In reply to Peter Shaw.

Hi Peter,
I’m certain that the claim that BuddyBoss hasn’t done anything new since forking BuddyPress is absolutely false. I listed two not-insignificant examples already, the new permissions system and the integration with the Redis Object Cache to speed up the load times of the activity feed, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I don’t understand how anyone can square the claim that all BuddyBoss did was simply fork BuddyPress and bbPress and haven’t done anything meaningful with it since, with the broader claim that BuddyBoss is hurting BuddyPress… You can review what they’ve done yourself in their release notes at https://www.buddyboss.com/resources/buddyboss-platform-releases/ and what they are planning to do in their roadmap at https://www.buddyboss.com/roadmap/. BuddyBoss has claimed that they are not even pulling from BuddyPress code anymore besides the occasional security patch.

Reading into why it was forked, it does appear to be complicated. Mike Eisenwasser simply had a different vision and didn’t think he could realize it without forking BuddyPress, but JJJ pointed out that Mike didn’t provide any feedback or requests before doing so. Given that, I understand both sides and in an ideal world BuddyPress and BuddyBoss would come together and merge the two plugins – even at least partially – to share in the development. That seems unlikely for the same reasons it was forked in the first place, which gives legitimacy to the necessity of forking it. On the other hand, if BuddyPress wants to make the case that it wasn’t necessary to fork BuddyPress at all for Mike to realize his vision, then merging BuddyBoss and BuddyPress should be under serious discussion. In my mind, those are the two determining factors/choices in front of everyone that offer us insight as to the wisdom of forking BuddyPress.

However, the BuddyPress team seems to be averse to adding too many features to the core plugin, while the BuddyBoss team is committed to a modern, feature-rich social networking platform that can be configured out-of-the-box. It doesn’t need to be winner take-all though, but it is up to BuddyPress to determine their value-proposition and path forward.