Shame his financial contribution doesn't really match up. $34k is pretty darn low considering how much money Laravel makes. Even worse when you see much smaller operatons like Private Packagist have donated more than Laravel and Symfony combined.
I'm a heavy PHP & Laravel developer and I speak for myself and a few close friends around my in my network who are like me. We all consider Laravel the reason we are still within the PHP scene and didn't move away. So in a sense I think it is true.
That said, the recent changes around Laravel (being bought out and becoming more and more commercial) is not something I (we) consider a good thing. Not necessarily a bad thing, but we all know that a OSS framework becoming commercial doesn't usually end well.
It's hyperbole, but like so often, there's a grain of it truth somewhere.
Also, like most things, Laravel is built on the shoulders of others. It sometimes makes hard things easy to access (ppl like this) and hides complexity away, clouding how things actually work (ppl don't like this).
I primarily use Laravel but like to think I code in a generalist if way as to not get stuck in its system.
Ehh, I don't think I'd ever use that word but he had a huge impact on reinvigorating the PHP ecosystem as a whole with Laravel. I remember playing with early versions of Laravel on my own and having my eyes opened to a better way to structure/write code.
