What's happening with MyBB 2?

[Oedipus]

So I've been out of the community for a while. What happend to MyBB 2? Do we know the release date? Some new screenshots?

 

[MagicalAzareal]

They're working on 1.9 right now, 2.0 is delayed.

It includes a new template system, if I recall.


Some pictures of 1.9.

 

[kawaii]

2.0 was formally placed on hold some months ago. Currently we're working on 1.9 which will include a brand new responsive theme (recycled from 2.0) and a migration of the theme templates from the database to the filesystem.

 

[LeadCrow]

Personal opinion: the few active contributors still cant make up their mind about where to lead the script. It could've been fine if they kept up with modern forum landscape but modern mobile-first scripts are eating away the marketshare of 'legacy' scripts like mybb and consorts. With so many innovative free scrips available, mybb doesnt feel special anymore compared to when it was considered 'poor man's vbulletin'.

Current mybb webmasters still face a dilemna even if 1.9 holds its promises. Do they wait for its general availability uncertain about its fitness for use, or do they migrate to other scripts with already mature ecosystems? It's still a desktop-first script, and while suitable for powerusers and oldschool forumgoers it needs to regain some mindshare at least by adopting more modern paradigms than what was decided upon in the roadmap blueprints years ago.

 

[Jason5]

I loved how the software used to be with lot of contributors and users. Now things have changed as paid software took over, the no of contributors has come down and the developers are confused and wondering what can be done. If they would have added some basic features in 1.8 like - Like, Alerts, simple SEO then it would have been great.

 

[macfanpl]

I hope you all are well aware that someway mid-June last year (2018) me (after having long and exhausting) discussion with my bosses, got to the point where it was viable/suitable for us (=company) to offer taking ownership/stewardship over. We'd create dedicated team to work only on MyBB. It was because they (MyBB team) lamented that they do not have free time to contribute thus development is so slow.....

What was their reaction to my offer of taking MyBB over? rude. They first publicly ridicule me, than gave me post moderation (multiple times) and eventually banning me.....

All I want to say is that they act as if they were untouchable and/or have all the knowledge that is here to gain..... try to say something thats against current line of thinking of team (members) and you will be dealt with swiftly, decisively and not fair....

Such behaviour drives people away. Main reason of situation whole MyBB is currently in, is sole team responsibility. They are killing good, with much potential, project.

My 2p's

 

[euantor]

I hope you all are well aware that someway mid-June last year (2018) me (after having long and exhausting) discussion with my bosses, got to the point where it was viable/suitable for us (=company) to offer taking ownership/stewardship over. We'd create dedicated team to work only on MyBB. It was because they (MyBB team) lamented that they do not have free time to contribute thus development is so slow.....

What was their reaction to my offer of taking MyBB over? rude. They first publicly ridicule me, than gave me post moderation (multiple times) and eventually banning me.....

All I want to say is that they act as if they were untouchable and/or have all the knowledge that is here to gain..... try to say something thats against current line of thinking of team (members) and you will be dealt with swiftly, decisively and not fair....

Such behaviour drives people away. Main reason of situation whole MyBB is currently in, is sole team responsibility. They are killing good, with much potential, project.

My 2p's

I'm going to assume you are the "devs" user who graced the MyBB community forum with your presence off and on for a couple of months last year.

If so, let's tell the truth about what really happened, shall we?

You appeared on the community forums out of nowhere with no past known contributions. Within your first couple of posts, you were disparaging team members and others and claiming you (and your company apparently) could do a better job writing and maintaining MyBB. You were invited, multiple times, to contribute to the project by way of answering support threads; or suggesting features; or testing issues and pull requests on gitHub; or through any of the other thousands of ways that users can contribute to the project.

Each time this invitation was extended, you would disappear for a while, then turn up again like a bad penny and demand that all of the MyBB step down and declare you our glorious leader.

Excuse us if we decided not to blindly trust somebody we don't know, with no proven publicly visible track record to take over a project that none of us feel like giving up on. To add to that, MyBB isn't a company or anything - none of the team could "hand over" or give you ownership of the project. MyBB was started by Chris, and he alone is the only person who could really hand it over.

