For the past months, I've worked on a project at JetBrains to create a strategy for sponsoring open source PHP projects. I was super happy to see the positive response from the community and want to share some more thoughts about it.

A drop in the ocean?

The strategy I came up with was to have five open source sponsorships that run for a full year, and each year we'll pick five new ones. That way we have a more lasting impact on projects instead of using one-off donations, and we could also spread our efforts more widely over time.

At the same time, spreading our budget between five projects made me question "will this really make a difference?" And even if it does make a difference for these five, there are so many more. We deliberately kept the final fifth spot vacant for another month so that the community could pitch in, and there were some really great suggestions, making choosing even more difficult.

But let's not forget the underlying goal. It's not just about sponsoring individual projects. Actually, I would say that's just a side effect of a deeper goal: to lead by example. To put our money where our mouth is. If enough companies and organizations would do so, I believe we could have a real impact on PHP. So let's set an example.

That's why I want to repeat my call to action from the original post: if you're a financial decision maker at a company that's relying on PHP open source, please consider spending a tiny amount of your budget on giving back. If you're an employee who cannot make such a decision, please talk to the ones who can. Keep in mind that it doesn't have to be much! Just $100 per month would make a huge difference if enough companies followed suit.

So that's my hope: more and more companies pitching in, so that together we can have a real and lasting impact.

Where to start?

I considered sharing my list for potential projects here, but finally decided against it. Let's face it: my list is incomplete. So let's say you did decide on investing some money back into PHP. Where to start?

Well, you likely already have a list. It's called composer.json. My suggestion would be to invest an hour or so scrolling through dependencies you often use in your projects, and pick one or a handful that you want to invest in. Even if it's just $10 per month, every penny counts.

You could have some criteria as well: search for projects that are actively maintained; maybe sort DESC on projects with the least amount of sponsoring; maybe pick the ones that you feel have the biggest reach. Up to you, my hope is that you find something that works for you.

And, in case you're an open source maintainer looking for sponsorships: feel free to leave a comment on this blog. Don't feel ashamed about self-promotion, it's ok to create awareness.