The manual for $wgFooterIcons [1] states that it's possible to disable the "Powered by MediaWiki" footer icons using:
unset( $wgFooterIcons['poweredby'] );
This worked flawlessly up to version 1.39.x, however when I updated to 1.40 the statement resulted in a bloody crash:
MediaWiki internal error.
Original exception: [99212f914215d7e358c7081f] /wiki/Special:Login Error: Call to a member function getTemplateData() on array
Backtrace:
from /var/www/html/includes/skins/components/SkinComponentFooter.php(318)
#0 /var/www/html/includes/skins/components/SkinComponentFooter.php(76): MediaWiki\Skin\SkinComponentFooter->getFooterIcons()
#1 /var/www/html/includes/skins/Skin.php(195): MediaWiki\Skin\SkinComponentFooter->getTemplateData()
#2 /var/www/html/includes/skins/SkinTemplate.php(188): Skin->getTemplateData()
#3 /var/www/html/includes/skins/SkinMustache.php(92): SkinTemplate->getTemplateData()
#4 /var/www/html/skins/Vector/includes/SkinVectorLegacy.php(161): SkinMustache->getTemplateData()
#5 /var/www/html/includes/skins/SkinMustache.php(62): MediaWiki\Skins\Vector\SkinVectorLegacy->getTemplateData()
#6 /var/www/html/includes/skins/SkinTemplate.php(181): SkinMustache->generateHTML()
#7 /var/www/html/includes/OutputPage.php(2899): SkinTemplate->outputPage()
#8 /var/www/html/includes/MediaWiki.php(941): OutputPage->output(boolean)
#9 /var/www/html/includes/MediaWiki.php(576): MediaWiki->main()
#10 /var/www/html/index.php(50): MediaWiki->run()
#11 /var/www/html/index.php(46): wfIndexMain()
#12 {main}
Did 1.40 introduce a new method of changing the footer icons? In this case we should update the manual. I don't have deep knowledge of MediaWiki internals, my "quick fix" was using:
$wgFooterIcons['poweredby']['mediawiki'] = ["src" => "", "height" => "0", "width" => "0"];