Simple Machines forms as an NPO

[Kindred]

Announcement:

The Simple Machines Team, the group of volunteers that coordinate SMF^® development and support, today announces the launch of a new organization that will continue to promote the development, distribution and adoption of the Simple Machines^® Forum software. Simple Machines will continue to expand on the efforts of Simple Machines LLC, the organization which has been responsible for managing the operations of the Simple Machines Forum project to date.

It has been a long-time goal of the Simple Machines team to dissolve the Limited Liability Corporation (Simple Machines LLC) and create a Non-Profit Organization^[?] so we can continue to lead and innovate. We're grateful for the past, present and future support of our charter and community members and we look forward to continuing to provide the best forum software out there, while keeping to the original goal: Simple, elegant, powerful, and free. 

Simple Machines Forum is developed in an open source environment and built by harnessing the creative power of several programmers around the world.  The new organizational structure returns us to our roots as a community owned project.

The new organization is led by a Board of Directors. The Officers are: Kindred (President and Treasurer), K@ (Vice-President), and Oldiesmann (Secretary and Compliance Manager). Antechinus, B, groundup and Norv round out the board as Directors. For those of you who are unfamiliar with an NPO, the Board leads the corporation and makes decisions at the corporate level. Reporting to the board, and responsible for the individual projects are Steering Committees. The Steering Committee for the Simple Machines Forum project consists of the current "Team Leads" and the Project Manager.

The teams - Support, Customization, Documentation, and Internationalization - will continue to work at the project level. The Site & Server team (red badges) and the Marketing team will now be "corporate" teams who will be responsible for cross project tasks, as Simple Machines works to expand the teams and the software offered under the Simple Machines umbrella.


Wait, projects (plural)?

There have been several ideas floated amongst the teams regarding what additional things we could offer. However, at this time, we are not ready to announce what direction those ideas may take us. At this time, we continue to focus on the Forum software which we made our name with. Our primary goal, at this time, is to complete the release of SMF v2.0 RC4 and 2.0 Final.


Simple Machines, SMF and the Simple Machines Logo (The Fulcrum) are registered trademarks of Simple Machines.

[mashby]

Flipping sweet news. Thanks for getting this all sorted out. Great move.

[Owdy]

Awesome news! Has everything transferred from LCC to NPO?

[Kindred]

The final transfer is still in process, but we wanted to get the news out there so that it did not get lost in the upcoming releases.

[Dannii]

Licence change time!

[SoLoGHoST]

Well this seems like great news.  A step in the right direction.

Congratulations

[EricTheRed]

Does this mean that licensing for SMF will change from the current proprietary free license that SMF distributes under to a GNU license?

[Kindred]

The establishment of an NPO has nothing to do with a license change. If a license change occurs, that will be a separate announcement.

However, I think that I can confidently say that SMF will never be GPL.

[Eliana Tamerin]

Woo-hoo! Awesomeness! Congrats to all the people who worked on this and for all of those who are continuing to work to make SMF a better place.

[metallica48423]

Congratulations

[Powerbob]

Well done, that answers a lot and looks good to boot

[Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen]

This is a long awaited announcement - Good news!

[Robert.]

Okay, this is a stupid question: will it still be free? Because Wikipedia said that you sometimes have to pay for a NPO software.

[Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen]

Okay, this is a stupid question: will it still be free? Because Wikipedia said that you sometimes have to pay for a NPO software.

It's said in the OP -

We're grateful for the past, present and future support of our charter and community members and we look forward to continuing to provide the best forum software out there, while keeping to the original goal: Simple, elegant, powerful, and free. 

Emphasis mine.

[Robert.]

Ah, sorry. Anywayz, its very good news then!

[CountryLady]

 
               AWESOME~!    AMAZING EVEN~!

        I'm thrilled and thankful for everyone's hard work.

[LHW]

Congrats!

* LHW is looking forward to RC4! 

[lucas-ruroken]

good news!

[hosszu]

Fine! When will you release out SMF2.0 Final? I have been waiting for 2 years!

[Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen]

Fine! When will you release out SMF2.0 Final? I have been waiting for 2 years!

It will get there - I'm sure, it just takes a bit more finetuning still, but it's closing fast (compared to the last 2 years).