Hi, all. I have always wondered why there is a bar on the right-hand corner of the Bitcointalk site stating "simple machines forum". What does this have to do with Bitcointalk? How do simple machines even remotely relate to Bitcoin? Aren't simple machines like screws, pulleys, levers wheel and axles and all that stuff that I learned in high school? So what relation does it have with the Bitcointalk forum?
It's simply the forum software we are using, just like vBulletin, MyBB, and many more. There is currently a new software called epochtalk which is financed by theymos (the money he gets from donations and ads) but we still didn't see anything significant yet.
Exactly, SimpleMachines provides the framework for both the backend/frontend of the forum - Essentially making it so that everyone doesn't have to re-create the wheel every time a forum is built. Best to leave the core dev to a dedicated company always working on it and providing regular updates than to try and risk bootstrapping a project like that from the ground up.
Usually such software comes with some sort of license that you purchase and pay at a set interval to receive regular updates. Makes things VERY efficient for forums/sites that need to be up and running quickly, yet things still be quite secure from the get-go =)