MyBB Community Forums

PayPal would handle the physical donations, but international donations are complicated from a taxation standpoint, primarily because many countries have regulations on money laundering and moving money across international borders.

Is the person who is going to be in charge going to be paid? Is it going to be Chris? What happens if they leave? Then who is in charge of the NPO? If they are going to be paid, how are we going to raise the money? Is that person going to take personal liability in any lawsuits? What if the NPO goes bankrupt? Is the CEO liable for that?

More than half of the donation drive came from Chris or Labrocca. Labroccas donation was certainly atypical. $4000 in 3 months is less than $20,000 annually (before taxes). That is not enough to support the CEO never mind the rest of the staff. Nobody is going to quit their day job to run a NPO for $20,000 before tax.

We absolutely try to compete with paid software in terms of features, but if you read carefully I was specifically talking about switching to paid model to attract capital investment to support the NPO. Switching to a paid model is not something we want to do.

Regarding team elections, we're not just going to hand over the reins of the entire group, server access, admin git access, and all other credentials to a bunch of people who get more votes than a bunch of others. That's a sure fire way for disaster. You want to lead the NPO and handle all the monetary aspects that you claim will support the salary of 10 developers (>$500,000/yr)? You've spent half of your time showing that you don't understand anything about developing a large scale project, you've shown an inability to make sensible business decisions, and other than the fact you've been around for two years your principle contribution has been to argue with members of the community and staff alike. Do you have a business degree? Have you run an NPO before? How are you qualified to run an NPO?

Honestly, you're wasting your time. If you really want to help development, then help by developing. Push some PRs, get involved in development. Telling us we should just allow any old PRs isn't solving the problem that we have very few PRs. If you're so well versed in PHP you probably could have coded some features by now and the PR might even have been accepted already.

The most crucial factor here though is that ultimately, the MyBB group and its decisions on the development are not directly linked to the will of a few community members. We take community advisement and we regularly incorporate requested features. But just because a community member asks for something (like auto PR approval) doesn't mean we will do it. The team ultimately decide what makes it in. But, and it's a big but, the beauty of the open source community is that if you disagree: fork MyBB and start DevsBB. You're absolutely free to do so.

Tom:

Of course - person in charge is going to be paid; sure thing. Is it going to be Chris or whoever - its going to be paid monthly.
Ifc NGO went bankrupt CEO is goigng to be held liable - whyt not? If CEO (or any other employee leaves, there will be recruitment proccess in place.
Do not worry about money - we've got plenty of them,......
As of handling access to servers etc. :: if new tteam is elected and/or MyBB is to become for-profit company, you will have no other option but to handle access data over.
I currently lead the team of 8 (eight) developers and our budget is far more than $500.000/yr and we are doing good, so not to worry.

BTW::: handling over the login credentials is not sth to be done ligthly - I agree. But dont say its sure fire way to disaster - if done with cautiously it isnt.

(2017-09-18, 07:16 AM)devs Wrote: [ -> ]Of course - person in charge is going to be paid; sure thing. Is it going to be Chris or whoever - its going to be paid monthly.

How much? As previously stated, when MyBB was more popular than it is now on a dedicated donation drive we raised an equivalent of $20k/year. Chris is going to quit his main job to be paid that?

Quote:Ifc NGO went bankrupt CEO is goigng to be held liable - whyt not? If CEO (or any other employee leaves, there will be recruitment proccess in place.

I think you'd struggle to find someone willing to be liable for a company whilst also being paid only $20,000/year. If that person is not Chris, then how would Chris know he can trust them?

Quote:Do not worry about money - we've got plenty of them,......

See above.

Quote:As of handling access to servers etc. :: if new tteam is elected and/or MyBB is to become for-profit company, you will have no other option but to handle access data over.

You keep phrasing this like it's some kind of literal election. It isn't. The MyBB Group isn't a democratic government, its not like anyone can put their name in and just get votes to become the new project manager. The community can't just replace the team, regardless of how many people vote for "Leeroy Jenkins" to be on the team. The final decision lays with Chris, who delegates this on a daily basis to the team. If there was community desire to change the project manager then we'd certainly take that into account but ultimately the team could just say no.

