Wedge

i agree 100% with what you are saying, but i do think that if done with a particular tact, that it can be done successfully.

arantor and i had a discussion about smf4mobile that was kind of similar to this, hell know what i mean.

they know the fork and the developers behind it can and will given time take over as number one. the reason is that they are lazy and riding on the already found success of smf, and yall are screwing with their free ride. they feel that yall are trying as "newcomers" (i know this is BS but for the sake of argument) snatch it from them without earning it.

they know yall are the reason that smf 2.0 is what it is, they just wanted the credit for it. well let them have all the credit they want. keep your enemies closer. keep doing exactly what you have been, but give smf the credit due, regardless of whether or not yall are the ones that earned them that credit.

your not better cause you work harder then they do, your better cause you are better.

make a new logo especially for yalls posts on sm.org. make it represent where the software originally came from. make it a partnership of sorts. include them in your endevours for at least for now on sm.org. add the honorable mention and bring them into the light with wedge.

this will do 2 things:
-- alleviate the tension and make them feel that your not a direct competitor, rather than an equal alternative that still uses smfs basic core, but just with differences that creates an individual product.
-- carrying their name with you in the beginning brings validity to wedge on the world stage. smf is established. wedge is not. they dont have to make their license where you can have wedge. they still have the power to screw you into next week. to make wedge what you want it to be, you going to have to put up with them, and appease them.

make a logo that includes them in it, and makes wedge a part of the bigger whole. that with some fancy words will make it where you can have your logo 100k strong on sm.org. but you cant slap them in the face. they will just squash you and force you to write your own software from the ground up. which it would be better to do that anyway, but....

dont fight them, allow them to do whatever they wish to do. when the time is right, yall will just simply take first place, cause of their lack of work ethic.

HAIL WEDGE. :)

I don't think they do...
I've been in the SMF community for 5 years now, started doing community work in early 2008, and got thrown out in mid-2010 because I was fighting with vbLamer45 and he's under protection (I don't know why, but whatever.) They knew I was right about him, but they chose to kick me out instead of him -- because of the protection, and possibly because for the first time, someone was standing up to him and actually had the power and listeners to let the truth be known.
It's always been a battle of power. I just didn't realize it at the time. I re-read many PMs and discussions at the time, between the team and I, and it's quite clear that they knew they couldn't afford to lose me, one of their top contributors, and the reason why they were afraid of letting me into the team was that I was kind of a leader guy. I wouldn't have settled on a lowly position. And they probably knew that I was skilled enough to run the team and the development process at the same time. Thus, they knew that by kicking me out, either I would just drop SMF altogether and waste my time on something else, or, if I was to stay in the SMF community, I *would* go ahead and compete with them.
Heck, it doesn't take a genius to understand the politics behind all of this.
What matters here, is that they've had as much time as I had to understand said politics, and understand that they should take responsibility for their actions.
And they're doing exactly the same now as they did a year ago! You'd think they LEARNED wouldn't you...?
No, they haven't.

January 2010 split: they kicked out everyone who didn't agree with the power struggles. Ex-team went ahead and made their own forum. SMF bans everyone linking to the other forum. Ex-team builds new project, because SMF doesn't want to go BSD. SMF team realizes they're wrong, changes mind, announces BSD switch, ex-team leaves new project, goes back to fold. End of story.

August 2010: they kicked me out for challenging vbLamer45 in public. Arantor was also a victim of SMF's internal struggles at the time. We went ahead and started our own project. SMF team is made aware of it soon after, no word from them. I'm sure they thought we wouldn't last, like Jaelta... Wrong.

November 2010: we're still on it. Now, SMF team attacks me on technicalities. They remove my beta tester rights (which I was still using to make bug reports!), and my SMF Friend status (because for them, current politics trump overall recognition.) I try to make a compromise for them, after which they keep saying it's too late. So I cancel my compromise, and they threaten to sue (!!!). I say screw you. End of story. SMF loses their most active beta tester ever (400 reports or so), but I'm sure they'll see this as a victory...

March 2011: we go public. Arantor adds link in his signature. SMF team invents new rule to prevent him from doing it.

Who wants to bet they'll win this time? Who thinks they've learned their lessons and they'll come to their senses? Who thinks they'll finally acknowledge that their team is totally screwed up and they're making bad decision after bad decision?

Seriously, I don't even know why Pete keeps posting over there... They don't deserve a hundredth of the efforts he's making for SMF.Well I only on the actual source code for 2 months so I'm only responsible for parts of RC4's fixes, I'm not saying the other devs are bad, I'm just saying the men who turned SMF into fantastic software are long gone -- because of the politics. Because of the current team! So, no, we're not responsible for SMF2, we're however responsible for part of its success (me because of Aeva/SMG and Pete because of so many things I wouldn't know where to start.) As for taking our credit away... I don't know, I don't think the SMF community is that dumb.I'm more of a guy who judges people by their actions, not their karma.A partnership? What do you want us to partner for? Especially with them? What do we owe them? We owe the current team absolutely nothing. They owe us. That's why they should acknowledge Wedge, instead of trying to hide it. They should declare they'll be looking forward to the competition. But they don't have the developers to follow suit. So their shortsightedness is currently losing them. They're making decisions for the near future, not for the far future. They don't know what they'll put into SMF3 because they all know they'll be gone before it even goes in beta.

