might prefer people comment on their accomplishments and not fixate so much on their identity