Last week, I mentioned that the the Drupal SMFforum Integration module was no longer being supported by the module's project leader, "vb". Apparently, Simple Machines had not granted permission to the module developer to distribute code found in the SMF application as required by the Simple Machines License. While some discussion followed this announcement at the SMF forums, as well as here at CMS Report, none of this discussion compared to what took place at the Open Source Community.

The good news is that Simple Machines LLC has granted vb to continue distributing some of the SMF code to work with the Drupal SMFforum Integration module. vb wrote:

I am glad to announce that distribution of the smf_api_2 package is resumed due to the express permission granted from Simple Machines LLC.
You can download the new package from http://vgb.org.ru/download.

"Orstio", SMF CMS Bridge Developer, added the following at Open Source Community:

Development of the SMFforum Integration module for Drupal is no longer.  Amy Stephen over at OpenSourceCommunity.org pointed out on her blog that the module's project  leader, "vb", pulled the module due to licensing disagreements with SMF LLC.  Amy references vb's original post at the Drupal forum, but she has a lot more to say.  Amy's an active participant in the Joomla! community, a community which had their own issues with a bridge between Joomla! and SMF.

According to vb's post, an email sent by Michael "Oldiesmann" Eshom, Project Manager, Simple Machines LLC stated that:

The problem isn't with the smfforum.module file or the packages distributed on drupal.org. The problem is with the "smf_api_subs.php" file that you're distributing as part of the smf api package - it contains modified versions of several SMF functions, and you did not ask for permission to use this code or distribute it.

It appears that Simple Machines LLC doesn't have so much of a problem with bridging SMF and Drupal as much as they have issues with their own code being used without proper permission.  The Simple Machines License clearly states that "Any Distribution of a Modified Package or derivative requires express written consent from Simple Machines LLC."  No word on whether Simple Machines LLC would endorse the use of their code if permission is asked.

"Simple Machines is extremely proud to announce the long awaited release of the first public beta of SMF 2.0.

SMF 2.0 has now been in development for over 18 months, and in beta with our Charter Members since August last year. Feature complete, and having undergone considerable testing and bug fixing, we are now ready to put it into the hands of the public for wider testing."

Complete Story

The Joomla! community just completed migrating their forum from SMF over to phpBB3. Brad Baker posted some of the details on Joomla.org's use of phpBB3 for their forum. In part, some of the move to phpBB stemmed from Joomla.org's discomfort from bridging GPL applications with non-GPL applications. Baker answers the question in his own way.

Why did we move to phpBB3?
Good question, and there is a simple answer. Whilst SMF was great for us, it is not licensed under GPL, and as a result many of our users who like to follow the choices we make were going to run in to integration issues in the future. As well as that, the team at phpBB have been great, with many of them offering to help, especially with the conversion.
In any case, we’re not going back, and the future is phpBB3!

Beyond a few minor tweaks, it looks as if Joomla.org was able to convert SMF over to phpBB with very few issues. Considering the Joomla community forum usually has hundreds of users on line at the same time, this is no small move for a forum to make the switch to new software. Congratulations to Joomla!

In 2006, I helped bring a friend's Fish and Tackle store online using open source osCommerce. The project was ugly in both appearance and code as I was merging a legacy site with an SMF forum together with the osCommerce software. As I indicated back then, while osCommerce was functional I was not pleased with the software. I kept on thinking how much easier this project would have been if I had used what I consider as modern CMS's. Specifically, I was thinking Drupal and perhaps even Joomla!.

I have slowly learned in the past few years that merging applications, applications never meant to be merged together, never really results in a good project. I knew even then I never really wanted to try bridging osCommerce, SMF, and Drupal into a single site. Yes, you can end with something fully functional and even pleasant to the eye, but as the site's Web developer you always have this nagging feeling that something is missing and you could have done better. If I had to do the fishing site over again and decided on using Drupal, I would only consider the eCommerce module for Drupal or Ubercart.

Thanks to a post at OpenSourceCommunity.org, I came across a conversion tool to allow you to import the SMF 1.1 database into a phpBB 3 site. Information about the conversion tool can be found in a forum post at phpbb.com. By the way, the script is still in beta, meaning that it works but you might find some bugs since it is not fully tested.

It is not that I'm encouraging anyone to convert their site from SMF to phpBB, but it is very nice to have options such as these available. In fact if anyone can point me to a good conversion tool for migrating a phpBB database to SMF, I would welcome the information.

The aim of this article is not to poke holes, or say ‘vBulletin sucks’, but to provide constructive criticism of a successful product, proving that vBulletin is not always the best choice. In places the article compares vBulletin to Drupal, this is the platform The Webmaster Forums will be switching to and represents many of the things vBulletin should—in our humble opinion—aspire to.

Now this was a interesting. A well written article on why one site is switching over to use Drupal's built in forum rather then continue to use vbulletin.

• Demonstrable experience and knowledge of the relevant database platform.
• Basic to intermediate PHP knowledge.
• Time to dedicate to the project.
• A desire to assist in a free software project and contribute to the community."
  

Simple Machines is proud to announce the release of SMF 1.1.2. Since the release of SMF 1.1 a number of bugs have been found by the community members here and this release should fix all major outstanding bugs in SMF. In addition a couple of security issues were pointed out to us which we have patched in this release. We have also fixed a number of issues with UTF-8 support - including emails being displayed incorrectly in some webmail clients.

In addition to fixes with this release we've also rewritten much of the visual verification (i.e. CAPTCHA) code to allow the admin to set the difficulty of these images as some people were having trouble reading the current images. We'd urge all users to upgrade to SMF 1.1.2 as soon as possible to take advantage of these fixes.

As I mentioned on my forum, a patch for the forum web application, SMF, has been released. Earlier this month, we talked about SMF 1.1 Final being out and how easy it is to upgrade SMF. Installing the patch was even easier with not only SMF's ability to install the package easily but can also the ability to self-download the patches as well through the browser. No FTP or Linux shell required! Something I would like to see in all my favorite content management systems.

The SMF 1.1.1 patch is mostly a bug fixer, but there is a security improvement for a cross-scripting vulnerability found for Internet Explorer users. The changes from SMF 1.1 to 1.1.1 include:

• Fixed potential XSS vulnerability for users of Internet Explorer.
• Changed the way SMF logs IP addresses to make it harder for someone to bypass banning.
• Fixed bug in BBC parsing that could cause an error for people with special characters in their username on certain versions of PHP.
• Fixed apostrophes in smiley location path causing a database error.
• Fixed usage of an array before it was declared causing issues for bridges.
• Fixed Personal Message labels not being properly restricted to the current member.
• Fixed search sometimes returning no results when it should have done.
• The sticky checkbox in prune boards would alternate when it shouldn't have done.
• Send announcements out in slightly smaller chunks.

The complete announcement for the for SMF patch can be found at the Simple Machines forum. The announcement also contains a tarred and gzipped patch for those that need or prefer to upgrade the "old fashion" way.