Maybe cut the peer in two (don't know if this expression exist in English
), allowed people could see and post, others (maybe selected) could just see ?
For my part, I slowly abandoned the forums and my (small) contributions because of the project looking dead, so, maybe a visible forum with restricted post could make both parties happy
I should add that if this project is going to use a system like SVN, we could allow anybody to see the progress in real time.
Just some thought and ideas thrown randomly after waking up
PS : I just don't want to see some kind of tension between allowed people on the project forum and the others, we are a small community, we should preserve that.