To be totally honest with you. You should not use this library anymore as the original maintainer said. BUT for the folks that still need this library to work with newer PHP versions, this fork is for you. We internally use PHP Excel in countless applications and there is currently no time for us to fully migrate to the new PhpSpreadsheet library.
This is dirty fixed and mostly untested but it works for our internal use cases. Use it for your own risk.
PHPExcel last version, 1.8.1, was released in 2015. The project was officially deprecated in 2017 and permanently archived in 2019.
The project has not be maintained for years and must not be used anymore. All users must migrate to its direct successor PhpSpreadsheet, or another alternative.
PHPExcel is licensed under LGPL (GNU LESSER GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE)