AFFiNE vs Flarum

Flarum is an open-source forum framework whose entire recent release history is the 2.0 train — beta.8 in March, then five release candidates from April through July. The candidates ship on a three-to-six week rhythm, and most of them publish nothing beyond a pointer to the changelog file in the tag. The last releases carrying visible detail were the earlier ones, where the work was database and rendering performance plus extension-compatibility fixes.

The substance that is visible points at making large forums viable: eliminating N+1 queries on the discussion list, adding a composite index to fix slow unread-notification counts, and caching scheduler timestamps. Those are the changes a forum makes when instances have outgrown the original query patterns. The steady RC cadence with no beta regression suggests a stabilisation grind rather than continued feature work — but the opaque release notes make the remaining scope hard to read from outside.

A 2.0 stable release is the obvious next step, though five candidates without a published scope makes the timing unclear. Watch whether rc.6 arrives on the same three-to-six week spacing or the gap widens.