See this listing from days later in September to see that the team distribution in March 2002 is essentially the same as late(r) September 2001. [Edit: or maybe not. The Wayback Machine seems not to be showing a late September listing there, judging from the link, though I was following a late September lising. In any case, I don't recall Bart ever being at the development helm of phpBB 1.x nor of 2.0, and there seems to be no extant evidence that he was.]code reader wrote: actually, i was thinking from sometime in summer 2001 is when bart became "chief developer".
iiuc, either late (nov-dec) 2001 or early 2002 paul took over. him being lead developer on march 2002 is consistent with my understanding of the history.
I'm not sure where your understanding comes from. I have no experience that I can recall to confirm any of that, neither from the outside nor from the inside. But I'm not so confident of my recollections that I'd care to press them very far. My own view is that you see James as being much more hands off than he was even during phpBB 2 development, which was, from the beginning, Paul's game from a coding point of view. To see James move to a more hands off approach requires watching his participation as 2.2 development cranked up, I think.code reader wrote: that's why i said james was not "in charge of everything" from very early in the project.
of course, since he started it, there was a time he was the only person "on the team", so clearly there was a time he was in charge of "everything", but i believe responsibilities were delegated almost as soon as there was "a team".
iiuc, for a long time james had the theoretical authority to override any other team member on any phpbb-related issue, so in theory you are probably right.
however, i doubt very much that this authority was ever exercised, so, in practice, less than a year after the project started, other people oversaw, with practically full independence different aspects of the project.
Edit: Sorry about the multiple edits. I can neither type, nor spell, and thinking is really iffy even on a good day.