Handing over the data is not really the issue. Its not like we're going to refuse to do it. Its more how do we trust the people who take over? For example, lets say you become Project Manager - we know almost nothing about you, we don't know who you are, your motives, we don't know if you really care about the longevity of the project. For all we know you, or anyone, could just sell the data/passwords and disappear. The only person with server access IIRC is Stefan, and that was only after years and years on the team. MyBB can't just replace the entire team on the whim of a single user and then give all of that responsibility to people we don't even know.

You have to remember that we invite almost all regularly contributing, active members of the community to join the team. Those who you see not on the team but with a lot of activity are by and large people who have declined to join the team for whatever reason, most frequently that they don't want the commitment of time. So realistically, the only people who would run in your "election" are other people, people who have shown no long term commitment to the project or its aims.

Quote:I currently lead the team of 8 (eight) developers and our budget is far more than $500.000/yr and we are doing good, so not to worry.

You personally deal with all the monetary transactions, accounting, tax returns? You run the business? Or you just manage employees? Have you registered an NPO? Have you done a costing analysis on this?

From my point of view, moving to the NPO model is doomed to fail purely because no thought has been put into it. What kind of cashflow are we looking at? Would income cover costs? How would we secure additional funding? What kind of monetary value does MyBB even have as an open source project? If the NPO goes bankrupt what happens to MyBB as a project? Does the NPO own the MyBB Group IP? What happens if the CEO decides to change the direction of MyBB, does chris retain any power?

Quote:BTW::: handling over the login credentials is not sth to be done ligthly - I agree. But dont say its sure fire way to disaster - if done with cautiously it isnt.

Agreed, except I was basing my statement on the fact you seem to want an open election where anyone can run. What if someone who is clearly bad for the project (lets say their plans are to just close MyBB) manages to win? Do we just give them credentials and say "this is fine"?

How much per month we are going to pay Chris? It depends on his proven knowledge......
If Chris is going to quit his job or not is up to him. We are not going to force him (not) do that.
How would Chris know, that his successor is trustworthy? Let me clarify:: we are not going to offer 'higher-management' job to some unknown person; only to someone we trust; who is with us from (near) beginning and clearly knows how to manage projects like MyBB. This strategy works for us well and it will work this time also.

The only person who is going to be changed at start is Chris. In the way he still will have his powers, but limited; Ultimate decision-makers will be us. Meaning that no substantial change will be available without our clearance. It may seem brutal at first, but having it this way gives huge profits in the long run.

As of who will run in elections etc :: its private data and - as long as you are not within our company - I cannot tell. All I can tell you is that is done on real fair basis, many time re-designed to adjust its fairness to maximum. And we are really listening to what people have to say; we teach our members to accept fair criticism, and - if necessary - step down. Its - by no way - shame; its fairness.

I'm vice-president of our company so I do not personally deal with accounting etc, we have big team of accountants and they deal with it. But I know the numbers.Yes we are legally operating = registered company; we pay taxes etc.

Will Chris retain powers? see above.

No thoughts has been given to the move to NGO?NPO? Just the opposite, trust me. Its not doomed to fail. Would income cover costs? for sure (maybe not in say 2 first months, but later yes, they would). How would we secure cashflow? You are going to get to know this when time comes. What happens to the MyBB when we bankrupt? We are stable company and we are not heading towards bankrupcy. But yes, there is a clause (in written agreement) stating that it will go back to as its now. By letting us have control over MyBB, you give us control over every asset MyBB owns currently (including IP address).

Open election = anyone can run, but its up to us who will be chosen. There will be no situation that wrong-willer will win - trust me.

I'm afraid we are not going to found a NGO based on some assumptions and claims you've made. There is no way to earn enough money to pay even one part time developer.

So, essentially Devs, it sounds like you have a great plan for starting an NGO. Thankfully, MyBB (the software) is open source, so you can simply fork it and use 1.8.x as a base for your new software.

But the MyBB Group will not be going down that route because, as Stefan has said, there's nothing that indicates to us this is a good idea.

(2017-09-18, 12:46 PM)StefanT Wrote: [ -> ]I'm afraid we are not going to found a NGO based on some assumptions and claims you've made. There is no way to earn enough money to pay even one part time developer.

you seem not to have even the slightest idea how wrong you are. But ok, you are team member.
As of forking 1.8 - I will fork it thats for sure. But not today and not till the end of the week. Most probably on next Monday
As I think its wrongly managed and  - therefore - not using every asset available.
I will ask for Chris's statement if he is interested as he is a founder.

