PunBB forks into FluxBB

Is this a repeat of what happened to Mambo and Joomla!?

Awhile back the rights to PunBB were sold to a company.

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.

Then a recent switch to a new domain occurred.

Moving the PunBB website under the informer.com domain is a way for our benefactors to promote their other services to the PunBB community and to promote PunBB to users of their other services.

Today many of the active developers mentioned they were forking the project into what they call FluxBB.

Some of you may have been wondering about the future of PunBB and the current development team following Rickard’s announcement that he will not be actively involved with PunBB, at least for the time being. … Now that circumstances have changed with the inevitable shift of power within the project, we all feel that we need a degree of control over future development which is no longer possible. We all share a desire to develop software for the benefit of the community and ourselves, without commercial concerns influencing the final product. This is not a condemnation of PunBB’s current owners: we simply feel that this change is necessary so that we as developers can maintain full control over the development process.

It didn’t bother me they had sold the rights to PunBB as long as it remained GPL, but what this split means now, I’m not sure. How many people will now abandon PunBB for FluxBB? A lot depends on how active the FluxBB project becomes and if the new PunBB development takes off.

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Comments 1-2 of 2 to “PunBB forks into FluxBB”

  1. 1 · segfaultlabs says:

    It’s obvious. Four core developers create fork project based on this same code. It’s just a matter of time for FluxBB to completely replace PunBB.

    Actually It’s pretty similar to Joomla vs. Mambo situation some time ago.

  2. 2 · drmoo says:

    The development is obvious indeed: Almost all long-time supporters of PunBB moved to FluxBB right away. FluxBB’s development is continuing, while at PunBB there hasn’t been a changeset committed since the four dev’s left… oh wait, yes, there has: one of them removed his name from the developer list…

    The idea of PunBB seems to continue to live in FluxBB…

    Release Candidate 1 is coming up…