[License-review] Voluntary retirement of the PHP License

[McCoy Smith]

Kudos to the PHP community!

On 5/4/2026 8:19 AM, Ben Ramsey wrote:
> 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> 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     The PHP License 3.0 is listed on the OSI website as superseded by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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>
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