MyBB Community Forums

Quote:Remember those developers you were going to get to contribute to MyBB 1.9? Yeah, so do I. I've yet to see any contribution from them whatsoever...

I used those developers to focus on my own site. We're responsive and have created dozens of plugins and features in less than a year. If I knew for a fact that the work done on my site would be similar to the goals of MyBB I'd simply have my dev (who is paid btw) work on the MyBB project and update my site accordingly. Unfortunately it's clear MyBB wants to do things like add TWIG and make changes that will break the current work but are also difficult to collaborate with at this time. Basically Justin is doing all the template work and we wait on him, am I correct?

And last time I contributed myself was to report an exploit. I was chastised for posting it at the Github so other admins could fix it. So that was very disheartening for me. The policy to hide reported exploits and vulnerabilities is a terrible one. It should be rewritten. It's another instance where the MyBB team is not up to date imho with the needs of the community and it's only thinking of themselves and not the many admins using the product.

Quote:It's always nice to see complaints, definitely makes the team feel even more inclined to pour their free time into something for no reward.

I offered a reward to the team. It proved to have no results. That was in June.
https://community.mybb.com/thread-218367.html

So reward, no reward, complaints, no complaints, what does it matter if in the end the team just goes at a pace the community has no control over and we're told to just wait. And we do wait. And then wait more....and more...you get the idea. Go read that thread btw..Eric says that you were just waiting for Justin to convert the theme to Twig and the theme was done. So months go by and we're all just waiting for this responsive theme so our websites can be updated to usefullness in the modern internet world.

Your words about 1.9...

Euan T Wrote:Personally I feel that we have a good chance of having a beta ready by the end of August/the start of September.

From a 60 day expectation to a 6 month wait and we still don't really have much of an expectation for a date. If you told us again that you think it's realistically a "good chance" of a beta in a couple months do you think anyone here would be excited? The mood now is "believe it when I can download it", from the community.

Quote:I know we're slow. Everybody else on the team knows we're low. If I could wave a magic wand and release 1.9 tomorrow, don't you think I would?

The admission of the problem is a first step in solving it. Or do you think the pace is reasoanble and that the waiting is acceptable? Because I have a feeling you might tell us something like "it is what it is". IMHO this should be solved with clear and realistic goals for the software and a stronger focus. The dropping of 2.0 was a great start. The new 1.9x thread roadmap was pretty good.

https://community.mybb.com/thread-215212.html

Maybe if you have people on the team not pulling their weight you need to replace them. I don't have an insider information to how the team is run or by whom but from the outside it appears like people are on the team in name only. A good portion of the 1.9x roadmap could be banged out in a matter of weeks if given the appropriate amount of attention and commitment.

Quote:I honestly don't know what we can do to speed things up.

Complain to the project manager about the slow pace.

Quote:All of the active members of the development and SQA team hold down full time jobs and are distributed across several different timezones. Most of us are also juggling several other MyBB tasks like responding to the several daily emails we receive to the MyBB email address(es).

Then find people who have the time and willingness to commit to get MyBB into a place it should be. Far too long the project has been okay with this slow-lime pace like a turtle and telling the community to just wait. WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT is all we read. If you don't think everyone is tired of that you are completely out of touch with the needs of the admins who run the MyBB software. NO ONE HAS ANY PATIENCE LEFT. That's just reality in your face.

Quote:I will always welcome constructive input, and would definitely welcome contributions in the form of code and testing any day of the week.

Aren't we waiting on 1.9x templates to be converted to TWIG for coding? The Github doesn't seem to have any 1.9x repo. I assume it's private still.

From Github "The develop/* branches contain the source code of future branches of MyBB under development."...so where is it?

Quote:But threads like these never fail to make me feel less motivated to continue working on a project I've poured the last decade into.

Nor is it pleasant for those running MyBB who have relied on the software for over a decade. I don't want to bash the team or the project but c'mon. You must know that what's happening isn't cool. We're the outsiders. We're not on the team. The project is on Github and it's open source but it doesn't ever feel like it's a community project because us outsiders are not privy to the private communications of the team. We don't really know how it's run. We are often not part of the decision making. We're just told what you're doing. Then we're told to wait.

