Topic: An update

It's time for an overdue update on what's going on in the world of PunBB.

A long time ago, I proclaimed that I would eat my hat if PunBB 1.3 wasn't done by the end of the year. That was last year. I, together with the other guys on the development team, underestimated the amount of work involved in making 1.3 a reality as well as overestimated the amount of time and effort we would be able to put into the project. We all have other things that we need to prioritise sometimes (work, college, family etc). As a result of this, we're now in October and PunBB 1.3 isn't quite done yet. I'm sorry for this.

But fear not, we have absolutely not abandoned the project. The work on 1.3 is progressing at a higher rate than it has in a long time. The extension system is coming along nicely, Paul is in the midst of committing major markup and CSS updates and we are picking off items on our todo list more or less every day now. I'm confident we will be able to get PunBB 1.3 into your hands soon and it will be the best release of PunBB to date.

Now, as some of you might have heard, the rights to PunBB are no longer owned by myself and/or the other developers. Early this summer, we were approached by a company that wanted to support the project financially. Apart from sponsoring the project, they wanted to later down the line offer paid-for web services in relation to PunBB (for example commercial grade PunBB hosting). We decided we liked the idea and sold the rights to the project. Now, it's important to understand that with an application released under the GNU General Public License, the ownership of the copyright is pretty irrelevant. The fact that we don't own the copyright anymore doesn't really change anything. It should also be clear that once code is released under the GPL, it remains that way forever i.e. it cannot be made closed source retrospectively. PunBB stays open source and the core development team is the same. There's no evil conspiracy. Think of it as a way for us developers to make a buck while continuing to work on PunBB in the exact same way we did before. We haven't made a big song and dance about this because we know it doesn't affect the project in any noticeable way. We haven't even bothered to change the copyright notices yet. The only thing that has changed from before is that we, for obvious reasons, no longer accept donations.

Now, back to more important things. PunBB 1.3 is closing in. Soon we will release a beta and when the time comes, it would be really cool if those of you aspiring to be extension developers could sink your teeth into the extension system. As you know, the extension system relies on hooks that are placed throughout the code and it's sometimes difficult for us to predict where some of these hooks need to be placed. Together with the beta, we'll have a few extensions we've written ourselves up for grabs that you can use as a base (or just for inspiration) for your own creations.

As usual, you can follow the development of PunBB in the timeline. If you want to grab the very latest source, aim your Subversion client at svn.punbb.org/svn/punbb/branches/punbb-1.3-dev/.

Ta ta for now!

"Programming is like sex: one mistake and you have to support it for the rest of your life."

Re: An update

Good to see it all cleared up.

Give me 1.3! big_smile

3

Re: An update

Nice to have some official info about 1.3. Not incredibly keen about the sponsor but hey, if it makes the developer's lives easier then go for it.

Re: An update

One thing though. I'm curious about the lack of ?PunBB time? on your schedule, if you have a buyer.

SoftDeluxe (the company who bought PunBB, and isn't named in this post) didn't support and sponsor the development of 1.3? They only bought the intellectual property?

They can't devote a few thousand dollars on the 1.3 project, to ensure a quality RC is published before the end of the year?

I hope you haven't undersold your baby... on the market, as it is, PunBB is worth quite a bunch...

Re: An update

Jérémie: They are sponsoring the development of 1.3. That doesn't change the fact that we are all busy with non-PunBB related obligations and that we occasionally like to not work. But rest assured, we're back on track.

"Programming is like sex: one mistake and you have to support it for the rest of your life."

Re: An update

i fully trust what has been done is the best possible solution for the future of PunBB. i look forward to 1.3 more now than ever.

~James
FluxBB - Less is more

Re: An update

thanks Rickard for the update, can we get more regular updates like maybe weekly?
cheers!

Re: An update

trakman wrote:

thanks Rickard for the update, can we get more regular updates like maybe weekly?

Most certainly. Paul had an idea earlier today that we should have a simple todo list with percentages for each item (e.g. "80% done"). I'll try to get that up tomorrow.

"Programming is like sex: one mistake and you have to support it for the rest of your life."

Re: An update

Apart from sponsoring the project, they wanted to later down the line offer paid-for web services in relation to PunBB (for example commercial grade PunBB hosting).

Whats' next? A special punBB for paying members. Now don't crucify me here people, but I think we are all entitled to our own opinions. I personally don't think anyone gains from this but the developers and those closely involved in punBB. Although you all have good intentions here for the project, I do think that you've (to quote a famous saying) "jumped the shark". Why does punBB need to rely on someone else funding the project. There are many great forums as well as CMS's out there that rely solely on advertising and they manage to still keep afloat. I think the company that is now involved has only one intention and that is to make money. They can never put the heart and sole into the project as you guys have for so long. Anyway, my prediction for punBB is that a lot of people will look for an alternative forum script. Lets see if I am right.

just my 2 cents.
Bingiman

10

Re: An update

Yes, it is a risky course. Look at the experience of the Mambo/Joomla fork. 3rd party developers got suspicious of the whole operation and wondered why they were working for free developing code for a product that a commercial entity owned the rights to. That's the kind of perception you don't want.

If AdSense ads + some sponsorship links (ie like phpBB.com) had been running here for the last few years, maybe these commercial issues needn't have come up.

Hopefully this development won't damage punbb, but as bingiman suggests, it probably will.

Re: An update

I will leave my comments until after 1.3 is released. Have one question though.

