Hello all,
As part of the 2.1 work we are reconsidering the themes we should include within the release package: we want to make it hold by default only one theme, the default theme, and have all other themes of interest developed as official themes outside the package.
We're pretty sure this is the way to take, to allow future separate release schedule, and at this time Ema is already working to take Core out of his 2.1 work repository, submitting his changes further, to enter the official repos.
To be honest, I think this is best, and I intend to make these changes in the official packages for 2.1: the SMF release package should contain the default theme itself, while others are (they really are) custom themes. Feel free to shoot me on this one, if you hate it.

Other themes, legacy themes such as Classic, Babylon, and Core, should be updated in the measure of our possibilities, as long as the community needs them, however, worked on in their own repositories, packaged separately as well, with possibly slightly different requirements than SMF itself (i.e. supported browsers), and released on the theme site or downloads site on their own. The same goes for newer themes, we may make, developed by our developers, customizers or other contributors, that we may be able in the future to make available to our community as official themes, under an Open License and maintained by us.
However, we need to make sure that the legacy themes still needed by the community are further developed, updated to newer versions, tested on the major browsers, etc.
This is the intention, and making them have their own release schedule is meant to serve it: different and more people can take part to them, fixing them and updating them (without depending on a SMF release) when needed and ready. And we need your help with it. If you're a theme designer, you can help by submitting your fixes, improvements, or ideas, for these themes, any contribution is very appreciated! If you're an admin wanting to use one of these themes on your 2.0 site, you can help testing it, and reporting issues with it. (please make sure to always include the browser in the report). If you just have some spare time, you can test it on your local site, and let us know issues with it.
Classic themeYabb Classic update for 2.0.
Once it passes a bit of community review (feel free to check it out!), it will be on the customize site, for our users to have for their forums. IchBin also intends to upload it on Github, in the official Classic theme repository:
Classic theme repository.
If people need it for 2.1 as well, and may be interested in it, please feel free to tell, and to contribute to it any way you see fit.
Babylon themeBabylon is in a worse situation. We have not updated it for 2.0, unfortunately, as yet. If you are interested to help with it, or perhaps you have already worked on it for your own site, please do contribute your fixes. We need your assistance and welcome your contributions!
I have made a repository for Babylon theme also available now to the community, please find it at:
Babylon theme repository.
Notes on open developmentFor interested contributors, you may want to note: we are starting to use the Github site for more of our projects, mirroring them on our internal repositories, and we will continue to do so more extensively: the Github site offers very good tools for development, using Git versioning system (to which we have converted our internal repositories), and a set of site facilities for looking at the code, issue tracking, diff-ing, etc, which few have. We have decided to not try any longer to do everything ourselves for the infrastructure we need, instead use when possible and as appropriate, the facilities of the Github site.
More importantly, I really don't want to see us continuing to work on our projects/subprojects (official themes, as well as others) in our closed environment, unavailable and unreachable for our community. While the transition to an open development environment involves quite a number of projects/subprojects (themes, converters, scripts, official mods, smCore, and of course SMF itself, among others), workflow changes and setup differences, it is underway and will continue to happen.
Allow me to also note that the Github site has a very good help on how to set it up to get the code, and how to use the site for contributing to projects, that you may find of use, if you wish to contribute to these - or other - of our projects. I will actually detail also in another blog, more, on the Git versioning system, Github site, and other projects we already have or are setting up on Github site.
Core themeOn Core further updates (for 2.1), I haven't made the repository yet; you'll find it ASAP on the same location under Simple Machines account on Github site. Core is included in the SMF 2.0 release package, as legacy theme. For SMF 2.1, however, I don't think it should be included, as said before, but available separately instead. As far as we can tell, there's a low usage of the Core theme for 2.0 forums already - but there
is an usage -, and we would try to fix and update it, for the next version of SMF.
Curve themeBecause Curve as the current 2.0 default theme is changing, and people are working to designs that arguably may make the new default theme a different theme, we will have to see if people will need both for their 2.1 forums. I'm not ready to answer this yet. Either way, on this matter, I'll make sure we present them to the community, first.
Excuse the rather quick writing of this blog. And please, as always, do let me know your feedback and thoughts.