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...
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.
On the other hand Laravel has VC backing and sells services.
Symfony itself also had a round of funding many years ago when it wasn't rolling in cash, around $7 million if I recall.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.