phpBB3 development

[Acyd Burn]

The point I'm making is the phpBB team can use a few more developers, so if a person has the skill and the will to work with the project, why not let them?

You do not only need "skill", you also have to be able to work within a team, to follow (and live) the philosophy behind the project. You also have to abide to the rules, make compromises, discussing the steps you take and why you are doing so (not just coding as we would do for our one-man-program), documenting it, you have to be able to take a "no" from time to time and you have to support your codebase (most of the time your code is not seperate, it depends on other code and other code in turn depends on yours, you need to have all aspects in mind and how a change would affect the whole program)... i could continue, but i just wanted to make a little point - to add new developers is not as easy as it sounds. Paul made his experiences and i am happy he shared them with us.

All people wanting to help the project in regards of development are able to participate within the community coding project (of course those people will be looked at closely for a team membership - how they manage the mini-projects will show how they would behave as a development team member). But i have to say that i am a bit disappointed.

That much rambling here, so much people saying what they would do, that they can do it much better, that we are idiots and do not know how to manage a project (especially again and again against Paul, who is the most talented programmer i ever had the pleasure to work with, he is top notch and without him phpBB would be nothing). But so few applicants to the community coding project... IF those people really can do it better, why don't they show it? IMO because they are speaking out of their stomache, without experience.

[evilmonkey]

That much rambling here, so much people saying what they would do, that they can do it much better, that we are idiots and do not know how to manage a project (especially again and again against Paul, who is the most talented programmer i ever had the pleasure to work with, he is top notch and without him phpBB would be nothing). But so few applicants to the community coding project... IF those people really can do it better, why don't they show it? IMO because they are speaking out of their stomache, without experience.

I couldn't agree more, which is why I'm trying not to sound like a rambling idiot. As far as I'm concerned, the team is doing a bang-up job. I can see why you're saying it's not as easy as it sounds, so I'll leave you to look over the coding skills of those who participate in the project. Thanks for clearing this up for me. Hope to see a new version in the near future.

[Dog Cow]

I only want to know one more thing (and if I can't get an answer, than so be it): why did Paul quit?

This was written without meaning offense to anyone, it was meant to be purely inqusitive.

Read his blog here: http://www.starstreak.net/blog/2005/09/14/im-free/" target="_blank

[VxJasonxV]

That's a big disappointment, especialy since it can happen to any bb solution. Be that as it may, I hope phpBB doesn't get abandoned altogether.

Something you (and a lot of other people) need to learn.
psoTFX did not build phpBB himself.
Did he do a hell of a lot? Uhhh, yeah. But there are plenty of people who helped/contributed/etc.

I love psoTFX's design, and it will always be his creation, but back off, honestly.

(Note: Since the 2.x overhaul is going on, you people really need to see how many 2.x commits are being made.)

[gweilo8888]

I only want to know one more thing (and if I can't get an answer, than so be it): why did Paul quit?

This was written without meaning offense to anyone, it was meant to be purely inqusitive.

Read his blog here: http://www.starstreak.net/blog/2005/09/14/im-free/" target="_blank

The blog is an interesting ego trip, but little more. It is particularly amusing when you consider that psoTFX liked to criticise others if they posted farewell messages. From a recent post by psoTFX:

I always find it strange when people post comments like this ... about anything. You find it all over the place. Read a forum on Telewest Broadband and you'll find "I've switched to Sky", etc. Good for you, hope you enjoy it. I tend to think of these people as being insecure, they need to have others know of their decision ... not to help them rather to reinforce the idea what they did was "correct".

I guess psoTFX is insecure, and has a need to have others know of his decision, to reinforce the idea that what he did was "correct".

Also rather enlightening in the blog were these comments:

I honestly feel that had phpBB not existed the explosion of community fora would have been considerably lessened.

