Simple Machines Forum

Simple Machines Forum is an open-source discussion board software project of volunteers participating in various operating functions including development, customization, documentation, localization/translation, user support, and marketing. The project is owned by a non-profit organization, named Simple Machines. Liroy van Hoewijk is president and CEO of the organization; Aleksi Kilpinen is the current project manager of SMF. "Sesquipedalian" is SMF's lead software developer.

Simple Machines is organized and operates as a not-for-profit membership corporation organized under the laws of the U.S. State of Nevada. To be eligible for membership, a person or entity must be nominated by a current member of the corporation and must complete a written or electronic membership application and approved by the board of directors. The organization has not applied to become a 501(c)(3) organization; however, its internal bylaws still prohibit activities which would disqualify it from becoming one in the future.{{cite web|url=https://www.simplemachines.org/about/bylaws.php|title=Bylaws|website=Simple Machines| accessdate=June 22, 2010}}

The organization is funded by private donations, advertisements on its website, and income from "charter memberships".{{cite web|url=https://www.simplemachines.org/charter|title=Charter membership|website=Simple Machines| accessdate=January 15, 2015}}

On June 16, 2001,{{cite web|title=YaBB 1.0|url=http://mac.softwareweb.com/summary/yabb-1.0-SLIAS.html|website=Softwareweb.com|accessdate=November 12, 2001}}{{dead link|date=May 2018 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }} 16-year-old Zef Hemel along with collaborators Jeff Lewis, Corey Chapman, T. Oswalds, and Matt Mecham released the first open source bulletin board written in Perl called YaBB 1.0 (Yet Another Bulletin Board).{{cite web|title=Interview With Zef Hemel – Founder of YaBB|url=https://theadminzone.com/threads/interview-with-zef-hemel-founder-of-yabb.10949/|website=The Admin Zone|accessdate=Jun 15, 2005}} YaBB 1.0 was the leading free forum software package at the time. It proved, however, to be inefficient and slow for active communities.{{cite web|url=http://www.sitepoint.com/article/interview-jeff-lewis-yabb-se|title=Interview with Jeff Lewis, creator of YaBB SE|author=Bes Zain|publisher=Sitepoint|accessdate=August 13, 2002}}

On November 12, 2001, shortly after the release of YaBB 1.0, a second program, YaBB SE 1, written by Jeff Lewis and Joseph Fung (from Lewis Media Inc.) with help from Zef Hemel and Christian Land (from the YaBB project) was released. Ultimately, users of this rough PHP port of YaBB also reported resource and security problems.

Lewis and Fung split off from the YaBB SE team to try a different approach for addressing the YaBB SE efficiency problems, security concerns, and to add new features. Lewis and Fung did a complete rewrite of the code and changed the brand name to Simple Machines Forum (SMF). On September 30, 2003, the first "YaBB SE/SMF" product, SMF 1.0 Beta 1a, was released.{{cite web|url=https://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=1715.145|title=SMF 1.0 Beta 1 Released!|website=Simple Machines| accessdate=November 13, 2003}}

The development and support team for YaBB SE was shut down in March 2004 with hundreds of communities in operation, when the developers joined the SMF project. A converter was developed to convert YaBB SE to SMF.{{cite web|url=https://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=129960.0|title=Introducing Simple Machines LLC|publisher=The Simple Machines Organization| accessdate=November 27, 2006}}{{cite web|last1=Lewis|first1=Jeff|title=YaBB Perl Software Community|url=http://www.yabbse.org/|publisher=YaBB SE|accessdate=March 4, 2004}}{{cite web|last1=Lewis|first1=Jeff|title=YaBB Perl Software Community|url=http://www.yabbse.org/community/index.php?topic=27708.0|publisher=YaBB SE|accessdate=March 31, 2004}}

On October 23, 2006, the Simple Machines Forum project was split off from Lewis Media for the purpose of "[solidification of] the team’s commitment to continuously providing free software, without the perceived risks of corporate influence". The new company was named Simple Machines, LLC.{{cite web|url=https://www.simplemachines.org/about/|title=Who are we?|publisher=The Simple Machines Organization|accessdate=January 15, 2015}} Simple Machines LLC was registered in the state of Arizona, and the transfer of copyrights from Lewis Media to Simple Machines LLC was completed on 24 November 2006 during a three-day retreat in Tucson, AZ.

