The new forum software has been in development for years. Considering the current trend of online forums losing ground to social media, there might be less incentive to hurry up and release it. The development is costly, time-consuming, but will it be worth it, and how big will the community be that uses it?
CMIIW, but majority of the development for the new forum software has already been done and the cost has already been invested in, at this point it's jus a case of when does it officially get released, not a question of whether or not to release it as the forum (admins and the community ( had already invested a lot into it.
Also, the forum isn't particularly profit-based and the purpose of the be software is not to attract more users, that's the job of the Bitcoin network which will attract individuals to itself and by extension this forum, the new software is meant to address some of the issues users have discussed over for years such a 2FA, a mobile friendly website etc. I have no issue with the way the forum is, but some others want those features and it should be available to them and I can choose not to use them.
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You make an important point about the evil fee, it's a system that does not work adequately and should be reviewed. I've once been on a forum where users from a whole country were tagged to a single or very close IPs and registration was made difficult for everyone, it created a bad situation, discouraging many from joining.