PHP's 70% web share rests on one full-time employee and 14 contractors
PHP, the programming language powering up to 70% of websites, is maintained by a nonprofit with just one full-time employee and 14 part-time contractors, according to a Reuters report. This week, two critical vulnerabilities in PHP triggered an emergency global response from governments and corporations. The PHP Foundation, led by Executive Director Elizabeth Barron, relies on charitable grants and private donations, with unpaid volunteer board members. To address the latest flaws, it partnered with OpenAI, Google-owned Wiz, and Calif, releasing emergency fixes on Wednesday. Cloudflare detected millions of probing attempts, but no successful exploitation has been confirmed on patched systems. AI tools helped uncover the decade-old vulnerabilities but have also doubled the volume of proposed code changes, straining the small team. Active contributor numbers haven't kept pace, and verifying automated suggestions still requires significant human expertise.