On Dec 02, 2006, SMF 1.1 was released.{{cite web|url=https://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=131008.msg835035#msg835035|title=SMF 1.1 Final|publisher=The Simple Machines Forum project|accessdate=October 25, 2015}}

On April 8, 2007, Simple Machines announced the introduction of SMF 2.0.{{cite web|url=https://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=163438.0|title=Introducing SMF 2.0|website=Simple Machines| accessdate=April 8, 2007}} SMF 2.0.x has been in development alongside SMF 1.1 since December 2005.

In June 2010, Simple Machines re-formed as a not-for-profit organization (NPO) registered in Nevada. The transfer of assets from LLC to NPO was completed in April 2011 and in May 2011, Simple Machines, LLC was dissolved. On the 24th of September 2010, the Simple Machines team announced the dissolving of the Simple Machines LLC and all assets moved to the nonprofit organization (Simple Machines) set up for the project.

On June 11, 2011, SMF 2.0 was released.{{cite web|url=https://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?&topic=437328.0|title=2.0 Final has been released|publisher=The Simple Machines Team|accessdate=June 11, 2011}}

On February 9, 2022, SMF 2.1 was released.{{cite web|url=https://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?msg=4110098|title=SMF 2.1.0 Released|publisher=Simple Machines|accessdate=February 9, 2022}}

SMF 1.0 and 1.1 are published under a proprietary license. While it is source-available, redistribution and/or distribution of modified components is limited to authorized entities.

SMF version 2.0 and 2.1 are licensed under the 3-clause BSD license.{{cite web|url=https://www.simplemachines.org/about/smf/license.php|title=Simple Machines License|website=Simple Machines| accessdate=November 13, 2003}} It is also open source with redistribution of modified code subject to the BSD requirements.

Simple Machines Forum (SMF) software is written in PHP and uses MySQL for database management – it is built around established industry standards and is generally valued for its high security standards. The use of PHP, MySQL and the fact that SMF is freeware, helped spawn the creation of a large and relatively active volunteer development community.

SMF is commonly deployed on basic web hosting packages, usually Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP (LAMP) compliant servers. Installations on VPS or dedicated servers are usually needed for sites with a large number of concurrent users online at the same time. The number of concurrent users that can be handled depends on the available server resources, the resource limits a hosting provider may imply, the server configuration, and on which kind of modifications have been installed. SMF itself has virtually no limit of traffic it can process, however: the more users online, the more powerful hardware it will require in order to function.

Simple Machines Forum has 4 versions, SMF 1.0, SMF 1.1, SMF 2.0 and SMF 2.1

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SMF has a modification base repository for free modification hosting and tracking via the Simple Machines main site. Many modifications, or "mods" as they are usually called, have been created and distributed free of charge, including an arcade, Help desk, profile additions, gallery, spam filter, various SEO features, and many more. Before being listed on the SMF Mods site, the mod is validated by the SMF Team, to ensure that it complies with the SMF Coding Guidelines.

The Package Manager included in SMF is one of the flagship features. It allows an administrator to install modifications and updates to SMF without having to modify the code of the script, usually with only a few mouse clicks.

Even though the sources were available from the start, SMF has been criticized by the open source community for not being available under a free software license. Redistribution of earlier releases of the software, even unmodified, is not allowed without a written permission. The source code is not redistributable either, although it is allowed to distribute instructions on how to modify it.

Starting with the 2.0 release the software is available under the BSD license, resolving the concerns.{{cite web|url=https://www.simplemachines.org/about/opensource.php|title=Simple Machines and Open Source|author=Joshua Dickerson |publisher=Simple Machines Organization| accessdate=January 15, 2015}}

• Comparison of Internet forum software
• List of Internet forums

{{Reflist|2}}

• [http://www.yabbforum.com/ YaBB Community] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191009113104/http://www.yabbforum.com/ |date=2019-10-09 }}
• [http://www.yabbse.org/ YaBBse Community]
• [https://www.simplemachines.org/community/ SMF Community]
• [http://www.forum-software.org/simple-machines-2/review Simple Machines review, demonstration and screenshots]

Category:Free software programmed in PHP

Category:Internet forum software

Category:Free Internet forum software

Category:Software using the BSD license