There are many different types of roles that add to the mixture of Simple Machines, and they all must work together for this organization to thrive. This section highlights the different roles you are likely to encounter, and how they fit into the overall picture of Simple Machines.

NPO Members

All members of the SMF team, once they are accepted by the NPO board of directors, are NPO members. In addition, the NPO has service teams, including the site, server, and marketing teams. In the future, other software development projects may join the NPO, and their members may become NPO members. In addition, some NPO members do not belong to any of the NPO's service or project teams.

All regular members of the NPO must pay annual dues, or, in lieu of dues, perform volunteer service for the NPO or its teams. All regular members may vote in the annual elections, and in any other polls the NPO may conduct.

If NPO members leave teams, cease performing volunteer service, and/or cease paying dues, they will be converted to emeritus status. These emeritus members may participate in discussions, but may not vote.

The NPO bylaws stipulate that the ratio of non-team members to team members of the NPO must not exceed 30%. If the ratio ever exceeds 30%, or if the addition of a non-team member would cause the ratio by 30%, no non-team members may be added until such time as adding a non-team member would not cause this ratio to exceed 30%.

NPO Board of Directors

The members of the NPO board of directors are elected to 2-year terms. Elections for approximately half of the seats are held every year, in June, by a vote of all voting members of the NPO. Once the board has been elected, they decide among themselves who will fulfill the roles of President, Vice President, Secretary, and Treasurer. The Board of Directors is responsible for making sure that the NPO's bills are paid and other obligations are satisfied. The Board of Directors may, from time to time, appoint members to carry out some of the duties of the NPO.

Simple Machines LLC

From October 23rd 2006 until 2011, Simple Machines was a Limited Liability Company registered in the state of Arizona. During 2010 and 2011, the Simple Machines NPO took on the responsibilities of the LLC, and in 2011, the LLC completed a merge with the NPO and was dissolved. The Simple Machines NPO has taken on all of the LLC's assets, liabilities, and business responsibilities. The Simple Machines LLC no longer exists.

Team Members

The people behind Simple Machines are a diverse group of individuals who, in their free time, put their efforts together to help make Simple Machines Forum what it is today. Many different uses of skills are expressed within several teams, including a design team, modification team, development team, documentation team, support team, and a language team. Each team member is a volunteer who has agreed to donate their time and efforts to help improve Simple Machines’ product and service offerings.

The team members are the people who help make this project a reality – and so we must be supportive with of all team members and help them grow as team members and as people. This project was founded by people and for people looking to development their skills as well as themselves. We will always strive to help and encourage others and to provide opportunity for growth, development and learning.

The SMF team is divided into several smaller teams, each responsible for a different area of the project’s success. This means that each position is a crucial one. Team members are always encouraged to stretch themselves and to try new things. Individuals often help out with other roles as part of their day-to-day activities. Switching teams can provide the team member an opportunity to learn new skills, apply old skills to new tasks, and provide variety to everyone.

SMF Friends

Anyone who had a lot of influence in the early years of the project (E.g. Zef Hemel), or any former team member is listed as a friend of SMF. These individuals have a lot of knowledge about the history of SMF, and about the code. Many of them check in from time to time, on the Friends board, and are available and interested in providing experience, knowledge and advice. Some friends have left in order to make time for new challenges. Others have left the team because of a lack of time, and may return to the team in the future.

Forum Users

The users of SMF are the most varied group of people at simplemachines.org. They are the reason the public simplemachines.org forum was established -- to support them. Some users are very knowledgeable, while others are struggling to learn to use SMF. Some communicate clearly, while others are difficult to understand. Some users appreciate the work we do, while others don't seem to understand. Some are easy to interact with, while others are not. As team members, we will treat all of them with patience, respect and fairness, friendliness, and civility, in accordance with our core values.

Always keep an eye out for forum users who are a good match for the team's core values, and have shown skill for developing, supporting, or documenting the SMF software -- most of the Simple Machines team members began their involvement as forum users on simplemachines.org.

Charter Members

Charter Members have signed up for an annual subscription. They have demonstrated that they believe in our success enough to make a financial contribution. The money they contribute is important to the financial health of the project. Charter members have a private section on the community forums, and are given a higher priority for support, via the HelpDesk system.

Charter Members are our primary advocates outside of SMF circles. So giving them good support is important to our continued success. Many of our charter members are competent installers and programmers. The vast majority of them are website owners who understand that they don’t have the skills to built their site, and who appreciate our technical expertise and our experience with the software. They are a great source of support, and a great source of honest feedback.

Advertisers

Most advertisers on the SMF site are owners of hosting companies or software companies who advertise to web masters and website owners. If you come across an advertiser using our community, please be considerate and helpful – if we can help their business grow, then they will be able to afford more advertising in the future.

If you ever elect to use an advertiser’s products or services, please take the time to provide them with a testimonial and a comment to let them know that their contributions to SMF yielded them new business, and to help them understand we appreciate their patronage.

Competitors

There should be friendly competition between us and the developers of other forum software. We should all be able to learn from the good points of other team's designs and implementation. And we should be able to keep the conversation productive and civil, even on private boards. Assume that whatever you say about a competitor will get out, eventually.

With the new license adopted for SMF 2.0, we have a new kind of competition -- forks of SMF. These modified versions of the Simple Machines forum are written by developers who are looking for a challenge, or who want to try taking the SMF code in a direction different from what the team has chosen. Discussions of pros and cons of these choices and implementations could grow heated, but should remain civil and friendly. Some of the best SMF talent will choose to do some work on a fork at some point, and the team can often learn from the experiments of fork authors.

Redistributors

Anyone is permitted to redistribute SMF 2.0, as long as they follow the licensing agreement. Any requests for interpretation of the license agreement should be directed to the NPO.

Anyone who wishes to distribute earlier versions of SMF must have written permission from the SimpleMachines NPO. All inquiries about redistributing earlier versions of SMF should be directed to the NPO.

Bots/Crawlers

Bots and Crawlers are not, strictly speaking, people. Most of them are automated indexers employed by search engine companies. Search engines are a benefit to the Simple Machines community. They draw interested users to the site, and help them find answers to their questions.