Thank you to the devs

Discussion of general topics related to the new version and its place in the world. Don't discuss new features, report bugs, ask for support, et cetera. Don't use this to spam for other boards or attack those boards!
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Discussion of general topics related to the new release and its place in the world. Don't discuss new features, report bugs, ask for support, et cetera. Don't use this to spam for other boards or attack those boards!
sectionw
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Thank you to the devs

Post by sectionw »

After reading the nit picking post by too many people with nothing much better to do and missing the simple grasp of the work to be done, and what is accomplished.
I want to thank Paul and the crew, i run phpbb 2.0.x and it is great, vs 3.0 will come out when it comes out and that is fine, the info on the up to date info for the beta was appreciated, thanks.

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espenhh
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Re: Thank you to the devs

Post by espenhh »

I second that :D

They are doing a great job. Now the search is back, so things are moving forward :D I also notised the new "message history" in PM's, that feature is just awesome! I have newer seen that at any other boards before :D

Keep up the good work. Take your time and make phpBB 3.0 the best forumsoftware ever made (it already is :D)
Espen

(Huge thanks to the phpBB-developers!!!)

Need Norwegian support????
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blobber
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Re: Thank you to the devs

Post by blobber »

I don't see the point of such discussions either, I mean after all it's really an opensource project and not meeting imaginary release dates is probably one of the most typical things for opensource software development, so opensource software development is all about expecting the unexpected, and hence about worst case scenarios - which applies to either base, the developer base as well as the community base.

Personally, I wouldn't even consider posting any progress announcements on forums - taking into account the enormous user community of phpBB, such a posting would pretty much always guarantee response with unnecessary babbling, babbling that takes time to be read - time that developers would probably always prefer to spend actually putting into the actual development and not the "therapy" of their user community.

I understand the desire of the community to keep getting updated on any progress, but I would certainly not chose to provide that information by interactive means - rather it should be a "one way road", at this point developers usually do not require any feedback, nor would it change anything (for the good).

Theoretically, it wouldn't be all that complicated to put a simple visual progress script together - much like the latest CVS statistics addition:

So users could for example open up a specific dynamic page where they would be able to see estimations about how many hours of work need to be put into a specific component/module for completion, and how many hours were already put into the development of a certain component - these would be absolutely approximate figures, so such figures don't talk about release dates or even deadlines, rather every user would have to interpret that information and take all the variables into consideration.

And it would be obvious from the beginning that all this depends on the amount of spare time that the developers can actually put into development - probably you wouldn't see many questions about release dates anymore, simply because it gets terribly obvious that progress is being made without actually encouraging everybody to start discussing.

All this could easily be kept entirely general, you wouldn't need to specifically mention certain features - it could even be kept much more general than acydBurn's actual posting at phpBB.com. That way the whole thing would provide information in an understandable way without providing reasons/platforms for absolutely unnecessary debates.

I think it might definitely be worth to internally discuss the pros & cons of such a -more- transparent progress tool, developing a simple script would actually not have to take much longer than 1-2 hours - and still it would have the potential to lead some discussions to an end.

Despite from that it's amazing to see how many people actually seem to claim the right to share their feeling of "disappointment" publicly, whoever's disappointed by an opensource project should think about who's actually paying for the project instead of the users, money doesn't necessarily have to be the currency of choice. At some point in most people's lives, time becomes a much more precious thing than money.

And yet I have to admit that I would find it personally pretty interesting to see how many phpBB users would actually be willing to make a (small) financial contribution to the project in order to allow the developers to spend more time on the project - apart from the fact that several OSS projects meanwhile make such calls, it seems not to be too unrealistic to think about something like that, taking the discussion in another thread into account that's mentioning a pretty weird thing that has meanwhile created a "revenue" of more almost $ 20.000 US- http://www.savetoby.com" target="_blank .
Nullius wrote: If you look at the size of the phpBB-community, I think there's only one conclusion that is right:
'The devs are doing a great job' !
Taking the obviously very narrow community of developers into account, you cannot overestimate that it's really amazing what's been accomplished so far.

