You make the statement that nobody is making a living on phpbb.
What do you know about the finances?
I am saying that it is possible (even likely) that 30K-60K is coming in each month from the phpbb site, and also the value of the text links on the phpbb homepage are VERY high, each being worth 2K each at least (and I have provided supporting evidence to show the worth). Yet we are left only to guess...
Here is some more info about the value of the text links on phpbb
http://www.tripconyconsulting.com/text_link_pricing.asp" target="_blank
http://easytool.org/buylink.htm" target="_blank (PR 8s at over $1000)
Want more evidence that they are actually selling text link ads?
Let's examine the backlinks of sites that are linked from the homepage of phpbb:
http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl ... tnG=Search" target="_blank
http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl ... tnG=Search" target="_blank
You can see these are sites that are appearing in the "Sponsored Ads" on other sites, which look like text-link-ads.com brokered ads to me. This is only indirect evidence, and I don't think I want to dig deeper, but I'll bet a couple of phone calls would clear things up.
To say phpbb is free of commercial interest...well...I am a skeptic.
If I offended anyone, please accept my apology. I think this is a great product, and I am hopeful that the people at the top are doing the right thing.