[_ck_]

Oh one big thing I should point out – the features in bbPress, and the time of the main developers are first and primarily geared towards the need of Automattic and WordPress.org – people forget or don’t realize that.

Remember, bbPress is a purpose driven product that happens to also be open source. It wasn’t just a few people that said “hey let’s make a better free forum because we can”.

The features that are “missing” from bbPress just happen to be the features that Matt decided weren’t a priority for WordPress.org and the other Automattic forums. It’s also why there is no documentation, remember Matt has to pay the coders, why does he need documentation for 3rd party plugin developers if it’s just going to cost money.

bbPress 1.0 and the backpress integration are now being driven by Matt’s goal of TalkPress for WordPress.com members.

So there’s the logic that some might not understand without perspective. There are projects like SMF that literally WERE “let’s make a better free forum” that have matured now so you can compare to them – but remember they are half a decade old. bbPress is far younger (and bbPress is way easier to write mods for).