SMF down the toilet?

[Jeffro]

Was just reading around again and came across this post.

http://www.smf-friends.org/index.php...sg2027#msg2027

I thought all the developers dropped out but by his post and him being project manager, it seems all those devs didn't go anywhere. Hmm

[Runic]

Hello,

This will be my intro aswell as a post on this topic, as this topic is reason I joined. I am Bryan Runic Deakin (my smf profile an admin should be able to confirm I registered with my smf address), I am also a vocal member at smf-friends.org and one of what is considered the "troublemakers" at SMF. I do wish people to know that I am posting as myself and not as an official representitive of smf-friends.


Now to give you all the short history, SMF has been going down hill for a while, I will not bs that, last year the team when I was a member allowed smf friends to help restructure SMF as that is what SMF needed. Alot was debated, argued debated etc and steps forward to help SMF were made. Positive steps, however during the weekend a post was made from the managers pretty much saying that friends need to shut the f up and that if we discuss anything political we would get banned ... now im sure you can guess how this made us feel, one user Dannii even got themselves banned to show the public the truth. Alot of us have removed our mods and Themes in protest.

This decision by the management got us pissed, one former team member had the domain and the other provided the hosting (smf-friends.org) this forum is pretty much been set up so we can speak without being moderated by the admins on SMF. We recently opened the doors to all members or the public so do please join.

The issue has had a massive negative reaction on the hidden boards, firstly the decision was not made fairly it came from Amacythe, and she got others to agree, decisions like this should have been put through proper channels yet those that they knew would say no to it were not asked, two out of three partners were asked, as the other would say no, one lead was asked as they knew he would say yes (he pretty much said I couldnt care) the devs mostly backed it to an extent, an official vote was taken by the new Operations Manager who was not officially elected yet, and his vote was counted as a yes. So they posted. As I have stated this didnt have effect they wanted, they made all team members have to agree to there new terms or they would no longer be team members, 5 team members have refused and are awaiting badges being changed, a few friends have asked for the friends badge be removed, one friend has put his account for deletion etc To the stage that now as it never had desired effect those that were sure it was best choice have started asking for ways from those they have told to shut up on how to improve things ... please remember this would be political and we arent allowed to speak political ubnder the new regulations.

What this means for SMF well it is still around, it will be around for a wee while longer and I do hope for a long time as imho despite the administration it is still the best damn software on the market.

Now I have stated to Jeffro that I will answer questions best I can and as honest as I can. But most answer can be found on smf-friends.org

[Len]

Welcome to the Tavern Runic and thanks for the info! You probably noticed a bit of traffic flowing to SMF Friends from here. (I've visited a few times myself) There are quite a few people using WordPress who also use SMF who understandably became concerned over this.

[Runic]

thanks for the welcome and your more than welcome, and I know that we are shocked about amount of traffic we are getting 2000+ posts in 2 days that is a nice record :)

[Ryan]

I don't think I'll be ditching SMF any time soon. As long as security holes are patched quickly, I'll be happy. But SMF has had a pretty good security track record anyway, partially I guess due to obscurity.

And welcome to the Tavern Runic :) I've read lots of your posts over on SimpleMachines.org over the past few years.

[Runic]

Thanks for the welcome :) And yeh ive been on smf a while.

But please dont ditch smf, the software is amazing we are more angry at the administration :)

If you want to know anything dont be afraid to ask

[Ryan]

Yeah, I love the software too.

I tried pitching in to help with the new Curve development, but I wasn't happy with the way things were being handled so I decided to step away and leave others to work on it.

I'm not sure I'd be keen to help out again unless the licensing can be changed. I was always a bit edgy about it not being forkable, but since it's such a good piece of software I've stuck with it.

I was actually using it as a CMS before discovering WordPress and porting it all over. Then I was using SMF to handle all of the user permissions in my WordPress install .... then WordPress updated to 2.3 and so I lost all of those customisations :p

[Ryan]

I've been sitting on this information for a few days now. I wasn't allowed to reveal it unfortunately. One of the big wigs has posted it on his blog now so it's public knowledge for all now thankfully.


http://www.lewisonline.ca/?p=426


I'd been aware of a lot of this crap for a while, but it's always been kept behind closed doors. I guess no one wanted to scare people off using the software.

[UNKNOWN] whose message was quoted in that blog post actually wrote a huge proportion (most?) of SMF1.0 by himself. He has a post count of 50,000 (or something around that) on SimpleMachines.org and is somewhat of a legend in SMF circles. He's also never revealed his name in public and so is still anonymous after all of the years.

[andreasnrb]

Well I'm thankfull that WordPress ain't SMF and can't be =).
They made some bad decisions the license and going LLC with unknowns.

[Ryan]

Well I'm thankfull that WordPress ain't SMF and can't be =).
They made some bad decisions the license and going LLC with unknowns.

They made a bad decision going with a single unknown. At least if there were a bunch of them there would at least need to be consensus.