[License-review] Voluntary retirement of the PHP License

[Nick Vidal]

Hi Ben and the PHP community,

I really appreciate the effort to move this forward. Sharing your blog post
here to the mailing list and also adding it to OSI's monthly newsletter:

https://ben.ramsey.dev/blog/2026/05/the-php-license-simplified

Warm regards,
Nick


On Mon, May 4, 2026 at 11:59 AM Ben Ramsey <ben at benramsey.com> wrote:

> On behalf of the PHP Group, I am submitting notice of the voluntary
> retirement of the PHP License 3.01.
>
> I recently wrapped up a multi-year process, working with the PHP Group,
> Zend Technologies, and the PHP internals community to invoke clause 5 of
> the PHP License 3.01[1] to adopt the Modified BSD License as the new
> version of the PHP License.[2]
>
> As of today, the PHP License 3.01 is no longer used by PHP, and the PHP
> project discourages use of the license for new works.
>
> See also:
>
> * https://www.php.net/license/
> * https://github.com/php/php-src/blob/master/LICENSE
>
> The PHP License 3.0 is listed on the OSI website as superseded by the PHP
> License 3.01. Since 3.01 is retired, 3.0 is also voluntarily retired. (The
> page for 3.0 is stuck in a redirect loop:
> https://opensource.org/license/php-3.0/).
>
> Since the process for voluntary retirement isn’t described on the OSI
> website, please let me know if there’s anything else you need from me to
> complete this process.
>
> Cheers,
> Ben
>
>
> [1]: https://www.php.net/license/3_01.txt
> [2]: https://wiki.php.net/rfc/php_license_update
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