Who is the sponsor?

Re: An update

bingiman wrote:

Whats' next? A special punBB for paying members. Now don't crucify me here people, but I think we are all entitled to our own opinions. I personally don't think anyone gains from this but the developers and those closely involved in punBB. Although you all have good intentions here for the project, I do think that you've (to quote a famous saying) "jumped the shark". Why does punBB need to rely on someone else funding the project. There are many great forums as well as CMS's out there that rely solely on advertising and they manage to still keep afloat. I think the company that is now involved has only one intention and that is to make money. They can never put the heart and sole into the project as you guys have for so long. Anyway, my prediction for punBB is that a lot of people will look for an alternative forum script. Lets see if I am right.

Most open source project with a certain size can't rely on pure advertisement and donation (the only exception I can find right now is Wikipedia, which is special). They all use other means, usually partnership of some kind and/or sell service around their products, to support them.

Re: An update

bingiman wrote:

Apart from sponsoring the project, they wanted to later down the line offer paid-for web services in relation to PunBB (for example commercial grade PunBB hosting).

Whats' next? A special punBB for paying members. Now don't crucify me here people, but I think we are all entitled to our own opinions. I personally don't think anyone gains from this but the developers and those closely involved in punBB. Although you all have good intentions here for the project, I do think that you've (to quote a famous saying) "jumped the shark". Why does punBB need to rely on someone else funding the project. There are many great forums as well as CMS's out there that rely solely on advertising and they manage to still keep afloat. I think the company that is now involved has only one intention and that is to make money. They can never put the heart and sole into the project as you guys have for so long. Anyway, my prediction for punBB is that a lot of people will look for an alternative forum script. Lets see if I am right.

just my 2 cents.
Bingiman

+1 !
may be the "community" would have liked to be questioned for a possibility to avoid this assignment ...

On another side i hope they will do with punBB what RedHat did for Linux ...

14

Re: An update

Cool. I'm really looking forward to 1.3 as there could be "multiple moderator gropus", smile tongue
This with the sold copyrights and that, I was glad to hear it didn't have allover catastrophic effects like paying for PunBB or something. (I don't know much about that topic but anyway tongue)

Darth Vader will chase you away with his lightsaber!
GalacticEmpire.se Forum

Re: An update

Thanks for the update! I've been following the timeline pretty much everyday since about v1.2.14 and I have indeed noticed an increase in activity.

At first when I read about selling the rights to PunBB, I was a little dubious, but it doesn't look like it's going to affect the project in a bad way at all.


I thank you for your continued effort in developing PunBB.

smile

16

Re: An update

So, now, without donations, if I want to use punbb without the copyright, what can I do?
Thanks.

Re: An update

miketk wrote:

So, now, without donations, if I want to use punbb without the copyright, what can I do?
Thanks.

This doesn't change anything in that area. It's not about who owns what, it's all about the GNU public license.


You can't alter the copyright of the sources.
You can remove if you want the Powered_by mention on the pages displayed.

Re: An update

Jérémie wrote:

You can't alter the copyright of the sources.
You can remove if you want the Powered_by mention on the pages displayed.

I will removed "Powered by PunBB - © Copyright 2002?2005 Rickard Andersson" as soon it will be changed officialy. I choose Rickard Andersson not SoftDeluxe ...
Anyway I hope that PunBB's spirit/philosophy won't change, and I'm ready for beta testing the 1.3

cheers

Re: An update

Bingiman:
Yes, they want to make money. Like any other company. But they are merely sponsors and, as said, the paid forum hosting could produce quite the income if played properly.
And for a paid version... why not? Personally, I think it'd be better if people could 'buy' official extensions in that case. It'd be pretty much like a donation.

And you know, it's still software under the GPL. If the developers don't like the way the company is going, they can just fork off and go their own way again.

20 (edited by intedinmamma 2007-10-13 13:18)

Re: An update

As long as it's released under GPL (or some similar license) and you don't have to keep a "huge" copyright notice like with SMF I won't complain. smile Btw, will there be an option to pay to be allowed to remove the copyright notice altogether? (Powered by...)

21 (edited by BlackJack 2008-01-05 21:53)

Re: An update

Bad news. It's really a pitty !
I think as bingiman.
Copyright has been updated on my website.

http://img510.imageshack.us/img510/1561/punbbownedss2.jpg

Re: An update

Enough with the drama. This isn't the "End of free PunBB". PunBB is GPL and will remain so. If push comes to shove, I'll fork it myself!

Regarding the copyright notice in the footer. Keeping it has always been optional. Actually, we decided to remove the notice altogether a year ago.

"Programming is like sex: one mistake and you have to support it for the rest of your life."

Re: An update

elbekko wrote:

Yes, they want to make money. Like any other company.

Rickard wrote:

Enough with the drama.

++

Re: An update

With regards to PunBB 1.3, is it useful to start working on the Dutch language pack? How many changes are to be expected in the current set of languages scripts in Revision 1054: /branches/punbb-1.3-dev/upload/lang/English?

25

Re: An update

Roel Schreurs wrote:

With regards to PunBB 1.3, is it useful to start working on the Dutch language pack? How many changes are to be expected in the current set of languages scripts in Revision 1054: /branches/punbb-1.3-dev/upload/lang/English?

Quite a lot, particularly relating to forms. In particular prof_reg.php is going to the trashcan. It was doing my head in having to work with two language files in register.php and profile.php.