We have phorum installed as an experiement more than anything else. We are looking at ways to use the forum plugin to cover the comments sections for every plugin that is offered. Phorum gives us a little easier platform to work on than anything else. That's why it is installed here. It also gives us a chance to have a forum installed with out making everyone either register twice, or installing a buggy integration effort for phpBB. Phorum is also a little easier to work with in a development, because it is a simpler code base. We can make some quick changes, just to see what would happen.
Really, there isn't any conspiracy afoot here. The people that really like Phorum, really like Phorum. The people that really like phpBB, really like phpBB. What is on my mind more than anything else is to give people the choice of what you want to install.
We also understand that phpBB makes sense to have as a plugin, because it was bundled with PHP-Nuke 4.4. As soon as we have some resources free that can look at some of the phpBB integrations around, we will. We will need to implement the CSS, and a few other things to make it much easier for you to deploy, and that's why we need to free up some resources to do this.
We hope to have both a Phorum plugin and a phpBB plugin that gives you a choice. We might actually be a little closer with the phpBB because it has been integrated before, and can allow us to speed development. Eventually, after we have the comments system worked out and an abstract layer in place, we will have a pretty good system in both:)
I hope this makes it a bit clearer as to our intentions.
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