Topic: The future of FluxBB
After the considerable discussion of the future of FluxBB we want to make this announcement to confirm what will happen over the coming months and the longer term plan for the future. I am going to break this up into the plans for the different versions of FluxBB.
Version 1.2/1.4
Smartys has already been working on an upgrade to 1.2, he has kindly offered to contribute his efforts to FluxBB, and we will be releasing this code as a 1.4 beta. We then intend to release a 1.4 final version soon after when we are satisfied any major issues have been resolved. The following points were the most discussed so we want to make them clear:
There will be the option to upgrade from versions 1.2 and 1.3 to 1.4
There will be no extensions system for 1.4
Modifications for 1.2 may be compatitible for 1.4 but some may need to be updated
There will be little visual change from 1.2 to 1.4, styles for 1.2 should work with 1.4
Version 1.3
We will not be continuing to directly develop version 1.3 (I will discuss 2.0 in a moment), however we will be releasing a final version, which will probably be revision 718 which many people are currently using, but with any minor markup issues fixed. We do not intend to support this release, and it is not intended for people to start using now, but we don't want to abandon people currently running 1.3 with many of their own extensions. We will recommend people using 1.3 currently move to 1.4 when it is released, but at the same time we know not everyone will.
Version 2.0
This is the next major version of FluxBB and what we are most excited about, it will be similar to 1.3 but will include a way of creating per-style templates, isolation of markup and code, as well as other features we have yet to discuss in detail. We want the development of this to go better than 1.3 did, and as such we are first going to plan exactly what we want from 2.0, and we will then develop it. There are currently no definite decisions for 2.0 and we will be discussing them. We will make further announcements as and when decisions are made.
Other annoucements
As well as the future of the different branches we have some other important plans.
Internationalisation
Once 1.4 has been released we will be supporting internationalisation of this site, this will mean the homepage, about, and downloads pages will have localised versions, the wiki already supports this, and for languages that wish there will be localised forums moderated by volunteers who speak that language. There will be more on this once 1.4 is out.
Modifications, styles and other resources
Up until now we have left the hosting of resources for FluxBB 1.2 up to punres.org, with the release of 1.4 we feel we should do more, this means we will be changing the extension repository we had planned to support hosting of mods for 1.x, as well as styles and eventually extensions for 2.x. We hope to have this system up at least in a basic form shortly in order to be available for the release of 1.4.
The FluxBB Team
Perhaps the most immediately interesting announcement is that we wish to involve more people directly with the development of FluxBB. There are many jobs that need done and the more people involved the better and faster we feel we can get them done. This team will be largely self-appointed, how it will work is anyone who wishes to get involved simply needs to drop me an email. We expected some evidence that you would be good to have on the team, which could be that you've been active on these forums, or just a link to your site, etc. We will then add you to a usergroup on this forum, and you will be able to talk in a private forum.
The plan is to break up the jobs that need done as much as possible on trac, and to allow anyone on the team to take any of the tasks, once someone accepts a task it will be expected that they complete it in a reasonable time frame and to a reasonable quality. No one will be forced to take tasks though, it will simply be contribute when you can. We also would expect people in the team to post on the forum and be generally helpful. In the future we may also have jobs such as auditing modifications and extensions for code quality. We also plan to create a todo list for the wiki and hope people will contribute to that.
If you feel you can contribute in any way please feel free to send me a quick email. We need experience in any (and all) of php, mysql, postgresql, sqlite, css, xhtml, javascript, or anything else you feel could help, we also need people to write documentation and otherwise look after the wiki. We would also like to hear from you if you feel you could contribute but for some reason we aren't giving you the opportunity you require.
We hope you are as excited about the future of FluxBB as we are, we know some of these announcements will cause problems for people, but we feel this will give us the strongest future, and in the long run be best for everyone.
