Have we all forgotten about Vbulletin, XenForo, etc? 🙂
It is completely natural for forum software, and software in general, to undergo evolutionary changes. Things break because the framework needs to evolve, just like nature and the animal kingdom adapt over time. The beauty of open source lies in the fact that any aspiring or skilled developer can step in when needed, as long as the original author included a license that allows for such freedom.
Recently, there was a discussion in the XenForo community forum about users still running on older and severely deprecated PHP versions. What did XenForo do in response? They simply added a warning message to their application, encouraging users to upgrade to the latest stable version of PHP when possible, without forcing them to make hasty changes. It's the responsibility of extension developers to update their extensions in a reasonable timeframe, granted of course, that the developers are still maintaining their code. It's perfectly normal to stick with a specific version of Flarum until your favorite extensions catch up. There's no need to rush when a new breaking version is released; it's wise to allow time for major bugs to be addressed and fixed. The key here is to be patient and offer help in any way you can, whether through a simple pull request to update an extension's breaking changes or by providing guidance on how to fix these issues as quickly as possible.
I've learned from my own experience that patience is indeed a virtue. While it might be daunting to face another phase of breaking changes, remember that the team behind Flarum aren't intentionally introducing these changes to annoy or cause anxiety. They are striving to improve the software for everyone's benefit. We're all in this together, and showing understanding and empathy can go a long way in making this process smoother and more enjoyable for all of us. 😊
