Update: Symfony reached 500 million downloads on September 26th, 2016. Read more about this achievement.

Symfony 2.0 was released on July 28th, 2011. The biggest difference from Symfony 1.x was the internal architecture of the framework, which was designed around a set of stand-alone and decoupled PHP packages called Symfony Components.

Five years later, we're on the verge of achieving an incredible milestone: 500 million Symfony packages downloaded by the PHP community (note that this number refers to downloads made with Composer; the total would be higher if we take into account other downloads through GitHub, the Symfony Standard Edition ZIP files, etc.) We're thrilled about this event and we want all the community to take part on its celebration.

We've prepared a dashboard at symfony.com/500million that displays the Symfony downloads in pseudo real time and estimates the date and time when we'll reach the mythical 500 millionth download.

When the date approaches, we'd like you to display this dashboard in your own computer, in a public display in your office, meetup group etc. so we all can live this moment together.

Besides, we'd like you to share some photos on Twitter (use the hashtag #500million) when the 500 million milestone is achieved. We'll pick the best and most original photos and we'll raffle some cool prizes:

So talk to your work mates, prepare a way to display symfony.com/500million in your office and share some photos of the moment so you get a chance to win. And while we wait for the moment ... keep downloading those Symfony packages!

Legal disclaimer: the raffle is open to any person regardless of their country of residence; all prizes are non-refundable and non-transferable; winners will be selected by a jury appointed by SensioLabs; winners will be notified via Twitter.

Published in #Symfony