[License-review] Voluntary retirement of the PHP License

[Ben Ramsey]

Thanks, Nick!



> On May 4, 2026, at 10:04, Nick Vidal <nick.vidal at opensource.org> wrote:
> 
> 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 <mailto: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 The PHP License 3.0 is listed on the OSI website as superseded by the PHP License 3.01.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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