Eric @ phpbb.com: "We are pleased to announce the opening of a phpBB Blog. This blog will be written by the phpBB Team on various topics related to phpBB and communities. The blog will provide an inside look into the phpBB Teams while benefiting the community.

Be sure to check it out: http://www.phpbb.com/blog"

Original Announcement

SitePoint: Once a community has reached a certain level of activity, your community staff -- your moderators -- play a vital role in the continued success of the operation.

Complete Story

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.

"Primarily this [bbPress 0.9] is a compatibility release so that we can continue to provide the same integration levels with WordPress as in the past, however quite a few other improvements have made their way into this version."

Complete Story

"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

I joined the new Content Wrangler Community with hopes of improving my social networking with other content management professionals. Scott Abel discusses his goals for the community on his blog.

The Content Wrangler Community is the new social network dedicated to people who value content as a business asset, worthy of being effectively managed. This is the place where technical communicators, medical and science writers, marketing pros, online community managers, document engineers, information architects, localization and translation pros, taxonomists, bloggers, documentation and training managers, and content creators of all types hang out. It’s much more than a blog. It’s a place to join your peers, to share, to collaborate, to contribute, to find the information you need.

Hopefully this community will take-off in a beneficial way as I've seen similar online communities not become any more than a "mailing list" of "friends" promoting their own agenda.

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!

"The 13th of December, 2007 marked the beginning of another chapter of the success story that is open source software, as phpBB version 3 was released. phpBB, an open source bulletin board system, was created by James Atkinson in 2000 as a forum solution for his wife. From its low-key beginnings, phpBB has gone from strength to strength, earning itself a reputation as one of the "killer apps" for the PHP scripting language."

Complete Story

Amy Stephen, site leader for Open Source Community, submitted her 5,000th post in the Joomla! Community Forum. The Joomla! community makes a big deal out of these type of achievements and we've covered some of their milestones in the past. You know what? It's hard not to celebrate someone else's contributions to open source communities. Congratulations to Amy!

Amy Stephen's 5,000th post in the Joomla! Community Forum

Amy Stephen submitted her 5,000th post in the Joomla! Community Forum. She is a very helpful and open-minded lady, we should call her the Honorary Joomla! Core Team Member: she was an attendee of the OSCMS Summit hosted by Yahoo! last year and she gave there lectures about Joomla!. She encourages the forum members getting involved in the project and now she is one of the enthusiastic supporters of the GHOP Contest - she submitted the fifth of her posts in this forum.