phpBB 3.2 Discussion

[SamG]

I would like to see even one example of a non-trivial OSS project that has succeeded long term without explanation.

Tp put it another way, I suspect that it's the minority of OSS supporters that measure a project's health solely by what goes on in a repo.

[Prince of area51]

if i had to guess i would say that the team do not expose their roadmap not because they are secretive, but because they don't really have one.

IMO that is a really harsh comment. There are certain things pretty much clear about 3.2 i.e. No support for PHP < 5.2, Events System, Posting API (in SVN), Improvements to Template System (in SVN), BBCode API (??). When you develop a software as a team, you can't just commit stuff as you like. Each and every new feature enhancement has to be discussed (unless you wrote it in the first place). Just because no so-called road-map is announced does not mean that there isn't one. I believe there will be hidden (aka private) forums on phpbb.com and even on area51 solely for phpBB 3.2 development.

Yes, what I (and most of us) would have preferred was a list of some sort of telling us what to expect in 3.2. May be something that can be updated as the list is being built up/decided.

[Acyd Burn]

At Londonvasion we (the dev team) presented our plans regarding 3.2 - not only for the crowd there, but also for those later watching the videos. I intend to post a blog post once the video is out to recap this presentation - but i doubt i will post an announcement with a milestone list.

I may add that some of the contents of this presentation was also new to team members - but mostly only those parts being very very technical and only interesting for the minority. And i think it is apparent that i am not the type of person who posts "regular development status reports" to the announcements forum

[SamG]

And i think it is apparent that i am not the type of person who posts "regular development status reports" to the announcements forum

It is. I don't think anyone thought otherwise.

[Ds !]

update attachment will be good

[statm1]

IMHO, a milestone list would be a great thing to impart a long term vision for phpBB development. It could include what the dev team wants to have accomplished for each milestone to be considered complete. There doesn't need to be any time frame for them to be complete. However long it takes for those features/rewrites/additions/changes you name it, to be complete, that is how long that milestone was supposed to take. Milestones don't even have to be compiled into a release like some bigger software packages do. Like if you complete M1 you make that a release, like an alpha or a beta. It can all stay in the trunk. It might go a long way to show beginners at what stage development is at. There is no time frame for any of these milestones and is subject to change at anytime.

If you don't want to go that far.. A set list of features doesn't even need to be included on the milestone list. You can just say M1 has been reached and then later in development when a certain feature is set in stone, you can reveal that that particular feature was developed for M1 or M2, etc. If nothing else it could be interesting for history sake, the dev team could do all this and keep it private and after 3.2 final is released you could release all this information to the masses. If a "press secretary" or a "Public Relations official" gets hired, that could be their job to help finish compiling this list or can be in charge of it from the beginning, by being the person who keeps track of all of this for future posting.

[Highway of Life]

IMHO, a milestone list would be a great thing to impart a long term vision for phpBB development.

Hint: Watch some of the Londonvasion videos recently posted. You will see that phpBB already does this (behind the scenes of course. )

[statm1]

I had forgot that they were being posted..

Update: After spending the night watching all the videos.. There was not much mention of what I described. Plus if it does exist I would think it would curb some of the "When is it coming" questions and the teams need to give a less than kind answer. As I heard once more the reply of "it will be done when its done" and the other unpopular reply. As Ive said in earlier posts there are better ways.

[Highway of Life]

I already said the Milestone list does exist. Meik spoke (vaguely) about the Milestone list. It was just not public until those who were at Londonvasion got to see a sneak peek.
We still cannot give any better answer to time questions, and it does not do any real good saying “Milestone 1 is done, working on Milestone 2 now”. It is still done when it’s done.

[EXreaction]

Which is why we'd like to see a public milestone list and a planned feature list. That would let people guess if they want, but more importantly know what is all planned and how things are coming.