PunBB 1.3 official extensions (Page 1 of 3)

Thanks for putting up a list.

One suggestion, I believe there should be an extension forum dedicated to extension introductions and support. Mixing extension and core support may prove a bit confusing over time. When introducing an extension, you could have a brief explanation of what it does and a screen shot of it in action if at all possible.

I quit all the switching.
I switch to punbb

Me to, I prefer to know who is developing the software I am using.

It amuses me very much, how PunBB falls deeper and deeper.

Instead of going the PunBB-way, Anatoly announced, PunBB still sticks 100% to the code of FluxBB and still does not give credit to FluxBB.
Instead of following the original idea ("fast and lightweight") the official PunBB forum is bulked up with extensions nobody uses which quadruple the generation time and need as many queries as FluxBB/PunBB itself.

It seems to me that PunBB goes the Microsoft-way: Release unstable software(here: extensions) to have more features than the rival and accept that users may make their installation insecure, because they don't see the small "beta" or "insecure" note.

headbuster: You have it backwards. PunBB 1.3 is based off of FluxBB 1.3

I guess you have the team has split because of an argument and punBB was born?

A fact which we don't deny and which we made clear at the time of release and in our "about" page. The difference is that we (the FluxBB developers) wrote the code which we forked from.
Point taken though.

I 100% agree with you. At this point, we have:

PunBB 1.2
FluxBB 1.2
PunBB 1.3 Beta
PunBB 1.3 RC1
FluxBB 1.3 Beta 2
FluxBB 1.3 Beta 2.5 (the "release" we made from SVN without Paul's markup changes)
FluxBB 1.3 SVN (with Paul's partially completed markup changes)

and two different support websites, one of which (this one) was fairly lackluster until recently in terms of answering questions. It's a nightmare trying to figure out what version someone is actually running, which is necessary to know before you're able to help them.

We would appreciate any suggestions you have on how to deal with the matter.

[Note from here: this is NOT me speaking in my capacity as a FluxBB developer. I have not discussed these ideas with any of the other developers. These are entirely my own personal opinions. Consider it a "what if" musing.]

In my opinion, the best way to go forward would be for the FluxBB developers to repurchase the rights that they sold and reclaim the domain name, name, etc from the Russians. The fork and its repercussions, while necessary, have been frustrating to everyone involved, both users and developers. This back and forth between the two teams in terms of releases, shared code bases, etc has done little to help the matter. Consolidating back into one code base and one team, under the original name of PunBB, would greatly improve matters.

However, I don't think such a thing is possible. For one thing, I don't know that the Russians want to give up PunBB. For another, I have a feeling that repurchasing the rights would cost more than we as a team could afford, especially since we are smaller than we were when the original deal was made.

[/note]

http://fluxbb.org/about/

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bunkum
Looks like it

As your  "average Joe" user, I agree fully.
Since I as here before the fork, I have a fair idea what the relationship is between FluxBB and PunBB. For those looking for a forum solution now - if stumbling on the 2, it is very confusing.
My hope is that PunBB will simply go away,stop clouding the issue, and let FluxBB flourish as it should.

It is a little telling that the painful truth is that PunBB is merely a cheap carbon copy of FluxBB, and were it not for the FluxBB devs, Punbb would cease to exist.

Matt: You're also right. A lot of the problem has to do with the name.

People who haven't been following this issue are bound to be confused: they come to the PunBB forum and they see new owners, they see a different looking forum then they have, they see a link to download "PunBB 1.3 RC1."

They also see the references to FluxBB. If they investigate, they get even more confused: they see that the old PunBB developers created FluxBB, that it was based on the original 1.3 codebase, that PunBB is now based off of the forked FluxBB codebase, that FluxBB is currently still in beta while PunBB is in RCs (how is that possible when they use the same codebase?), etc.

As much as we might want to make a "clean break," we can't. For better or for worse, PunBB has chosen to tie itself to FluxBB. And from FluxBB's history, it is tied to PunBB. The codebases have been tied together and the community is very much tied together (after all, many of the people on the FluxBB forum originally came from here).

The names cause confusion, but I don't really see a good way of handling any kind of separation without users paying an even higher price.

Surely none of us actually have any say in what happens to this forum, which is the problem in the first place.

Unfortunately, that's not my call to make. Personally, I feel I can't do support here for two reasons:

• I'm neither a developer nor a user of PunBB anymore and to pretend otherwise would be a disservice to PunBB users who expect the people giving them support to be versed in the software. While that may make little difference now, in the future supposedly PunBB will have some more features that diverge from the FluxBB code base

• I would feel the same way I felt when I was coding for SoftDeluxe before the fork: that I was unpaid labor for a company that was benefiting from my work and that didn't listen to my opinion

And you have done a fine job of it.
In all honesty though, your criticism (at least from my perspective) is much appreciated.

It isn't though. I'm not the sole developer of FluxBB, nor am I its head developer. FluxBB is not just mine, it's Paul's and Connor's and Kristoffer's as well. And it's not just ours either. We didn't fork out of a lust for power or control. We forked so that the community could enjoy the forum software to the fullest. We promised the community that we would fork if the need ever arose: we kept that promise.