I think it is probably worth clearing up some misconceptions about 2.0 (based on this thread and others, as well as some PMs). I'm going to try and clear up the reason for its existence and then the perceived length of time 2.0 has been in development (based on my experience, public blog posts, and some information posted in "The Lair" - the private staff forums here).
Back in early 2011, MyBB 1.4 reached EOL. 1.6 was currently gold, on version 1.6.4/1.6.5. Now, MyBB 1.6 was essentially just based directly on 1.4. It was iterative, as 1.4 was on 1.2. Some of the code in 1.2/1.4/1.6 was based off of, or was code from pre-MyBB 1.2 days, despite MyBB 1.2 being a "rewrite" of XMB/DevBB. This is a time when PHP 5.1/5.2 and 5.3 were the most common PHP installations, and the software was written with that in mind.
In
mid 2011 Chris made an announcement that the next version of MyBB after 1.6 would be a fully rewritten version - version 2.0. The rewrite would address the issue of the aging codebase, aging design, and general compatibility issues moving forward with the anticipated release of new versions of PHP like PHP 5.4.
The initial plan was to continue supporting 1.6 while 2.0 was written. 2.0 would be fully custom, with the Twig templating engine to power rendering. It would use modern MVC (at the time) practices, and while no expected release date was announced, internally roadmaps were set at around 2 years. In that time, 1.6.x would continue in active development, adding minor features and primarily fixing bugs. At this time it is important to remember that all in-dev repositories were private. This version of 2.0 never made it to the public.
Around a year later, in
April 2012, it became clear that development of 2.0 was going to take longer than anticipated, and that the design of MyBB was becoming very dated, as well as the number of bugs reported for 1.6 increasing daily. The team then took the decision to put off 2.0 for a while (although not officially, officially it was still being worked on) and refocus development on a new version - 1.8.
1.8 was designed to bridge the gap between 1.6 and 2.0, refactoring significant portions of the codebase and creating a new, more modern base theme. For example, the base theme was switched to use jQuery, which required the rewrite of a significant portion of the theme code. At the same time, underlying architecture was updated to make way for the imminent adoption of PHP 5.4. At this point, 1.8.x became the "feature" branch on GitHub, with 1.6.x remaining as master.
1.8 was released approximately 2 years later, in 2014. This took longer than expected but the gap had been filled by the 1.6 series, with 1.8 adding both features and an overhaul. 1.8 development continued for a year, until early 2014, when the team decided that 1.6 was getting way out of date, and announced EOL for 1.6 in October 2015.
With 1.6 approaching EOL, and 1.8.x out of development and now public release, focus shifted back to 2.0. At this point, PHP frameworks had really taken off, and had become much more mainstream, and more importantly - stable. At this point, with the code for 2.0 almost 2 years old and most of the development team changing over that time period, the decision was made to
start over.
At the same time, the decision was made to open up development repositories much earlier. The primary reason for this was the dwindling dev team, and the focus on community interaction and contribution. The 2.0 repository started private (ie: when it was empty) and was opened to the public when it contained the very basics of the software.
Realistically, therefore, 2.0 in its current form has been in development for around 2 years. Is it slow? Yes. But without consistent community contribution it essentially falls to a small team of developers here. 1.8.x is still under active development, and will not become EOL until likely just over a year beyond 2.0 release.
