SMF very slow at development. Dying Slowly

Yeah I would like to see that too but I personally don't think 2.1 will ever come. The problem is, even SMF 2.0 does go gold, I'm curious if people are really happy with that. I mean, 2.1 brings the features they want but 2.0 gold....

 

Haha I dont think that will ever happen either. Maybe another 5 more years?

 

Yeah but when it's that time they already banned half of the members

 

Rofl...

 

Wow, SMF has been in development since 2005? I was a sophomore in high school when this was happening. Makes you wonder why people still use it when they are so slow on updates and things.

 

And I was in the 5th grade

 

Ha, ha, in any case, I'll bet that neither you nor I knew jack squat about forums back then! I certainly didn't, as I didn't start foruming until I was almost finished with high school!

 

To me, SMF is slow there skins aint good and its over-rated, TinyBB is better than SMF and so is MyBB by far, in my league of forum softwares SMF is bottom

 

I did, I started foruming at 9.

I wouldn't go as far as saying tinybb is better, but I have seen some great SMF themes, SMF 2.0 of course.

 

SMF was the first ever forum software I used lol.
But yea they are painfully slow and releasing updates and it is a shame.
However as others have mentioned it's free software funds may be tighter than we think.
I'd never go back to using it now and one of the main reasons would be due to there time scales for updates I think they will eventually die out with other providers like phpBB and myBB going from strength to strength I think it's only a matter of time before we see the death of SMF.

 

Well there is good news for ya! Looks like they are slowly getting back on track. http://admin-talk.com/threads/smf-gold.2475/

 

Right?!!! Four years seems excessive for Beta.

Really, how long could it possibly take to shake the bugs out of any piece of software.

And, as for the excuse that none of the developers were being paid, that hasn't stopped other open source and freeware software development before. Many of these developers work on the software just cause they can and it's something else to do in spare time away from their paying jobs. For some it's more like a hobby, but that doesn't mean the job don't get done.

 

I agree, thats not much of an excuse for them, look at MyBB, they have never stalled and they are always up to date, and keep their users happy.

 

They are quicker than they were before. SMF 2.1 is already in the making. I think I can actually download a version of it now, I am a charter member there but I don't think its stable enough to have online. The reason they were so slow at first (pre-2.0) is they had a lot of internal issues to sort out. I know all about everything but I don't want to be a gossip so I wont get into that...

 

This post was a year ago and today SMF 2.1 is not even ready for beta testing. They have 33 contributors who have been working for the past 3 years putting this and SMF core together. You guys who were in school when they started this will have grand kids in school before a what they consider a stable release is ever finished. Then there will be years of bugs going ignored and multitudes of security breaches taking several years to fix. Remember it is all done with not very dedicated volunteers. As they claim, they work at their own pace and do nothing about nothing being accomplished. If you have ever watched paint dry, or waited for water to boil, either one will happen faster.

Here's some history for you to consider. SMF went Gold June 4, 2011. By Sept 2011 Critical Security patch was released. Now one would expect some bugs and such but Critical Security breach? Well ok, let's give them that one, they found it and fixed it.

Holy crap, by Dec 2011 there was another Critical Security patch. After a year of complaints from members on Dec 2012 another security patch. And again Feb 2013, CRITICAL SECURITY PATCH and the latest August 2013 CRITICAL SECURITY PATCH after their own forum and database were taken by some hacker.

Don't get me wrong, bugs are one thing and we all know that's a way of life with coding and programs, but consistently releasing software that has critical security breaches and constantly telling their members there aren't any is just not ethical or morally sound treatment of their members. Is it any wonder so many of them including their coders are bailing out?

 

Hey man, to be fair, it took them four years to go from beta to final release.

But then again, phpBB 3.0 was released in 2007, and in the last six years, they haven't done anything major.

 

SMF's development problems might be worse than phpBB's to be honest. PhpBB's are extremely slow yes. But SMF has one minor issue in recent years:

The core contributors have apparently partly left the project.

Or at least, I distinctly recall hearing how a bunch of the well known SMF coders were going off to make their own forum software and really, really dislike the current SMF community and development/support teams. PhpBB at least likely doesn't have this schism.

 

But to be fair in SMF's case, the problem was that it was Amacythe who held the copyright to everything and she held it hostage. That was when they all left. She eventually transferred the copyrights back to some NPO and left the organization, and some of the staff members who left came back (though [Unknown] did not).

 

Phpbb is hardly ever getting updated seriously i have not seen a update in a long time, SMF at least post announcements so you know they are doing something i don't think its very slow.