Changes in PunBB

[Blacklord]

(the forum software we use here).

From the developer :

"Now, as some of you might have heard, the rights to PunBB are no longer owned by myself and/or the other developers. Early this summer, we were approached by a company that wanted to support the project financially. Apart from sponsoring the project, they wanted to later down the line offer paid-for web services in relation to PunBB (for example commercial grade PunBB hosting). We decided we liked the idea and sold the rights to the project. Now, it's important to understand that with an application released under the GNU General Public License, the ownership of the copyright is pretty irrelevant. The fact that we don't own the copyright anymore doesn't really change anything. It should also be clear that once code is released under the GPL, it remains that way forever i.e. it cannot be made closed source retrospectively. PunBB stays open source and the core development team is the same. There's no evil conspiracy. Think of it as a way for us developers to make a buck while continuing to work on PunBB in the exact same way we did before. We haven't made a big song and dance about this because we know it doesn't affect the project in any noticeable way. We haven't even bothered to change the copyright notices yet. The only thing that has changed from before is that we, for obvious reasons, no longer accept donations."


My 2 cents worth :

Code that has already been released cannot be un-GPLed.  However, the copyright and license on new code (future releases) is not governed by the GPL unless it is released under those terms.  There is no guarantee that future releases will be released under the GPL.  There are several examples of GPL projects that switched to proprietary models; Active Collab comes to mind.  That is entirely within the rights of the copyright holder.

The question is, will the upcoming 1.3 release (which promises lot's of good things) be GPL still ?

Perhaps time to change forum software ? There are issues with this (& I'll throw it open for discussion) along the lines of retaining user data & post data; if we change software, is their conversion utils available ?

Are people sufficiently happy with the existing software that a change may not even be required (or desired ?)

Comments ?

[Guest]

This forum, especially the way you have it configured, is by far the best I've seen.  I especially like the fact that the lasts posts since your last visit actually works and the link for new posts actually takes you to (gasp!) new posts.

[nikoniko]

Unless there's a compelling reason for you to switch, I'd prefer keeping PunBB. There may be other packages which promise the same features, but I've never found one that does a better of helping users keep up with new posts.

[airship]

Please just let us know if you're going to switch. I'd like to archive my posts and a few others if there's any chance at all they'll be lost.

[Golan Klinger]

If the licenses changes you may not get future versions but since this version is working well for you, it's a bit of a non-issue. If there are features you want add or bugfixes that need doing, you can always do them yourselves (or have someone do them for you.) Besides, if the new version goes closed, I'm sure PunBB will fork.

[Blacklord]

Seems that we may as well stay locked to the current version then, I must admit, it's pretty stable - I only wish certain BBS package releases back in the day were as stable

[bacon]

Unless there's a compelling reason for you to switch, I'd prefer keeping PunBB. There may be other packages which promise the same features, but I've never found one that does a better of helping users keep up with new posts.

While I think the software is perfectly OK, I don't think it's does a good job of helping users keep up with new posts. In fact, I think it sucks in that respect. When I log into the forum I see a lot of subforums showing the "new posts" icon. If I then read a post and decide I want to reply to it, in the time it takes to write the reply, the "new posts" icons apparently time out, so when I go back to the start page I can no longer see which sub forums have any new posts.

[Blacklord]

Unless there's a compelling reason for you to switch, I'd prefer keeping PunBB. There may be other packages which promise the same features, but I've never found one that does a better of helping users keep up with new posts.

While I think the software is perfectly OK, I don't think it's does a good job of helping users keep up with new posts. In fact, I think it sucks in that respect. When I log into the forum I see a lot of subforums showing the "new posts" icon. If I then read a post and decide I want to reply to it, in the time it takes to write the reply, the "new posts" icons apparently time out, so when I go back to the start page I can no longer see which sub forums have any new posts.

That can be changed - it's currently set to 600 seconds before it will mark them as no longer new. I've set it for that otherwise some people may get old posts as new when they return.

Alternatively, you can also do what I do, open each new link in a new tab in Firefox & read at your leisure.

cheers,

Lance

[Guest]

Alternatively, you can also do what I do, open each new link in a new tab in Firefox & read at your leisure.

I do this as well, but you can also use the back button on your browser to go back to the list of new posts.

[bacon]

Those are just workarounds (and at work I can't use Firefox. Probably shouldn't be surfing in here from work though...). I still prefer the way new posts are handled by phpBB (as used by the Denial forum Lemon64, and others) where there is no timeout; instead the posts remain marked as new until you've read them or logged out from the site and logged in again.

[Blacklord]

Those are just workarounds (and at work I can't use Firefox. Probably shouldn't be surfing in here from work though...). I still prefer the way new posts are handled by phpBB (as used by the Denial forum Lemon64, and others) where there is no timeout; instead the posts remain marked as new until you've read them or logged out from the site and logged in again.

Unfortunately I'm not a fan of phpBB, looked at it, didn't like it, moved on to this. PunBB is fast, simple & largely hack-proof & lacks the bloat of phpBB.

cheers,

Lance

[nikoniko]

Hmm... I never noticed the timeout. I list all the new posts in one tab, then read each one in a separate tab.

[airship]

D'oh! I have the same issue with new post timeouts, but I never thought of using tabs.

[bacon]

I didn't mean to sound like I wanted you to switch board software. I'm only one user being dissatisfied with a small detail. Overall, I like the board: it's fast and responsive and it seems to work really well.

[Guest]

But on Denial and Lemon64 you can't go directly to the new posts, it takes you to the first post of the thread, which is even worse because you don't know where to start reading.

BTW, IE7 has tabbed browsing and for IE6 you can use the Yahoo or Windows Live toolbars to add tabbed browsing.

[Golan Klinger]

But on Denial and Lemon64 you can't go directly to the new posts, it takes you to the first post of the thread, which is even worse because you don't know where to start reading.

Of course you can. When you see the overview of new messages, do NOT click on the subject of the thread. See the little piece of paper icon with an arrow pointing to it? Click on that. That will take you directly to the posts you haven't read.

[nikoniko]

By the way, Lance, do you backup the forum database regularly? It'd be a shame to ever lose our posts to hardware failure / hacking / whatever else.

[Guest]

But on Denial and Lemon64 you can't go directly to the new posts, it takes you to the first post of the thread, which is even worse because you don't know where to start reading.

Of course you can. When you see the overview of new messages, do NOT click on the subject of the thread. See the little piece of paper icon with an arrow pointing to it? Click on that. That will take you directly to the posts you haven't read.

Wouldn't a (new posts) link be so much more obvious?

[Golan Klinger]

Wouldn't a (new posts) link be so much more obvious?

I knew you would post something like this rather than saying, "I didn't know that. Thanks." What can I tell you? Millions of us were able to figure it out without it being literally spelled out.

[Blacklord]

By the way, Lance, do you backup the forum database regularly? It'd be a shame to ever lose our posts to hardware failure / hacking / whatever else.

Yup, automated backup on the server host & also the forum software does it's own backup of it's database(s).

Lance

[Dragos]

Having worked in commercial datacenters for the last 9 years, let me tell you a little about the host doing a back-up for you.  Do not count on it!!!  figure a schedule and means to dump the db somewhere other than their backup and get it out of their facility.

[Blacklord]

Having worked in commercial datacenters for the last 9 years, let me tell you a little about the host doing a back-up for you.  Do not count on it!!!  figure a schedule and means to dump the db somewhere other than their backup and get it out of their facility.

I control the host

cheers,

Lance