PHP RFC: Using and Mentioning Third-party Packages in PHP Documentation and Web Projects

• Version: 0.2
• Date: 2024-08-24
• Author: Jim Winstead, jimw@php.net
• Status: Discussion
• First Published at: http://wiki.php.net/rfc/web-and-doc-use-not-endorsement

The PHP project has had a long-standing but unwritten, vague, and inconsistently applied proscription against mentioning or using third-party PHP projects on the grounds that it implies some sort of endorsement over other third-party projects. This has impacted the web projects (bugs.php.net, etc) and documentation in ways that seem harmful to the overall PHP community.

Adopt this statement of principle:

The web, documentation, infrastructure, and any auxiliary projects within the PHP Project can use or document the existence of third-party PHP projects as part of their roles in supporting the overall PHP community. Such use does not represent endorsement of those third-party projects by the PHP Project.

• None yet.

• None, except this guidance could be changed in the future by another RFC or subsequent governance mechanism.

• Adopt the statement of principle in this proposal? Yes/No

• Drama that ensued when a third-party development dependency was pushed into web-bugs: https://github.com/php/web-bugs/pull/77
• PR to add references to Composer and Packagist to the documentation: https://github.com/php/doc-en/pull/3677
• PR to add mention of AMPPS installer: https://github.com/php/doc-en/pull/1674
• Discussion of this draft RFC: https://news-web.php.net/php.internals/125279