A look at my experience with SMF

The following is a significantly polished version of an article I wrote in April of 2008 that has never been posted here.

Many of my peers are well aware of the role I serve for a software organization in which I provide a significant amount of time volunteering for. Those who don't know me as well, probably aren't aware of my involvement with this software organization, which specializes in web development.

The role I perform involves a team leadership position for SMF. Simple Machines Forum (abbreviated as SMF) is a free open source message board software [see wikipedia definition]. The primary function I serve for SMF involves writing documentation and maintaining the SMF Online Manual, which is the primary repository for the official documentation of the software. Since 2006 I have been the coordinator of the documentation team of SMF, just one year after joining the team in July of 2005.

SMF is a free software, period.

The first bit of knowledge I would like to throw out there and emphasize is that SMF is completely free for anyone to use. Yes our organization has had some heat thrown at us by a small group of individuals that go around advocating an Open Source license called GPL, with an attitude very much akin to that those who do not use a GPL license yet still release software free of charge are acting in a bad way, with no questions asked. This is at least the impression I get. From what I understand, these people aren't necessarily so against commercial products, but they feel all software that does happen to be free as in 'free beer', should also be 'free' as in complete freedom. What this means in our context is that currently we do not allow others to modify our software and redistribute it under a different name ("fork" the software as it is frequently called) which is one of the key components of what the GPL license would allow. We actually do occasionally allow redistribution, but only in special cases in which permission is asked and then granted. We have had legitimate reasons for not allowing others to fork our software. SMF traces its roots back to a predecessor message board software called YaBB SE, which was released under a GPL license. Sadly YaBB SE had a fork, and while I know that I wasn't around back during those days, I have heard about how the fork damaged the integrity and reputation of the software. Granted the SMF software is much more mature than YaBB SE happened to be back in the day. If SMF was "forked" it would probably be left standing strong, however we still have our reasons to be against going with a strict enforcement of using a GPL license. Reasons however in which I either lack the expertise to discuss, or are internal matters that I am not privy of mentioning.

Now let me be clear that I am by no means against the GPL. I think for instance GPL is really great for Linux. I think the one of the major problems however is that GPL just was not designed for web development. I will save the argument for another day, but essentially the GPL was not made with the idea of web software in mind. I am not an expert on this subject, but I have had colleagues who are very experienced in programming and licensing who have given good reasons as to why the GPL does not make the perfect fit when regarding licensing web projects.

Why do I spend time on SMF and how did I discover it?
First off, SMF was not the first message board I used. phpBB was, and at the time I didn't mind it. But the version available at the time, version 2, by my judgment, was quickly becoming obsolete as it wasn't quick enough to release a significant upgrade to remain competitive. However I do have a a lot of respect for the people behind the phpBB project, and just like SMF, phpBB is also free (and 'GPL free' for that matter). However phpBB just did not offer a lot of the features I wanted for my own message board that other free competitors had to offer. I eventually found my way to Invision Power Board, another quality forum package and was quite happy with it until the unfortunate change in direction was made for the project when IPB became a software that cost money to use.

From there, I eventual crossed paths with SMF, and almost instantly fell in love with it. What was it that I liked about SMF when I first discovered it? In general I was impressed with all the configurable administrative settings that were available and the good looking, friendly user interface.

I think what ultimately inspired me so much to contribute to SMF was the friendly user community behind SMF. I was essentially a young and inexperienced member when I first signed up to the community as a member, but the community never made me feel like I knew nothing and was worthless. Instead, I only became more and more encouraged and confident in myself, quickly trying out and learning new things on a daily basis. I recall being impressed with how many ordinary users would go around helping other SMF users, providing support for the usage, as well as installation of the software. I realized then that I found something that made me feel good. Sure there was the sentimental feeling from giving back to something that I believed in, but I think more so than anything else, I found a place where I could help others out and feel welcomed by all.

What do I do with SMF? Do I just write documentation?
Documentation is actually only one of the activities I am involved with. The list of everything that I do is an extensive one, but here I will try to keep it simple, highlighting what I do the most.

Documentation is my main duty over at SMF. I write new documents and edit existing ones. As mentioned before, I am responsible for maintaining the Online Manual, which is powered by the SMF software. Maintenance includes the responsibility of upgrading it when new versions of SMF are released. I also do some programming so that we have special features needed for handling the documentation, since SMF was not designed as a wiki software.

But if documentation isn't the only thing I do, then what else do I do or have I done in the past?

Well, for starters, I have written a few modification packages. For those of you who may not know, modifications (often abbreviated as 'mods') generally are third party packages of code that either directly modify code in the software (in SMF's case), or at least provide instructions for someone to manually modify the software by themselves. Modifications that I have written provide additional functionality that SMF does not have in its default download package. One modification I wrote has actually been made into a default feature in SMF 2.0.

A long time ago I even released a few themes, but my theme designing skills are not the best and consequently the themes I released faded to a point where they stopped being updated for more recent versions of SMF.

A huge part of what I do with SMF when I have the time is provide support for those who have installed the SMF software and need assistance with using it. I often like to focus in on areas where there is high demand for a certain type of support, but low supply of those able to help. Such examples often include people asking for minor tweaks that require editing SMF's code to achieve a certain functionality or feature. Many users are not that knowledgeable in regards to coding, and coding related questions usually take much longer to answer than other questions, so I try to step in and help with such questions whenever I can.

Another huge part of my involvement with SMF involves providing feedback to the team behind SMF, offering suggestions and advice on the ideas of others as well as coming up with my own ideas. I also beta test the software and report bugs that I find in SMF so that they can be fixed. There have been some events and concepts that would not have taken place if I hadn't been the one to initially come up with a certain idea. I take pride in helping SMF move forward and helping to make the community into more of a friendly environment. I have often suggested ways of getting the people in the community more involved, by employing the usage of contests and other means. It is my belief that maintaining a friendly community that is able to connect with the team behind SMF and feel welcomed is virtually the most vital thing for SMF to remain a strong message board software.