Not to forget Nao, who has been helping with development for the past two months as a consulting developer
Yay! At last some official recognition, somewhat

Too bad it came at the time when I resigned! Bad timing eh?
and a dozen of Beta Testers who have joined the ranks
As a veteran beta tester myself, I can say they're pretty good new recruits!

So, what does this all mean? It means SMF 2.0 RC4 will be out soon. I cannot give an exact date, but it's definitely very soon. 
Now I'm absolutely glad I don't have to worry about THAT anymore

I was searching for a forum software and thought i found it in SMF but after i was reading the Forum and other sites I'm not sure anymore. I was also waiting for phpBB 3 but I didn’t like that what came out but as things are standing right now I think the best thing to do is to go back to phpBB.
SMF2 RC3 is better than phpBB3.
WTF happened to this Software, at the moment i get the feeling it’s like Duke Nukem.
DNF was never available to begin with, even as a beta or RC.
SMF2 RC3 is stable enough. I'd call it SMF 2.03 if it were just up to me.
The only difference between a RC and the final version, is that when the final version is installed, you can upgrade it with patches. But if you make sure to record all of your edits into a diff patch (or simply only use the mod system), you can easily upgrade RC's, too. That's why so many users choose to use SMF2, even in RC, rather than SMF1.
Are the good news that the RC4 is going to be out soon? I'm reading that for a while in the forum, nothing happens.
I've seen the insides of the team -- they're on the right track for RC4 now. I'm confident they'll do their best to release the final version by the end of the year. Really, everyone is dying to see it out and be able to finally work on Saguaro and do the FUN stuff, i.e. implement new features.
If things go on like this the Software is going to be old when it gets released. You started the Development with PHP3? Then you had to convert to PHP4 then to PHP5 and as things are going soon to PHP6?
It's still PHP 4.3 right now, I believe. PHP 5 would be for Saguaro, at best.
When is this going to end? If you still have old PHP3 code in it you can never perform like software written in PHP5. I just don’t get it. What is going on?
Hmm... I don't see the difference. You can obviously run in PHP5 programs written for PHP4 (or even older).
The only difference is that you don't get to use the OOP stuff. But as for OOP being faster... I don't think so.
you can blame the Developers that they started over with Duke Nukem three times and changed the Engine three times, it was the management),
Actually, I believe the DNF management was also involved in programming... (And that's probably *why* they screwed up. Too large a project. Can't do everything.)
if i wanted a "dictate" I would go to China.
I don't see the point...
But SMF will go more open source in the future. At least that's what all of the team wants. From what I've heard. And I support them in that direction, too.