(2020-04-03, 08:00 PM)labrocca Wrote: [ -> ]Quote:MyBB prides itself upon being free and Open Source. I don't see this changing any time soon.
That should not exclude a commercial option. Maybe that's where some (un)official commercial fork would be a good option.
I guess what I was trying to say is that the core will never become a commercial product (eg: don't expect to have to start paying for a license to use MyBB at all - IPB went down that route a long time ago and I'm trying to reassure we won't). I can see a possible future we might offer paid support plans or something, but with the way the project is structured at the moment (one BDFL who is reluctant to register MyBB as a company or non-profit, etc due to the amount of effort required and the legal hardship), anything like that is so far over the horizon it's difficult to see.
(2020-04-03, 08:00 PM)labrocca Wrote: [ -> ]I think the team does a fair job of fixing bugs and having updates in major versions. The issue is more about making leaps in the code which could potentially be done by a small team of paid developers in what I would hope could be a shorter time period. You don't have to hire for a year. My guess is that dedicated paid developers could bang out the work in 2-3 months at a reasonable cost. Team could them be responsible for updates, bug fixes, and security audits.
I suppose I'm personally okay with the development roadmap and the addition of Twig. What I'm not okay with is that by adding these elements the progress has slowed tremendously. What's the point of placing a roadmap if the release date is unrealstic and we never see it or that it takes YEARS. That's a TERRIBLE plan. Just freaking AWFUL. Do you guys understand how frustrating this is becoming for the base admins using MyBB? I don't think you do. It's beyond patience. It's actually at the point that if I ran this project I would fire each and every one of you. None of you appear to be responsible enough to lead or commit. This is how I feel and maybe you think I'm wrong but that's how I feel. We are all tired of the responses to wait wait wait...
GET IT TOGETHER AND RELEASE ASAP!
I have a pretty good idea of how frustrating it is. Believe it or not, I'm frustrated too. I genuinely hoped that we'd have 1.9 out following the timetable I originally laid out. We started off fairly well with several of us working through the template conversion and the theme design relatively quickly, then unfortunately it all fell apart.
The reason I suggested the issue/bug bounty idea is to see if that may motivate developers (both inside and outside the team) to contribute. I'm going to lay that idea out in more detail in a separate thread later on tonight and would really love some feedback from administrators like yourself. Offering a paid incentive might hopefully urge more people to help.
(2020-04-03, 08:00 PM)labrocca Wrote: [ -> ]Quote:Some people may look and believe the team aren't doing anything, when we're actually busy.
Developers like yourself shouldn't be answering threads like this. Where is the community laison?
Kick the inactive devs and make a requirement for activity in the Github to keep their position. Some sort of quota. It's almost decieving to see this page:
https://community.mybb.com/showteam.php
@Euan T, I know you do a fair-portion of the development along with maybe 2 others. But I have an honest question for you, who is actually leading the developers with assignments along with time-frames for accountability? Or it is more like people accepting a task then doing it on their own time-frames? How does it work right now? What's the projects work-flow like?
I try to keep abreast of everything going on as much as possible. When it comes to technical threads or threads questioning development, I feel like a developer should become involved at some point as they should be able to provide more insight than most other team members.
You mentioned the show team page, but I also find it insightful to look at the GitHub pulse too, and it's honestly embarrassing:
https://github.com/mybb/mybb/pulse/monthly
It currently works exactly as you said (and as far as I'm aware, it's always worked this way): developers choose a task to work on (sometimes without even assigning themselves or stating they're working on it - the first time you know is when a PR appears...). Leadership wise, I guess there's me and Devilshakerz but neither of us tend to assign tasks - if we did, we'd likely assign most of them to ourselves as other developers come and go.
(2020-04-03, 08:00 PM)labrocca Wrote: [ -> ]Quote:my proposal to speed it up is to apply the main commits onto 1.9
Even though I don't plan on using 1.9x to my main site I completely agree with this. Leave 1.8x alone 100%. Ditch 1.8x. Smart devs will be able to compare code of 1.9x to 1.8x for any changes or bug fixes. Make 1.8x updates Github managed by the community instead of by the team and official releases.
I pay my developer for a 5 day work week. I'd be willing to dedicate him to one day a week for the project if I knew it would help but I don't have confidence in that.
We all know Chris is absent. Is that the problem? Is there a lack of leadership guiding the project? I suspect that's exactly the issue. I'd like to ask you personally if you feel the same.
As mentioned earlier on, Devilshakerz and I are the de-facto leadership really. I have the most access to get management tasks done (though I still lack access to some 3rd party services we use such as CloudFlare) so I tend to manage that side of things that most people don't normally see as well as trying to work on development.
In the past we had a much more active team with clear leadership at every level. Now, it's a lot more disjointed with fewer people doing the same amount of work and no clear leadership.
An idea I've had floating at the back of my head is to hold monthly (text-based) team meetings where team members can say what they've done that month and what they're working on. I want it to be in a setting where the public can watch the meeting and where we can have a log after the meeting that will be posted in the forums, but I don't want the distraction of community members discussing during the meeting if possible (comments would be at the end of the meeting, like they are in a town hall type of meeting - structure and with everybody getting a chance to speak). I'm not sure of what kind of platform would work best for that as I'd like it to happen live like chat. We'd probably also want to implement some kind of rule where if anybody missed more than 2 meetings in a row they were removed from the team.