Stefan, you might find this thread interesting https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/2tt9ml/wanted_php_mode_maintainer/ - seems that the current maintainer is worried he won't be able to take care of the legal stuff needed to assign the copyright to the FSF (~60 contributors). Maybe you can offer some advice of the subject.

On 14 May 2015 at 00:35, Bozhidar Batsov <bozhidar@batsov.com> wrote:

And php-mode is looking for maintainers. Guess the current maintainers would be willing for the Emacs dev team to take over this package.

On 13 May 2015 at 15:35, Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> wrote:
On a related note, I'd love to have a php-mode in GNU ELPA or bundled
in Emacs.

Stefan