Fix this ...Screw up that!

As usual Boonex puts out a beta with problems that worked on earlier releases, and now dont. Guys look! if it worked on a previous release there is no excuse for it not to work now. Beta or not!  All the people involved in the development of this software should hang thier heads in shame. Hell I cant even register my copy..cant edit the language strings and that just a start. Why dont you try this shut down the bug reports for a while..take what you have and get it right then add things in time..you are not getting ahead the way you are going now, and you are pissin alot of people off.

Are you also starting to feel like we got duped into being the testing staff for Boonex jdoyle?   Those smart people who have done nothing with the betas are in the same place as most of us, and it looks like those who kick back and do nothing with this one will also be in the same place - maybe even a little ahead of us as they will have fewer gray hairs.   The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.

Rob

I can say that I am not installing the beta 8 after reading everything that has gone on.

The real question is whether the devs will react to this or do another full blown media blackout

I am extremely disappointed in the way Boonex has been acting lately,  The way they have managed these betas has been disrespectful, even abusive, of their hardest working and most loyal members and customers.  After they broke their promise of delivering the RC to us last Friday, they could have softened the blow by skipping this beta and going directly to the RC - or giving us an upgrade script from this beta to the RC.  It doesn't matter what you call it, the upgrade script is what we need.

I like the software, but they have done some serious damage to many small businesses by the way they have handled this and now it almost seems we are being played as fools.   Their passive aggressive attitude in not communicating with us on these forums has made things even worse.   In my opinion, they can do one of two things to help mitigate this damage:

1.  immediately commit to an upgrade script for this beta.  This would allow us to deal with the bugs and issues in this version without wasting our time, since we would know we are not on a dead end path.

or

2.  Immediately commit to a firm date for the RC in the very near future.   This would allow us to skip this beta - which most people seem to be doing anyway, and to be able to make real plans for our business - something we haven't been able to do in over a year.

Without one of these two actions, in my opinion, this beta is a total waste of time.

Rob

an RC that works would be nice...I sit and read the timeline and roadmap in Trax everyday and I cant believe some of the piddly ass shit they worry about when the basic code is sooo screwed up. I say stop the bug reports and get their basic code working.

I've been waiting for this for more than a year now, and it always seems "imminent" then something always happens to delay it.   I think Boonex just likes being "visionary" developers - they don't like getting actual products out the door, they just want to keep working on their vision.  If they did, they would do exactly what you said - get the basic functionality working and give us an upgrade path.  For some reason, they have dug their heels in and refuse to do that, even though everyone wants it - in fact, we have practically been begging for it.  In my opinion, this latest beta is a disaster, and you are right - they have now added dozens, maybe hundreds of new bugs.

What makes this even worse, is we still don't have any idea of when the RC will come out.  It was supposed to be here last Friday after another beta that was supposed to be the week before.  Some people have extrapolated and think that means the RC will be out in about a week, but in my experience logic like that doesn't work with Boonex, and that is wishful thinking.  Without that information we can't even make business decisions, so Boonex has really put many of us in a horrible position.

I am curious what others are going to do to deal with this situation.  Continue working with B7?   Look for other solutions?  or just wait and hope?  How can we continue to make progress, given that Boonex will not help us, and this beta has apparently failed.

Rob

I used to be a systems software beta tester for a major corporation and interacted daily with the programmers.  It was a fun job and they always were good about fixing bugs pretty quickly.  One thing I learned very quickly was for every set of bugs they would fix, they would add a few more for job security.  (No bugs, no job right?).  I noticed a pattern though, every few builds they would un-fix a bug and act confused on purpose just to make it appear that they had no idea what happened there.

Now, I am not saying this is happening here at Boonex, but I can tell you that I have put 100% of my brakes on right now with my Boonex projects.  I have decided to stop using Dolphin 7.x until at least it is a stable version instead of the beta 8 or RC1,2,3,4...1000 etc..  It has been fun testing it on my servers and stuff, but not in a true production environment.

I can honestly say though that if I was considering using Dolphin for my large company (if I had one), I would stick with the tried and true software.  This is why you don't see a lot of corporations going and installing Windows 7 or even Vista on their systems just yet.  A lot are still stuck in Windows NT, 2000 or even XP.  Why?  Because those systems even though legacy, are tried and true.

Hi Medfordite,

I know what you mean.  I got in on the tail end of the dot com boom as a Program Manager responsible for Testing and QA.  At one time, I had over 20 projects with nearly 50 employees and was flying all over the place.  Testing is a thank less job, and frankly I don't thing Boonex does all that much testing - they are having us do it instead.  I don't think I ever experienced Software Engineers putting bugs in the program on purpose - they didn't need to, as it wasn't the bug fixing that generated new bugs, it was new features that generated new bugs.   In fact, the Software Engineers did everything they could do to "not lose ground" and to keep the product as stable as possible even as they added new features.  That is why I agree with idoyle that they should have done everything they can to make the core program work properly - and NEVER make the kind backward progress we have been seeing here.   When I was up in Silicon Valley, I also went through the Technology Project Management certificate program run by the University of California.  In this program, we learned about something called "a run away project".  This is a situation where every bug fixed or problem corrected causes a multitude of new bugs and problems.  It sounds familiar - I hope it isn't.

Rob

I used to live in Santa Clara CA and had a lot of friends in Silicon Valley. I have heard that term before "Run-away project".

Scary thought to say the least.

It is scary SkyForum, because normally what has to happen in situations like that is that management has to kill the project and start all over again.  I really wish Boonex had concentrated on just getting the core functionality working properly, with a minimal set of extensions.   I think they have approached this in a way to almost guarantee that this development effort would take the maximum amount of time, while generating the maximum number of bugs and problems  - but I am already in enough trouble for expressing my opinion here.   Andrew just posted a comment on a blog post that the RC will be "next week" so if that is true this time I can't see why anyone would bother with beta 8.  In fact, they more or less said on their most recent blog that you should test it on their demo site, and you should only test it on your own server by "if you want" by first installing the revision files.

Rob

test test test , it looks like we are working for Nasa lol