Saying that, MyBB is and always has been free and open source. We reminded you of this fact multiple times too. There is absolutely nothing to stop you from forking MyBB and renaming it to work on it under a different name with a different set of contributors. This exact thing happened with SMF and ElkArte.

You did at least take this into account - you forked MyBB to your personal GitHub account as a private repository! You then made it into a private project, and invited my self to it as a collaborator. You then... made 5 commits. In these commits you removed a couple of lines from the CONTRIBUTING file, added a binary file, then deleted said binary file and made some random comments to a few ACP JS files.

I think we made the right choice not immediately handing the project over to you and declaring you our one true benevolent leader.

 

[LeadCrow]

someway mid-June last year (2018) me (after having long and exhausting) discussion with my bosses, got to the point where it was viable/suitable for us (=company) to offer taking ownership/stewardship over. We'd create dedicated team to work only on MyBB

Not to doubt your company's clout but the proposal might have been weak. Could you summarize the important points (assuming not confidential) ?
Why would your group be a better steward for mybb, and how could the project's continuity and the community's interests be preserved? Funding and finding codemonkeys alone is not sufficient, good governance is also necessary.

So far you dont have a documented history of managing opensource projects, so I suspect there'd have been trust issues longtime major backers of the projects would not have had.

 

[euantor]

My previous post was slightly off topic, and for that I apologise. However, I felt I had to respond.

To answer the original question, MyBB 2.0 is on hold as was previously mentioned.

We felt this was the best approach due to the reduced activity from team members contributing to 2.0 and a couple of other factors. Many in our community were already asking why we weren't simply taking MyBB 1.8 and modernising it incrementally, so we decided to head out down that route seeing as it should lead to less development friction.

In doing so, we chose several key areas to focus on for MyBB 1.9. This is primarily the template and theming system. We're moving to the Twig template system rather than basic `eval()`'d PHP code stored in the database. We're also adding support for SCSS stylesheets and introducing a new responsive default theme.

Our current status is that most templates have been converted to Twig, and the new theme is done (save for some minor tweaks that may be realised after further testing). I'm currently working to rebase the changes for 1.9 to ensure they contain all of the latest fixes form the 1.8 branch, and then we need to work on updating the ACP modules to actually allow editing of the new templates.

We also have some plans to have a look at some other subsystems such as how we send emails.

A good way to follow 1.9 development is the 1.9 milestone on GitHub: https://github.com/mybb/mybb/milestone/22

 

[MagicalAzareal]

I'm going to assume you are the "devs" user who graced the MyBB community forum with your presence off and on for a couple of months last year.

I forgot about devs, he was one crazy, crazy guy.

 

[macfanpl]

let's tell the truth about what really happened, shall we?

We shall.....

You appeared on the community forums out of nowhere

Just as any other user out there.....

you were disparaging team members

Saying what can be done better (by someone) doesnt mean disparaging them. I wasnt doing that. I was just criticizing.

claiming you (and your company apparently) could do a better job writing and maintaining MyBB

Because thats the fact.

You were invited, multiple times, to contribute to the project by way of answering support threads; or suggesting features; or testing issues and pull requests on gitHub; or through any of the other thousands of ways that users can contribute to the project.

I was not. Not by PM, public post, post in Private Inquires..... nothing....
All I was given was bashing my person and my company for offering to help...... so - after I was given a ban - I stopped temporarilly, Than (after some time) I created another account (=> someoneBig) and hey guess what? I was given post moderation also? For what? Hell I dont know. Just because someone in the team dont like me....... there was NO other reason. After some time I noticed post moderation was lifted. Also without any notice.

and demand that all of the MyBB step down and declare you our glorious leader.

That "demand" was demonstrated not only by me..... but you (=team) was doing your best to silence those saying this......

MyBB was started by Chris

Is he even real person or is it one of current team member impersonating him? I think the latter Im affraid.....

that none of us feel like giving up on

Sure..... power is everthing not to be given up at any cost...... even if it means lying and making fool out of yourself...... indeed speaks volumes......

You then... made 5 commits

And? whats the importance of this? You know why I invited you? Because we are truly open and wanted to have valued contributor onboard.....

