The Zend Framework is to get a new name and a new home, under the auspices of the Linux Foundation, just a few months after its parent co was itself swallowed whole.

Zend – as was – is an open source, object-oriented web application framework implemented in PHP 7. It was synonymous with Zend Technologies, which was taken over by Rogue Wave Software in 2015. Rogue Wave Software was itself acquired by private equity outfit Clear Lake Capital earlier this year.

According to the website for the new organisation, “To take it to the next step of adoption and innovation, we are happy to announce that we are transitioning Zend Framework and all its subprojects to an open source project hosted at the Linux Foundation.”

It went on to declare, “We believe that by moving Zend Framework to this proven governance model, it will enjoy both growth in adoption and contributors, and it will continue to focus on delivering best of breed innovative code, using the highest standards of security, transparency, and quality.”

The site added that to differentiate the open source project from the eponymous company, a new name was required. Laminas, it continued, is “the plural of lamina, meaning a thin layer. We feel it succinctly summarizes the goals of the project in many ways: Components you can compose or layer into any application; Middleware architectures are often termed layered.”

Talking of layers, the project will be headed up by a governing board looking after business decisions, and a technical steering committee.

In time, these will be joined by “a small team of developers to help lead the day-to-day maintenance, manage automation, keep the web presence online, and other tasks necessary to keeping the project going. This team will help provide project continuity, allowing contributors to focus on the contributions they care about most.”

In the meantime, the Zend Components and MVC code will move to a new Laminas organization under GitHub, while Apigility packages will move from the Zend Framework Campus organization to the Apigility organization and Expressive packages to a new Expressive organization.

The existing code will be archived, and made available on GitHub as read only, with new packages marked as “replacements” for the existing package. In time, the project will provide tools to update code and dependencies for the new packages from the project.

Laminas aims to be fully operational by the end of this quarter, or next quarter at the latest, depending on how successful it is at securing sponsorship commitments for the foundation.