What I don't get however -and I'm repeating myself here- is why the project's developers seem to prefer to remain an "elite". I mean there's such an enormous community, the manpower behind the project simply doesn't seem to resemble its size - I think it's no surprise that release dates cannot be kept when -at times- there are only 1-2 people actually putting their spare time into it. That's actually what I was referring to when I talked of "worst case" scenarios: with only 1 or 2 people on the team nobody can ever make any kind of realistic assessment about anything.

I mean, I do understand all the reasons about maintaining code quality etc. - and yes I am definitely aware of the "too many cooks"-concept, so I do know that there's no direct link between the amount of coders a project has and the amount of work that gets efficiently finished within a certain amount of time.

So, I am not even suggesting to let anybody make contributions to phpBB - but given the incredibly large community it is really hard to believe that it should not be possible to find at least 1-2 additional capable developers that fullfil a very strict set of high requirements.

Still, you wouldn't let any new team members deal with every portion of the code, but rather let them take care of the less complex issues, so that they can slowly familiarize themselves with the code, hey if you have some decent PHP,SQL & OOP experience it's really not all that complicated to actually see how it all hangs together.

And even if the dev team itself should decide to keep its current joining policy, as soon as time constraints and unsufficient team contributions are becoming an actual problem (as previously indicated), it's hard to understand for many people why the phpBB team doesn't look for other volunteers, volunteers that could actually take care of the easily delegatable work, developers who might even be subject to equally strict joining requirements.

blobber
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Re: Thank you to the devs

Post by blobber »

Sorry, I just noticed that the original thread that I intended to reply to has been locked - please feel free to delete my posting, didn't intent to keep the rumbling goin'.

Sorry for any inconveniences.

BioALIEN
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Re: Thank you to the devs

Post by BioALIEN »

:? I never really saw the other posts that followed 8O

Edit: Just read the other threads. Things are hotting up around here. Give the devs a break! Like i said before, http://www.SaveToby.com" target="_blank instead of bugging the devs ;)
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Ptirhiik_
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Re: Thank you to the devs

Post by Ptirhiik_ »

The only comment I will make is : I will be on the deck for the betas, in order to try to help my best the devs to fix remaining glitches if any. I hope all who has - and probably will sadly - complained about the delay will also do the same, with a real investissement in time. That the least we can do to thanks the devs, as we won't even approach the time and the energy they have putted into the various release of phpBB.

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cyberCrank
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Re: Thank you to the devs

Post by cyberCrank »

Thanks again to the devs and sharing beta status info!

I'll be there with you Ptirhiik_ to help test this baby, provide feedback, fix what can be fixed, and help get it out the door...

** to blobber and BioALIEN and others -- I apologize if anyone is offended, but I closed the other thread as I felt it degenerated beyond its original intent. My apologies to anyone who wanted to reply and could not; to my knowledge no posts were deleted at all that I can tell, but please be aware that the Moderators and Admins did NOT close that thread, I did and mostly made this post to clarify and make that clear. And I apologize for making this note in this thread, but consistent with this thread, I thank the Devs again for providing the beta status information and leave it at that... **

DragonlordP
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Re: Thank you to the devs

Post by DragonlordP »

thanks for the info from me too, i hope this becomes the new policy from now on... i think there were 9 areas which still need work, it would be also nice to know when work on each one is complete 8)
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Re: Thank you to the devs

Post by Natan »

BioALIEN wrote: http://www.SaveToby.com" target="_blank
Snopes :mrgreen:
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MHobbit
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Re: Thank you to the devs

Post by MHobbit »

I also want to thank the devs a lot for all the hard work they've done...

I for one refuse to complain about the speed of the development; I understand that the devs have lives to tend to.

I will also help with bugtracking the betas when they're released publicly whenever needed.
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