....

....Well, all in all, that's what the SMF team management inspires me. Nothing but ill decisions and general lousiness.We tried that... Until the November backlash.SMF is no longer established. It's dying, remember? More people are leaving the software than new people are joining it. It may also be true for other forum packages, I don't know, but the stats speak for themselves at sm.org.
And I don't want to build our software's reputation on SMF. Not on the *current* SMF.
(Besides, you know it's a public area and they're certainly reading all of this, right? Do you think they'd like you suggesting we "use" them for our benefit? ::))No, they have to, for several reasons we detailed elsewhere. In short: (1) they promised the community, and the community is tired of being screwed with. (2) SMF's ex-devs never signed any proper contracts and said they would relinquish the rights to their code ONLY if SMF went BSD... It's another struggle, but one that has been made public. So they HAVE to go BSD or they can't release SMF2 Gold *at all*. It's not a present they're giving us... It's the only way SMF can survive. (And it will survive -- through its forks, not through the core software.)When did putting a "Wedge. Simple math, really" logo amount to slapping someone in the face?

Do you realize that my initial slogan was "SMF for real men"? Now I would have understood they got upset at this slogan (which I came up with for fun, nothing else). But "Simple math"? Uh...Just by making these internal struggles public, we're already fighting them. Anyone at Wedge.org is now aware that SMF is not playing it nice. They've been presented with proof. That alone is enough for me.

always remember tho, spite begets spite. forget about anger, roll with the punches. continue forward. dont think about smf, think about wedge.

love thy neighbor as thyself, no matter how stupid they are. :)

That's exactly why we kept so quiet about Wedge for 7 months... We spent the time working on it. I didn't create an alternative account or anything at sm.org, I simply stopped caring about it, and was focusing on Wedge.
I know that confronting an audience has never been my forte, and it tends to degenerate quickly into flame wars. This is one of the reasons why we weren't sure whether to go public or not. Especially because we knew that most of the fights tend to start as soon as something changes. i.e. in this case, going public would bring its lot, and it would calm down afterwards. So I'm discussing the things that are in the air, establishing my position, and hopefully people won't come again with the same complaints in the future.

tl:dr
Flame wars are unavoidable here, in this day of going public. What matters is that it settles soon. But, of course, the SMF team had to plunge right into it... -_-

Let me add one point.

We kept Wedge quiet because Kindred asked us to. And we did. We sat on it for months. Then I made (quite) a few remarks about it in December and was 'asked' to knock it off. So I did. Then on the day we make the website publicly accessible I put a signature link in.

Oldiesmann has not replied to me, but I'll give it a little longer then nudge him about it. The rule in and of itself isn't inappropriate, but it has to be applied equally.

Oldies was last seen online about 3 hours ago... Meaning he definitely read your PM. And he's just sitting on it, like you say... :-/

So i've been asked to remove the sig from Kinderd...

Not really a surprise. But they haven't answered my complaint about Sinan linking to a non SMF forum in his signature.

I was just asked to do the same by Kindred, and I'm replying to him that Sinan has one to phpBB...

Oldies asked me last night...

There's a big difference between linking to a site that *uses* a certain software and linking to the home site of the other software. I was asked way back when to remove links I had linking to my IPB stuff.

I see nothing wrong in asking you to remove the links since it's advertising the competition's product, not just a personal site that uses the product. There's a big difference.

I'm guessing they started reading this topic and screaming in their private area.... ::)

And still no official explanation, eh?
Guys! Don't start making up rules and implying they've always existed! If you can't fight, then just keep quiet instead of making fools out of yourselves by doing lame actions that only hurt your reputation. These people you're blaming, are the very ones who care about the SMF codebase's future! If you can't keep your software alive, don't start blaming others for your own shortcomings!

Next step, then...?

@JBlaze> It's not competition if IT ISN'T AVAILABLE, for God's sake!
It's a site running SMF, and discussing SMF-based software. Their links don't even say it's a forum software! It just says Wedge!
What they're trying to do is stupid. They're only saving time.

It wouldn't surprise me, at this point, that they never release Gold at this point. Just to make sure Wedge doesn't get in the way....... ::)

But the personal site uses certain software that can be seen as competition, and by you using it you give advertising to it.
JBlaze, when they asked you to remove the links to your IPB stuff, were you linking to the main IPB site or was it your personal site that used the product?

The point is that this website is the home of the SMF fork. It's considered advertising the competition. I'm actually siding with them on this one.It was linking to the IPB main site. They have no problem with me linking to my current site which is running IPB.