With the release of MyBB 1.6.13, the team felt there was a need to address some issues that affect the future of the Project, the Community and the Team in general.
Developers and MyBB Development Workflow
With the departure of Nathan and Tomm, MyBB has once again found itself in need of active team members. This, along with the unavailability of most current developers due to time constraints caused by life issues, led to us breaking our workflow, which as you may have noticed ended up delaying the release of MyBB 1.6.13. After MyBB 1.6.13 was out, work on 1.8 Beta 1 has been resumed (and you can clearly see that by examining the commits made for on github in the ‘feature’ branch).
Moving forward with 2.0.
Initially 1.6 was supposed to lead to 2.0 directly, but with the team feeling that 2.0 was still in very early development, MyBB would lose to its competitors for quite a bit of time (the development time of 2.0). Thus, work was put into “modernizing” the look and feel of 1.6 before the complete rewrite, and so 1.8 was born. As anticipated, this has delayed work on 2.0 of course. Once 1.8 is released (Beta 1 is nearing its completion; at time of writing only one feature is left to finish: jQuery conversion; all the other open issues aimed for Beta 1 are bugs) work will start on 2.0. There has been a lot of talk of MyBB being a “dead project”, but this is very far from the truth. As an open source project, as long as we have active developers, the project will never be “dead”. But we need the community’s help – we’ve been helping you for a long time, we’re asking you to help us now – so if you feel that you know MyBB pretty well but most of all, if you feel that you have value to give to the team and project, contact us!
Changes that we are implementing now
It became apparent to us, that one of the major problems we have had was losing key team leaders. As you may remember, we recently got rid of the “Team Leader” role, and went with a more equal structure. This did not promote (as we had intended) productivity. So we have come up with a new system, whereby developers will take turns taking the “lead” on a per version basis. This will keep them all updated with the procedures required to package and release new versions. We are pleased to announce the Stefan T will be assuming the role of Lead Developer first and and the next should be Pirata Nervo (after that a new internal poll will be made). We are also pleased to announce that King Louis will be assuming the position of SQA team lead (the leader here doesn’t change as we believe the SQA team requires a static leader).
Recruitment
As mentioned above, we are now looking for more active members for both Development, Support, and more importantly SQA (we’re running low here!). If you feel that you would be a good addition to the team, why not submit some pull requests on Github and/or drop an application to using the contact form, posting a thread in Private Inquiries (recommended) or even by PM’ing us. You cand read more about the responsibilities here. Do not be afraid of contacting us, we won’t bite you – but we’ll be always be honest with you.
MyBB Blog 
You guys should stop talking about the future until you can deliver on the present. Saying 1.8 Beta 1 is almost finished except for jQuery doesn’t mean much when it’s already a year and a half late as a public release.
As you can see on Github all major parts of the JQuery conversion are already finished.
That’s nice to hear, although I’m not a developer, so I am obviously not checking GitHub to ascertain the status of the project. (Often get the feeling that non-developers are left out of the conversation here.)
We’re basically just trying to finish the jQuery conversion now to get Beta 1 out. And most of it is done already. Beta 2 is for feature improvements while we start working on 2.0. So the time between 1.8 and the alpha and beta stages of 2.0 will be shorter.
Apologies for posting this publicly (my opinion only) but you guys need a bomb up your ass.
Unless the team can feel 1.8 beta can be released within the next 3 months it should be ditched. The plans for this put MyBB ahead of its competitors for quite a while but, now, you’re falling behind. I’m actually more looking forward to IPS4 than this.
MyBB has some talented designers and developers. Gather these together so they’re on the same page, rather than different books altogether, and get working PUBLICLY on 2.0. You’ve got the majority of design work complete, it should only take you 6 months to get a core forum application based on Laravel tried and tested. You can then build from there, it doesn’t have to be a complete product.
Good luck guys. Before talking about the future, make sure you know what you’re doing.
Is this actually Tom?
Never seen him be anything but cordial. If he has such harsh words, it’s hard to not wonder what it means for the project’s internal status.
(Hope you’re doing well, man. Would love to chat sometime.)
Yes the team feels MyBB 1.8 can be released in less than 3 months. Beta 1 should be out very soon and Beta 2 will be focused mostly on bug fixes. After MyBB 1.8 Beta 2 is considered stable, we’ll release 1.8 officially.
Looks good. I don’t mind the delay because I don’t want to spend $100+ on forum software if MyBB can be just as good.
Good luck. 🙂
Screw everyone dissing how slow mybb is progressing. Mybb is great. I’ve used it on every single forum I’ve ever had and they have a great community support forum. Can’t wait for 1.8 to be released. (:
Well done,I have 2 questions:
Pirata Nervo “Beta 2 is for feature improvements ”
Pirata Nervo “and Beta 2 will be focused mostly on bug fixes.”
1.Is Beta 2 for feature improvements or bug fixes?
“So the time between 1.8 and the alpha and beta stages of 2.0 will be shorter.”
2.So we won’t have 1.8.x (1.8.1 , 1.8.2 ….)?
1) Both, however fixing bugs has priority.
2) Sure there will be several versions of 1.8.