<snip>

You see there are board and other software authors out there that just don’t “get it”. They appear to see themselves as infaliable and play up the “safety” of their boards. Of course they in the meantime gloss over the various releases fixing “potential” problems … they have that luxury. When you’re being used by perhaps 1000 websites there is little to no glory in discovering exploits. However, when you’re powering 100,000 websites it’s a whole different shooting match.

Google proves rather enlightening here:

• Results 1 - 10 of about 12,500,000 for "powered by phpbb".
• Results 1 - 10 of about 1,170,000 for phpbb exploit.
• Results 1 - 10 of about 16,200,000 for "powered by vbulletin".
• Results 1 - 10 of about 419,000 for vbulletin exploit.

[wGEric]

I guess psoTFX is insecure, and has a need to have others know of his decision, to reinforce the idea that what he did was "correct".

Umm he posted that at his own site, his own blog and not at any *.phpBB.com site. His comment was refering to people that go to the site of what they use to use and telling them they have switched.

Google proves rather enlightening here:

• Results 1 - 10 of about 12,500,000 for "powered by phpbb".
• Results 1 - 10 of about 1,170,000 for phpbb exploit.
• Results 1 - 10 of about 16,200,000 for "powered by vbulletin".
• Results 1 - 10 of about 419,000 for vbulletin exploit.

That proves what? That more people are talking about phpBB's exploits than vBulletin? There could be 100 pages on the same exploit in phpBB and only 10 for an exploit in vBulletin so you prove nothing.

[dhn]

• Results 1 - 10 of about 12,500,000 for "powered by phpbb".
• Results 1 - 10 of about 1,170,000 for phpbb exploit.
• Results 1 - 10 of about 16,200,000 for "powered by vbulletin".
• Results 1 - 10 of about 419,000 for vbulletin exploit.

Apart from that this is a useless statistic as it does simply count all pages on which the text appears, which means that it doesn't count number of forums but forum pages, the "powered by phpbb" search gives me 19,000,000 results.

As for your critique on Paul's blog. Don't you have anything better to do? I think there is a difference from having someone switch to Sky than having someone leave a project one more or less ran for 5 years and spent countless unpaid hours upon? Go away. Please.

[VxJasonxV]

As for your critique on Paul's blog. Don't you have anything better to do? I think there is a difference from having someone switch to Sky than having someone leave a project one more or less ran for 5 years and spent countless unpaid hours upon? Go away. Please.

Not to even mention that he didn't say "I'm contributing to <insert forum name here> from now on."
He said, he's done. And yes, it was on his own website. Key difference there.

[gweilo8888]

Check his post history; he threw in a little farewell hissy fit here too...

And sorry, but that stat is perfectly enlightening. It shows that there are overall quite a few more people posting through vbulletin forums than there are people posting through phpBB forums, but phpBB exploits get talked about FAR more than vbulletin exploits. That means that phpBB exploits have to be either more common, or worse (there's no other reason for them to be talked about more).

That's backed up by the fact that web hosts are sending out emails telling their customers they're going to delete phpBB from their sites if it isn't patched to the latest version, or that they've banned it altogether. It is also backed up by the fact that the impetus behind Olympus has stopped, and the phpBB team is now frantically scrambling to audit the current version for security problems before it gets such a bad reputation that Olympus is a dead duck before it is ever even released.

If you ask me, that's a good call on their part. It shows that somebody's finally listening to the users, and I think that's in fair part because psoTFX has gone. (If he was still around, this criticism wouldn't have been allowed - if we'd had this discussion in his day, the posts would have been deleted and the thread locked, after a sarcastic comment about how if we thought other scripts were better and/or more secure we should *beep* off and use them instead).

[dhn]

If you ask me, that's a good call on their part. It shows that somebody's finally listening to the users, and I think that's in fair part because psoTFX has gone. (If he was still around, this criticism wouldn't have been allowed - if we'd had this discussion in his day, the posts would have been deleted and the thread locked, after a sarcastic comment about how if we thought other scripts were better and/or more secure we should *beep* off and use them instead).

Go away.

Seriously.