PHP's licensing has been a source of confusion for some time. The project is, currently, using two licenses that cover different parts of the code base: PHP v3.01 for the bulk of the code and Zend v2.0 for code in the Zend directory. Much has changed since the project settled on those licenses in 2006, and the need for custom licensing seems to have passed. An effort to simplify PHP's licensing, led by Ben Ramsey, is underway; if successful, the existing licenses will be deprecated and replaced by the BSD three-clause license. The PHP community is now voting on the license update RFC through April 4, 2026.