This is open-source project and they are working for free. I am software engineer myself and I know what does it take to have a solid product shipped, stick to expectations and do it on time.
Let's just reward their work and simply fund their efforts. We can come up with a bounty to have stable version shipped sooner. I believe with a bunch of us, we can collect decent amount ???
+1 
Who else is in?
Okay, off you go then.
Berlyn thanks for the link.
I was thinking about something more official where we can collect the money and see how much we have in total. I believe this will encourage others to jump in more than a link to donation.
Why is your username exactly the same as this topic?
Davis I don't know. Stick to the topic please.
Are you interested funding this project?
justshipit Thanks for your enthusiasm! As Berlyn pointed out, we have a donate button on our page, and any bit helps to pay for our infrastructure. I do know that Toby took some time off last year to work on Flarum, but he's since returned to University to complete his degree. Priorities, priorities.
At the risk of sounding callous, I'd rather not suggest that you just throw money at the problem. Money is a great incentive, but Toby and Franz (and all our other contributors) are doing this because they're passionate about forum software, and Flarum in particular. Your donations will help alleviate stress in regards to server infrastructure, or any future considerations for software/service purchases for development or community enrichment, but a bounty isn't the right approach here. Bounties tend to hurry development, which can make for seriously underdeveloped features or require some big bug fixing later, and we want Flarum to be the best as it possibly can be upon release.
I'll advise you to have patience. Check out the Milestones on the Github issues, and you can watch the bugs tick down. And absolutely donate if you're so inclined, but just remember to temper your expectations about your funds.
If you've read their story I am quite sure they are not going to leave their lives to work on Flarum 24/7 just because they get a one time money deal.
Anyway if you also notice the activity going on in the repository you'll also notice they already do a whole lot.
Activity is very low, in fact recently there is no activity (milestones to beta 6, commits activity).
That all made me think they have other priorities right now - and perhaps this priority is money.
If they are pouring their time & energy somewhere else now because of money, let's just fund it so they can focus on this full time. We have enough members here that even if 1/5 of them will contribute, we can do a lot.
We are trying here to hurry development, we just want to keep it alive and move forward with noticeable progress.
justshipit I'm quite sure this is the part of the year where people finish up school and go on vacation, so the lack of dev activity is pretty understandable.
justshipit Things tend to break if you rush it.
Devs are working hard behind the scene to make this project smooth and stable. So, we ask our supporters to be patient and we promise that all things will be worth the wait...
There are several ways to help the project, GitHub or donate via PayPal: http://flarum.org/.
Please feel free to do either or both. ?
justshipit That all made me think they have other priorities right now - and perhaps this priority is money.
Nope. The priority is school. Our lead dev is a 4th year medical student and this consumes much of his time. He works on Flarum during times away from school, and even during school, which is why progress seems intermittent.
Trying to hurry development is not the way this project will be completed. As Digital mentioned, hurrying development tends to lead to things breaking, and you need only look at any major video game release in the last 5 years to see this in practice. Flarum's development is proceeding at pace with its developers, not an arbitrary time table. This will allow Flarum to be a solid, stable piece of software on final release.
I hope you can afford it the patience it needs to get there.
jordanjay29 This answer my fear that it could be abandoned.
jordanjay29 if the problem here is lack of hands and brains, can the authors bring on & assign more people to core project and themselves assist more on product management level to keep the vision and directions up yet maintain the progress?
Just exploring options here.
justshipit Anyone is welcome to go ahead and try to fix some issues tagged for the next release.
While I'm willing to donate, I think money isn't what's slowing down the development. I come from XenForo and slower development would definitely mean that people will lose interest over time. I personally lost interest in XenForo 2; which is 'under development' since last 2 years. I know rushing in would likely mean compromise on the quality; but the software does need to maintain some pace.
I really think the lead developers should consider the option of recruiting more people on the job; tell them what needs to be done and the way it needs do be done and get the bugs fixed and smaller features developed.
All this - because I have faith in the developers and the potential of this awesome software. Can't wait to see the stable version!
It is called open-source for a reason. Anyone is welcome to participate/contribute on this project.
Start here: https://github.com/flarum/core/issues
Just what I thought. Flarum is not a a focused full-time project, it's a hobby.
Just get it done before the Cubs win a world series.
1-Million-Years Is your username a suggestion of how long we have? ?
