My temporary PHP fix from 2014 has nearly 20M installs. Today I'm deprecating it

A PHP developer is deprecating a temporary utility function he wrote in 2014 that has been installed nearly 20 million times and still receives over 400,000 monthly installs, including through major plugins like WPML and content management systems. The decision to retire the package stems from security concerns about maintaining widely-used software with a new maintainer, alongside the availability of better modern alternatives like PHP 8.5's native URI API. The code contained bugs that went unnoticed for years, making it unsuitable for continued maintenance without risking unintended consequences for downstream users.