In this new entry on his blog, Jacob Santos is officialy ringing his own sort of death knell for phpBB in the form of recommending a move to FUDForum.

The development of phpBB 3 has been past due for a long time. In my humble and not so educated opinion, it has faded (or if it hasn't already, it will fade) into obscurity. The phpBB 2.x development line has been overtaken by other forum projects, including better security in their package. SMF offers many of the features that will appear in phpBB 3 and also offers phpBB ease of installation and use.

He goes on to talk about the "upcoming release" of phpBB 3 but reminds us of the fact that it might be "another 2 or 3 years" before the update. If they ever get it out, though, (and it lives up to expectations) it'll be great.

Jacob then looks at FUDForum (a project involving Ilia Alshanetsky) and praises it for its integration skills and simplicity. It even includes APIs to help integrate the install of FUDForum with the databases from other popular message boards.