This is definitely my time to chime in seriously now!!
I've been using phpBB for the past year and a half. I have been developing, hacking (modding), and creating new code for it. As far as the phpbb hacking community is, I'm up there. There is a large amount of controversy in the phpBB community. Basically, everyone at phpBB.com are jerks.
I hang out, and am a Support Team Member over at (ironically)
http://www.phpbbhacks.com/ If you are interested.. please check it out, and look for hacks and tutorials from me. In fact, many teams could benefit from my dynamic sites tutorial:
http://www.ajquick.com/programming/phpbb/tutorial/
Send a link back to AJQuick.com or CogSquad.org if you use it!