Oh and you "forgot" to mention how you deleted my post detaileing take-over scenarios..... No in fact you havent forgotten; you ommitted this fact on purpose, because it would reveal your true intentions/unwillingness to hand the power over.........

I think we made the right choice not immediately handing the project over to you and declaring you our one true benevolent leader.

I think you (whole team) are just power hungry persons, with one clear goal: not handling the power to anyone at any cost.......at least it seems like this.

 

[Tom Kent]

I don’t want to take this even more off topic... but while many of your personal attacks have been deleted, many of your posts still exist, including this one: https://community.mybb.com/thread-212883-post-1284217.html#pid1284217

You never approached us with a concrete plan, you never introduced the mysterious “company” you are apparently Vice President of, you never introduced us to the team you planned to replace us with.

You were invited to contribute, but declined. We would never just hand over all of MyBB to some stranger to the project with zero proven development experience. Have you ever even written a plugin for MyBB? Do you understand the intricacies of the merge system?

Please stop wasting everyone’s time with this crusade of yours.

 

[fixer]

 

[zappaDPJ]

I don’t want to take this even more off topic

It's relevant and good to hear from both sides when there's a disagreement. Welcome to TAZ Tom Kent

 

[macfanpl]

Tom Kent: I seriously dont see whats wrong with the post you linked to? Or is it sth else you tried to prove with this link?

I don’t want to take this even more off topic

Its another (lame) excuse of yours.... you are simply too afraid of loosing power.... thats why you are doing what you can to avoid admitting your wrongdoing..... as of it: you've linked useless (as per this discussion) post of mine, but you have not clarified what for.....

And hell yes - will repeat what has been said by me in the linked post :: seeing whats going on here, its high time you (Tom Kent) resign......
You are defacing team, making them loose credibility.......

 

[macfanpl]

You never approached us with a concrete plan

Thats a lie. I did approach you publicly. I have written very detailed plan but you (or someone else from team) simply deleted that post without saying a word as to why.....

 

[MagicalAzareal]

Is he even real person or is it one of current team member impersonating him? I think the latter Im affraid.....

That is pretty tin foil hat territory, even by my standards. It's kind of like saying that Kier isn't real and is just a fictitious person invented by XenForo.

If you want to fork the project or create your software, then you're free to do so, especially if you feel that the mainline project is heading towards a dead end. It becomes strange, however when it's treated almost like some sort of popularity contest involving people who registered yesterday.

If you want to collaborate in a project, then calling for people to "resign" as if there is a long line of people ready to replace them is probably not a good way to get off on the right foot. And even there, real code and plans shines above all else.

Contributing is a simple matter of a forking a repo, work on whatever bits and pieces matter to you, and putting the changes up for approval from a maintainer with the process being repeated over and over until some semblence of a working relationship is formed.

This isn't quite as "cool" as playing the "hero" who fires the entire team and replaces them with yet to be mentioned "more competent" and hopefully not fictional people, but it is more or less how just about every open source project on the face of the planet works.

 

[macfanpl]

project is heading towards a dead end

Its not heading towards dead end.... it IS dead. MyBB as a software IS dead. Believe it or no.

 

[Tom Kent]

macfanpl the post I linked to is the most “concrete” plan I can find that you posted. I looked through all 139 posts you’ve made (including the 41 unapproved posts) and that is the most detail you ever went into. The only more concrete plans you may have posted is via PM to someone directly, but obviously I don’t have access to those.

Additionally, in that thread you are invited more than once to contribute to the project. Something you say we have never done.

Finally, I’d like to point out your alt account was put on post moderation, and will be banned specifically because you used it to circumvent a ban on your main account. The rules specifically prohibit this.

Edit: it’s not even like we simply do due diligence, you literally never gave us any details about this mysterious company you work for/are VP of/manage a coding team in.

 

[macfanpl]

I looked through all 139 posts you’ve made (including the 41 unapproved posts) and that is the most detail you ever went into

Its clear to me that you are trying to defend someone from team (or maybe even yourself).....

n that thread you are invited more than once

Prove it by quoting here appropriate replies.....

you used it to circumvent a ban on your main account

Creating new account inplace of banned one is circumventing? So what would you call creating second account while first one is active? Im all ears....