Euan, I know you're a solid coder. Looking at the Forum Team...who is the actual project manager right now? Could it be the lack of project management leadership is the cause for all these problems?

(2019-02-17, 11:04 PM)labrocca Wrote: [ -> ]Then find people who have the time and willingness to commit to get MyBB into a place it should be.

You say that as if no one ever thought of it before.

Of course, we would like to find more people to help, but they aren't exactly falling out of trees, ya know? I can understand your frustration, but to echo Euan, I haven't seen you contributing anything either. Look at the team we currently have. I personally haven't contributed anything in a few months to the project. It makes me sad, but I have bills to pay and a real job that actually pays that I have to put first.

When I have time to work on my plugins, I do. If there is an issue on GitHub for MyBB that I think I can handle, I try to solve the issue. But when I don't have time, there is nothing to be done about that. I'm sure the rest of the team feel the same.

So, please, for the love of all that is holy, contribute! Create an issue for change that you would like to see in 1.8 or 1.9. Wait for a discussion to have time to resolve. If everyone is in agreement, create a PR. When someone else gets a chance to review and test your PR, then it will be merged. It will not be a rapid process, but it is necessary in order to be thorough.

Even then, bugs slip through. Then we have to feel like crap because it happened and rush to fix it.

All I want to do is share the stuff I make for my forum with everyone. For free. That's it.

Yet, somehow I wind up feeling like crap all the time for not "doing enough" or being "too slow."

Thanks, big guy. Way to inspire the troops.

Quote:I can understand your frustration, but to echo Euan, I haven't seen you contributing anything either.

Unfortunately my only real contribution can only be financial support as I have limited time. But also, I'm not officially on the team either. I'm fairly sure I'm controversial enough that having me on the team even if I wanted to be would be blocked.

Quote:So, please, for the love of all that is holy, contribute!

If MyBB would adopt the HF base theme (different color choices of course), which is fully responsive, I'd be happy to contribute it and help to integrate it into base.

Quote:Yet, somehow I wind up feeling like crap all the time for not "doing enough" or being "too slow."

I didn't start this thread. I'm not the only member to express this view. I believe my opinion is shared by many. I'm just willing to verbalize it.

Quote:Thanks, big guy. Way to inspire the troops.

Aren't we beyond that? If MyBB was to announce they are no longer actively developing or releasing updates it wouldn't shock anyone. Since the project is on Github what does it even mean anymore to be on the team? If official development is going to be as slow as it has been for the past 5+ years then why not just disband the official team and stop having releases and encourage Github updates. Find a different way to push the project as a true community driven one. Not one that's run by a small team that's inactive and develops at a snails pace. Just have managers who review and approve changes that happen on base. Find a way to obtain votes from the community for what's incorporated.

Things could be different with MyBB imho. And imho if they don't change, then this project is pretty much on its last legs.

Keep in mind, you shouldn't shoot the messenger. You don't see anyone outside of the team disagreeing with my sentiment.

(2019-02-17, 11:04 PM)labrocca Wrote: [ -> ]And last time I contributed myself was to report an exploit.  I was chastised for posting it at the Github so other admins could fix it.  So that was very disheartening for me.  The policy to hide reported exploits and vulnerabilities is a terrible one.  It should be rewritten.   It's another instance where the MyBB team is not up to date imho with the needs of the community and it's only thinking of themselves and not the many admins using the product.  

I want to see something like HackerOne where reports, when closed, are then made public.

(2019-02-17, 11:04 PM)labrocca Wrote: [ -> ]Aren't we waiting on 1.9x templates to be converted to TWIG for coding? The Github doesn't seem to have any 1.9x repo.  I assume it's private still.

From Github "The develop/* branches contain the source code of future branches of MyBB under development."...so where is it?

Here? https://github.com/mybb/mybb/tree/develop/1.9

(2019-02-17, 11:04 PM)labrocca Wrote: [ -> ]I used those developers to focus on my own site.  We're responsive and have created dozens of plugins and features in less than a year.  If I knew for a fact that the work done on my site would be similar to the goals of MyBB I'd simply have my dev (who is paid btw) work on the MyBB project and update my site accordingly.  Unfortunately it's clear MyBB wants to do things like add TWIG and make changes that will break the current work but are also difficult to collaborate with at this time.  Basically Justin is doing all the template work and we wait on him, am I correct?