(2017-09-18, 02:59 PM)devs Wrote: [ -> ]

(2017-09-18, 12:46 PM)StefanT Wrote: [ -> ]I'm afraid we are not going to found a NGO based on some assumptions and claims you've made. There is no way to earn enough money to pay even one part time developer.

you seem not to have even the slightest idea how wrong you are. But ok, you are team member.
As of forking 1.8 - I will fork it thats for sure. But not today and not till the end of the week. Most probably on next Monday
As I think its wrongly managed and  - therefore - not using every asset available.
I will ask for Chris's statement if he is interested as he is a founder.

Again, you're telling us we're wrong about how we don't think MyBB could find funding on a yearly basis to pay even 1 part time developer, yet haven't shown in any way how we could raise that much money as well as pay a CEO of the NGO... if we conservatively pay the CEO only $20,000 and a part time Dev only $20,000, once you take into account the loaded salary of those two we would have to raise at least $56,000 assuming the NGO incurred no additional administrative costs. From donations alone there is absolutely no way we could raise that much. That is >$1000 a week, or >$140 a day. And we'd have to do that consistently, for years.

A case study of this would be WikiMedia with their donation drive for Wikipedia. They received 5 million donations in 2015-16 amounting to $61 million raised (excluding major donations). They have 430 million unique visitors per year, meaning approximately 1.1% of all users donate. MyBB is obviously considerably smaller, with <200k unique visitors yearly, perhaps even less than that (exact visitor numbers are not given to us) . Doing the math on that, if 1.1% of 200,000 unique visitors donated $12 (the wikimedia average) each we'd raise a little under $30,000 a year. This is approximately in line with the MyBB.com donation drive (although a little higher) if extrapolated to a year.

If you used the number of actual members of the MyBB forums as a gauge for activity you would see even less. Users of the forums are assumably much more likely to donate, but obviously it is hard to say about transient visitors. Nevertheless, I see no evidence that we would suddenly raise $200,000 a year just because you say we would.

There is little benefit moving to this kind of model without attracting outside investment, assumably in return for shares in the MyBB IP. Chris certainly isn't going to risk losing the IP he spent years creating on a venture without first ensuring it is likely to succeed, which he has looked into before and concluded it isn't.

(2017-09-18, 02:59 PM)devs Wrote: [ -> ]

(2017-09-18, 12:46 PM)StefanT Wrote: [ -> ]I'm afraid we are not going to found a NGO based on some assumptions and claims you've made. There is no way to earn enough money to pay even one part time developer.

you seem not to have even the slightest idea how wrong you are. But ok, you are team member.
As of forking 1.8 - I will fork it thats for sure. But not today and not till the end of the week. Most probably on next Monday
As I think its wrongly managed and  - therefore - not using every asset available.
I will ask for Chris's statement if he is interested as he is a founder.

MyBB 1.8 is a pretty bad base to work with. It's riddled with data races, hacks to cope with PHP4, potential SQL Injection exploits (due to the lack of prepared statements), and other problems. 2.0 is important in all sorts of ways, but of course, it is taking a while.

There are probably two reasons 2.0 is taking a while.

Firstly, the world is changing, really really fast, much more than it has before, and many of their decisions are already out-of-date and they have to go back to modernise it once more.
Secondly, many people probably find Laravel and MVC intimidating, it's actually not as hard as it seems, you just need to wrap your head around the concepts.

(2017-10-10, 09:04 AM)Azah Wrote: [ -> ]If 2.0 development continues in some shape or form, I think it would be a good idea to have a few articles on 2.0
E.g. An introduction to it's architecture and how control flows through it. Models, Views, Controllers, etc., an introduction to git, and an introduction to contributing to the project.

I don't know how much that would help, but it would be nice, if it inspires at-least someone to contribute.
Also, 2.0 development is a tricky one, as this year has been particularly harsh on 2.0 development, so it may get better next year, but no one really knows when it'll be ready.

Judging by current state of 2.0 (and MyBB in general), lets hope that next year wouldnt be last year of MyBB. Im affraid that if the team continues to force its, somewhat shady, unclear and highly controversial policies, MyBB will not last till the end of 2018.

To gain rapidness in development as well as to attract new/more contributors, MyBB's team need to change policies on certain things. Or step down.
All this whats happening is very sad.