How do you feel about forks?

[Shawn Gossman1]

Forks are new developments of the existing forum software.

A lot of forks came out of SMF about 10 years ago. Arantor had a few. I want to say another one was also around.

I feel like other software has also been forked.

How do you all feel about the fork idea?

 

[Dilip]

Forks are good as long as they can get some attention. Otherwise, they die out.

Haven't seen Arantor in years. Not sure whether he is still in the scene.

 

[Shawn Gossman1]

Haven't seen Arantor in years. Not sure whether he is still in the scene.

He was on TAZ for a while. He goes by, Pete, there. I think he got a better job and that took his attention away from most forum stuff.

But I think he is still developing some sort of gaming-type software.

 

[Dilip]

SMF ruined itself with bad policies. Some people on the staff were outright rude and believed what they did was right.

Nice to see Arantor got himself out in time.

It is really hard to do open source unless the team is not proficient enough to generate money through donations.

 

[Shawn Gossman1]

But now it seems like SMF is the only free software doing updates to their core.

I mean I suspect most are doing bug/security updates but SMF recently issues a pretty big update.

They're still not very modern but they've improved a lot I think.

 

[Dilip]

If I understand correctly, the latest SMF's first code is from 2010. The framework or base is at least 5 years old. It is more or less like using Windows XP as a base.

Having such old code or framework in the core is a bad idea security-wise.

I mean I suspect most are doing bug/security updates but SMF recently issues a pretty big update.

Do they have a major version which they are working on?

 

[Shawn Gossman1]

SMF released 2.1 in February!

https://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=580585.0
That was a pretty big release.

But yeah, it's still old looking as far as how the forum looks.

But that release even made it support mobile devices so I think it's getting better.