Why do I need to use a popular framework?

Question

I\'ve been a PHP developer for many years now, with many tools under my belt; tools that I\'ve either developed myself, or free-to-use solutions that I have learned to trust

Answer 1

Advantages are that it's already written and tested by multiple people therefore less likely to be bug prone.

Disadvantages are that it's not built specifically for your application and therefore will most likely perform worse.

All in all, I can't really see much reason to use one considering you already have your own...although it may be worth releasing that open source so others are able to bug check and recommend improvements.