If you're going to argue with me, get your facts straight. I have not joined the forum of any other fork, I was already a member of BlocWeb before that. I'd argue the other points regarding offering advice but I already explained that and it still falls into the fact that you're still too far up your own arse to see what I was getting at. A lot of my criticism of SMF is actually at the fact that too many people consider it "good enough" without stopping to see if it can be improved at all.
As for you distributing ViennaBBS, why is it my business? Well, apart from that fact you do still have good ideas, and competition causes everyone to stay on their toes, I have to consider the strong likelihood that people will use it, you'll abandon it and it'll be SMF, Wedge and others that will have to clear up your mess.
"Clearing up my mess"..lol, that was fun argument though. In what way, exactly? Do you make themes all of the sudden..? You do know I've sticked with SMF themes and TinyPortal since 2003, right? I don't have to explain myself really..but I'll do it anyway: when i closed off my site the first time, it was out of lack of interest from users + the amount of work I put in the paying themes felt a bit wasted. The few that subscribed were welcome of course - but it was a dwindling entity. I really wanted to just make the premium themes all free at that point. The final time I closed AND this time removed the themes even, there were only a handful of people even visiting BW. After some personal issues(again, that thing that you don't care to look behind the scenes, you just "conclude" comes to mind) I decided to stop right there and then.Brutal, yes.
I am not making any excuses for it. Teeanger stuff, heh, you can talk lol. At 45 I've learned that in THIS world its the important things that is worth sticking too. Sadly SMF themes isn't that for me any longer. it was at one time, but things like family, health, steady job and happiness(yes, its cheesy, but its also true) takes precedence.
It has been said that I've been "brutal" to Bloc, even though I only wrote 3 lines in total on the last page. I figured I might as well post this longer message if, whatever I say, I'm seen as 'brutal'...
As for myself, I only ever joined another fork's forum -- EosAlpha -- and only posted to praise it. Of course, the fact that I have a link to Wedge in my signature can be seen as a shameful attempt to bring in more users, but that'd be preposterous -- Nightwish doesn't do anything to get people to have a look at his fork, and instead we at Wedge have been doing most of his marketing, offering it as a 'realistic' alternative to Wedge.
Mind you, we'd have done the same for ViennaBBS if we'd had any reason to believe it was going to be a reality. But the only thing that you released for ViennaBBS, is your logo (and even then, it's only on your blog, not on your official website...)
Yes, it took me 62 pages to find the perfect logo (reply #921) -- but unlike you, I have absolutely zero design skills, and I'm working hard to find it in me to do something inspiring. The fact that I made all of the skins available at wedge.org, all of the logos, all of the design concepts, is proof enough that I'm willing to work hard to overcome my weaknesses. It'd be much easier for me to just focus on things I can easily do (JavaScript and PHP) and just let Wedge look like another clone of SMF.
So that's what I did. In the meantime, all we got from you on the subject of ViennaBBS is wind. How many times did you declare on your blog that you never really planned to make a fork? That ViennaBBS was just a 'toy' for you to play with? Just like your themes. You remove them at will, regardless of what your paying users might have to say. (I may have stopped work on Aeva Media nearly two years ago -- but I issued security updates and left it online for everyone to enjoy. Because it's THAT easy to do, and THAT important if you have any respect for your users who, let's just say it clearly, also make you what you are.)
So, yes, apologies are in order. Keep working on ViennaBBS. Pete only wanted you to realize you were wasting your time (and your users') because no one will ever use some forum software that looks good and can disappear overnight because the developer decided he wasn't in the mood. But who are we to say. Enjoy your waste of time. In a few years' time, users will be running SMF, Eos and Wedge. And they'll have no idea what Vienna looks like, because they 'never went there'. I'm talking about the city, of course, because they'll never have heard of ViennaBBS *at all*.
But seriously, thats was how I created TP on my own, more or less, doing the mistakes, learning things bit by bit..the TP team helped a lot too but I think they saw that angle and gave me the freedom. Thats also how I worked when I was at the SMF team, being the only one working on the graphic design for Curve(and Core btw) before collaborating on the bigger amount of code work for it.I had a lot of respect for several devs at that time, because they allowed me that room. And finally, thats how I work with themes too, trying new things no others did, sometimes its just right, but not always, you learn from it.Stop doing something just because a person or two says its "rubbish" isn't enough. Rebellious? Stubborn? surely. My nagging about more innovation,about using peoples skills rather than using who screams the loudest, those things come from that point of view.
So pardon me for jumping to a conclusion in a former post of mine: THIS is me, the "hit and miss" part was a bit inaccurate.And thats the only apology you will get I am afraid.