Not true. I use boards of all kind - phpBB (I've used Olympus CVS AND 2.0.12), vBulletin, Invision, SMF - and their permissions levels are all equal.Look carefully at phpBB3. There are some features in it even vB doesn't have, like the level of permissions control.
I was NOT, however, exaggerating the length of time it takes me to install 50 mods, since I like to heavily modify core. Drupal - 5 minutes. vBulletin - 30 minutes. phpBB - 2 days (I only work about three hours a day on modding, though). EasyMod is nice, yes, but I'd rather have THAT in core, since it's something other forums are already starting to incorporate.phpBB3 has a modular ACP, MCP and UCP. phpBB also has EasyMod, not officially, but it works. And you're exaggerating the difficulty of installing mods.
Please note: I wasn't using this to argue against EVERY phpBB person, just the fools who made spelling an issue here. It's not. I just brought up the fact that many intelligent people can't spell for beans online, or have better things to do. You haven't argued that way, so you're in the clear. ^_^Sorry. You lose. You're strawmanning. The reason there is no spellchecker in phpBB is because it is impractical and takes too much server processing time. Go get your own spellchecker.
I have finals to go to, but I'll finish this later. Sorry for cutting short!