...


Aren't we waiting on 1.9x templates to be converted to TWIG for coding? The Github doesn't seem to have any 1.9x repo.  I assume it's private still.

From Github "The develop/* branches contain the source code of future branches of MyBB under development."...so where is it?

Are you sure you looked at GitHub? 1.9 development is happening in a develop/* branch ... just click on the "branch" button in the mybb repo: https://github.com/mybb/mybb/tree/develop/1.9

Regarding the theme, progress is also being tracked on GitHub, in this issue. Development of the theme itself is happening in a fork on my GitHub account which is also being tracked in this pull request. As you can see, a lot of work has been done on the theme in the past several months.

There's also this live demo of MyBB 1.9, where you can see the new, responsive theme is already nearly complete (Twig conversion and all). Most of what is left with the theme is testing, testing, and more testing to ensure everything has been accounted for and works well on every device.

Please consider taking the time to actually keep track of development of 1.9 before complaining about the lack of development of 1.9.

@labrocca
On your mentioned reward thread I have stated the practical scenario that made many people unhappy and made yourself "gone". You people can raise points and issues to show the team down, but can't have the truth in face? No miracle is gonna happen and no reward can boost things up.

How the team runs is not important, contribution is the main part to speed things up which you rarely do. May be you are right, because if you do you may go demoralized very soon, and thats the core reason of having lack of developers.

I just stated the fact, not the reason. And I stated this not on behalf of team its my own feeling gathered by contributing to MyBB which is, honestly, driving me to contribute even less, and surely I am not the only one felt this way.

Smf wasn't updated from 2017. At leasy mybb team is trying to fix stuff and taking members suggestions. This pre release .20 is theonly delayedpre release so far but there were some bugs which occured so its fine. Labrocca you camt expect mybb to conpete with ips or xenforo where dev team has a salary and full time job.

Great. Glad everything is as it should be then. Seems no one has anything to worry about.

Regarding the security issue procedure, this is publicly explained on the site: https://mybb.com/get-involved/security/ - we do not want issues reported publicly without a tested and approved patch available as having them public could lead to further exploitation. This is a common industry practice that I'm sure you're aware of.

Regarding HackerOne or some such for security reports. We've discussed this kind of thing a couple of times as a team. The only thing that's put us off using HackerOne as far as I can remember off the top of my head is that there tends to be an expectation for bounties when using HackerOne - we can't really offer bounties given that we're not making any money or anything...

Regarding a product manager or any such: there is no product manager. There's Chris who pays for everything, then there's the rest of us. If anything, Devilshakerz and myself have the highest amount of access to things like GitHub, servers, etc. out of any of the rest of the staff.

The actual conversion to Twig is complete, and has been for several months now. Justin is putting some finishing tweaks on the new theme as he mentioned above. Once that's done, there are basically a couple of other tasks to complete:

• Rebase the 1.9 code on top of the 1.8 code to include all the 1.8 bug fixes since the last rebase
  
• Update the ACP to allow admins to edit Twig templates from there
  
• Finish my SwiftMailer PR, which I've had sitting open and unfinished for several months as I got side-tracked
  
• A boat load of testing
  

Regarding replacing inactive team members, I'd be more than happy bringing additional members onto the team. However, we need people to apply and to preferably contribute before applying. We've tried in the past to bring people into the team who've had no experience working on the core and none of them have ever lasted over a month or two. Adding that extra level of churn doesn't really help anybody unfortunately.

---

I'm planning to get 1.8.20 released during this week. Once that's released, Justin's theme PR will be merged as it stands, then 1.9 will be rebased on top of 1.8. Once that's done, I plan to either update my original roadmap thread or create a new one - I'm not sure which would be easier for people to follow and understand? I'm all ears on this. I'm used to developing, not managing or necessarily communicating intent/progress.

I fully sympathise with people being frustrated at our rate of development. I too wish we could do better, but as it currently stands I know I'm personally stretched pretty thin.