On the Symfony blog there's a new post about a major upcoming milestone for the framework: their 500 millionth download of version 2.0 of the framework.

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.

In the five years since it's initial release the download count is getting closer to the 500 million mark all the time. They've even provided a real-time(ish) dashboard of the current count so you can keep track yourself if you'd like. The post also asks the Symfony users out there to share some of their own photos on Twitter of when the milestone is reached and even offers potential prizes to those that participate (a raffle).

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!