With the vast gap between some of the original founders, developers, and team members of SMF and the current SMF team one has to wonder where that unused talent pool is spending it’s time and what it could be doing. After three months of discussion and planning it looks like a path has been chosen!

During a lot of the ongoing discussions with SMF it was clear to many that things weren’t going to change much so the feeling was one of let down. We had let down the community by not making things right. Now, right for one group may not be right for another group and that’s fine. However, this group wanted to be more open and more transparent and have started down that path.

The idea is to create an application to be used as a core. That core will control the basic functionality like security and allow the use of modules to create workable applications. So, for example, you could install this core on your site and if you wanted a forum you could drop a forum module on your site. If you wanted a helpdesk module, you could do the same.

Many of us always wanted Simple Machines to be more than just a forum software and that remains a goal of ours moving forward. Allowing people to do more. We want to make this as painless as possible for the end user allowing them to create their site based on modules and apis.

It’s a hefty goal but one we think we can reach. We have around ten developers on board with signed contributor license agreements, some of those developers worked on SMF such as [Unknown], Thantos, Orstio, and myself. We have a non profit corporation set up, a board of directors set up and working groups functioning.

We, as a group of over 30+ SMF Friends, voted to use the existing Youra Software Foundation NPO since it was already in place but re-elected an entirely new board. We’re operating as Project Phoenix as a code name as we haven’t decided on a name yet but will once the right one comes along. Even the NPO may undergo a name change at some time to reflect it’s new purpose.

Now that we have our code repository set up, a developers work group and a project management work group going – we’re hoping to see some code started before the end of the week. It’s pretty exciting stuff!

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