Will SMF be free forever?

[whileloop]

Will it ever be a paid software like how Invision Power and Expression Engine switched to paid software?

[Illori]

take a look at http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=16971.msg140624#msg140624

[Kindred]

which is one of our prime about pages: http://www.simplemachines.org/about/whyfree.php

Yes, SMF will always be free.

[Illori]

which that link contains the exact same text in the link i posted... maybe we need to update our news to link to that instead for why free is better.

[Kindred]

Yes, I know that link in our about page has the exact same quote from [unknown].  It was so important that we posted it to a static page instead of a thread.

[Illori]

in the news fader we have a link "why free is better" that links to that link i posted above.

[kat]

Will it ever be a paid software like how Invision Power and Expression Engine switched to paid software?

Of course, if you want to slip me a few bucks/quid, just for the fun of it, I won't complain.

[青山 素子]

Will it ever be a paid software like how Invision Power and Expression Engine switched to paid software?

SMF is now licensed under the BSD license. This means that even if everyone on the team went insane and chose to charge for their software, anyone could continue to develop the free source that existed before such a thing happened.