phpBB Discussion • Re: What is the Future of phpBB?

No, this is not about when the next version of phpBB is going to be released but is about where, if at all, phpBB is going.

There has, and is, much talk about phpBB4 being the next major step forward but from what I can see phpBB4, if it ever comes to fruition, will only be a minor improvement over phpBB 3.3 - which in itself is still basically phpBB 3.0 with the addition of extensions (yes I know there have been a few minor additions, but nothing that is significant)

Currently there does not appear, to the outsider, to be any plan whatsoever as to where phpBB is going and, dare I say, there also appears to be a lack of leadership and drive and this is more than apparent with the Chameleon project.

The Chameleon project has been underway for the better part of four years now and is still nowhere near seeing the light of day. Once the "framework" is complete there is still a massive amount of work to be done - all the templates need to be rewritten, some core code needs to be reworked, css needs to be created and most, if not all, of the js needs to be rewritten. On top of that almost every front facing extension will need to be rewritten, or at best modified. By my estimation, based on the current rate of progress, we are looking at another four years - minimum.

Now before anyone jumps on this I am more than aware that everyone involved with the development of phpBB is a volunteer and does it in their spare time but going back to the pre phpBB 3.1 days there was an "army" of volunteers working on the development of phpBB as can clearly be evidenced by the number of "Former Team Members" - where are these people now? Yes people move on for all sorts of reasons but any well run organisation would have replaced them, or at least some of them, by now.

The development of phpBB would appear to have stalled with major aspects, such as moving all of the ACP to controllers having been reversed. I am prepared to be proven wrong but there is no plan being actively progressed to finish off what was started with phpBB 3.1 - to complete the moving of all major components to work with Symfony.

In my view, and that of some others, phpBB is in danger of dying within the next few years unless some drastic action is taken in formulating a plan as to where phpBB is going and how it is going to get there - and if such a plan does exist then why can we not know about it?

phpBB presents itself as a "community" but over the last seven years or so the inclusiveness of the community has evolved into exclusiveness - there is virtually no nurturing or encouragement for change. There have over the last year or two been some suggestions made by members of this board to look at doing some things in a different way but any such suggestions are immediately shot down by Team members - in other words "this is how we have always done it and so it will stay". This type of attitude only serves to disenfranchise members from offering to help and drives them away.

I know that this will not make for comfortable reading for some members of this board, and some will deny that much, if any, of what I have posted is true but I feel that it needs to be said in public. I have tried over the years to have this discussion with members of the Management Team but I have never got any reaction - it is as if by burying heads in the sand it will go away.

So my question is - "What is the future for phpBB"?

Statistics: Posted by JLA — Sun Apr 07, 2024 4:33 pm