The PHP Foundation and The Challenge of Sustaining Critical Digital Infrastructure
MCLD 2002 | Fri 07 Aug 10:45 a.m.–11:30 a.m.
Presented by
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Elizabeth Barron is the Executive Director of The PHP Foundation, an organization focused on the long term sustainability of the PHP language and ecosystem. She is a long time open source contributor and advocate with almost 30 years of experience at organizations like GitHub, Pivotal/VMWare, Sourceforge, and CHAOSS (Community Health Analytics in Open Source Software). She is also a published author, public speaker, community organizer, and award winning nature photographer. She is currently working toward achieving her MBA and she lives in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Elizabeth Barron is the Executive Director of The PHP Foundation, an organization focused on the long term sustainability of the PHP language and ecosystem. She is a long time open source contributor and advocate with almost 30 years of experience at organizations like GitHub, Pivotal/VMWare, Sourceforge, and CHAOSS (Community Health Analytics in Open Source Software). She is also a published author, public speaker, community organizer, and award winning nature photographer. She is currently working toward achieving her MBA and she lives in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Abstract
Used by over 34 million websites, PHP powers a large portion of the web. But as a community-owned language without a single owner, sustaining the language has become a shared challenge. The PHP Foundation was created to support those efforts by funding contributors and strengthening the growing ecosystem without direct governance, helping ensure this critical piece of digital open source infrastructure continues to thrive.
This talk explores The PHP Foundation’s origins, its unique relationship with the PHP community, and how it not only supports maintainers and ongoing development of the language, but also how it supports the other pieces of the PHP ecosystem. We’ll examine how this model differs from traditional open source foundations and what it reveals about sustaining widely used, but often underfunded, technologies.
Attendees will leave with a clearer understanding of how critical digital infrastructure is maintained and why evolving sustainability models matter for the future of open source.
Used by over 34 million websites, PHP powers a large portion of the web. But as a community-owned language without a single owner, sustaining the language has become a shared challenge. The PHP Foundation was created to support those efforts by funding contributors and strengthening the growing ecosystem without direct governance, helping ensure this critical piece of digital open source infrastructure continues to thrive.
This talk explores The PHP Foundation’s origins, its unique relationship with the PHP community, and how it not only supports maintainers and ongoing development of the language, but also how it supports the other pieces of the PHP ecosystem. We’ll examine how this model differs from traditional open source foundations and what it reveals about sustaining widely used, but often underfunded, technologies.
Attendees will leave with a clearer understanding of how critical digital infrastructure is maintained and why evolving sustainability models matter for the future of open source.