future of dolphin project

As a "great breaking news" from Andrew shocked most of us I feeI I have to open thread for this. Throught Im kinda shocked I and most members who are longer time here kinda expected this long time ago.Its not hard to predict that coz this is happenning from very first version of dolphin over and over again.

Andrew you are visionaire and thats good but please you have to accept you build quite big community who sticked with your project and its time to listen what people who using dolphin really wants or you playing with dolphin only for your own pleaeure ?Than its wrong.

You can say dolphin is free platform so nobody will loose any money but its not true. Boones works on good and proved business scheme based on removing branding and selling copmmercial mods and everybody who use dolphin for real use will do that - buy license to remove branding and buy some mods. "Free" is just a catch word - but so far nothing bad on it - its just a good strategy - many companies doing same.. Many people invested fortune on commercial modules, programmers and we all were waiting for 7.1 as most stable and most bug free and half working or not working feature fixed version - first one really usable for a pro site.

Now you tell us guys you decided to scrap 7.1 and instead work on d8. What you think will evocate that sort of announmcement inside brains of all that people who waiting several years for you to actually FINISH some version to be really usable ?

SO what happen now - we gonna be waiting another year sticked to half working and not really usable d7.07 then you release some first d8 with nearly no features and full of bugs - so waiting another year until you add some modules and fixing 5.000 new bugs - reportimng to trac, arguing with your staff what is bug and what is enhancement. After that we prolly will be at same stage as its now dolphin. BUT in that time there will be already new techniques, technologies, scripts, updated java, html etc.... that you say EXACTLY what you say now.... guys we scrap  8.1 and concentrate on D9 because we want implement new technologies, rebuild some core stuff and all this what is happening now will happen EXACTLY same with d8 after couple of years. The question is if you will even have some people to test as I think many people leave your project..... I think even for a hardcore fans and community moderators this is over certain limits.

I have talked privately with some commercial mods programmers asiee dolphin and guess what.They will release mods for d8 as separate mods and most of them after andrew announcement stopped working on d7 mods as its now basicly dead version. So those of you who bought commercial modules for  d7 and some really invested a fortune - all of you just dropped your money to rubbish bin as d7 will be not finished and if you want use d8 after it will be released you have to buy new modules again ...haha ...crazy....craaaazy... There have to be setupsome rule in market that commercial developers have to keep their versions updated even for new version - as most people cant affor pay several thousands dollars ever year as new hype version appear ...

I think prescrrening of d8 is good,ideas are good but you should really first completely finish d7 and for sure fix all stuff in track for 7.1

Andrew said in his posts that some third-party mods will work in the new version and other that will not will be given several weeks (prior to the new version being available) to upgrade/modify their mods. Dolphin 8 is going to be upgradable from the latest version of Dolphin, so it shouldn't be too much of a head. But probably will be ;) I'm positive about the upcoming changes and look forward to a much more efficient website for our users and advertisers.

Some developers for sure misuse situation and they release new(separate) version of their mods which will people have to buy again (some already confirmed that they willing to do that to me) .  Current situation can be maybe okay for teams who have their own programmers and fixing stuff themselves but all that majority of individuals gonna be fu**** up. Joe (kolego :-) ) this situation with dolphin that version is stopped nearly before stable version is happenning from begginning and till now we have not even SINGLE really usable version. SO of course andrews ideas are good but we are heading about 2 years to get dolphin 8 at similar feature rich and at same stage of bugfixing and then guess what ... than as d8 will be at around 85% finished (same as is now d7) they stop it and gonna work on d9 . This happening with dolphin project from beggining and recent andrews announcement proved they gonna continue with this again and again..... something have to change here as this situation cant continue .

I will accept if there gonna be some public d8 trac, fixed terms of certain development stages and hired more programmers. As from andrews statament is there are only two main programmers  working on that - so my real guess - to get d8 at similar ferature rich platform and same bugfix stage we are heading about 2 years of waiting, testing, bugfixing and even then version will be most probably stopped at 85% of completion and they start work on d9 - so  whats the point... we simply never get really stable version and only we do will be buying new modules another 2 years for nothing ...

If we know on d8 working like 10 full time programmers with strong progress everyday visible in ublic trac for d8 then I can accept this. Andrew as usually say ... we cant give fixed dates of completion nwhich is logic but with twoi programmers working half on d7.07 and d8 its really looong way to get d8 at stage where d 7 is now...

Freakpower,

We really don't know what the Boonex names for versions mean anymore.  The latest I heard is that they will save Dolphin 7.1 by going straight to D8 or something like that - but I can't even keep track of all the names anymore: Sundance, Hookie, Dolphin 7.1, Shark, Dolphin 8, Trident, The next big thing - it goes on and on.

Before that blog post where Andrew told us he had been planning "biggest and the most important Dolphin version update we have ever had" that will be so "grandiose" that all other versions pale in comparison.  I could almost feel the groans from all over the planet - and from the responses it seemed that almost everyone had a strange, "we have seen this movie before" feeling.

People had been wondering why Boonex had stopped responding to forum posts, why the trac bug fixing showed nearly zero activity- it was as if they had dropped off the map but people assumed they had been working on D7.1 and the list of fixes they posted a few months ago.  It turns out they weren't doing that at all.  Most of this time was spent on this new interface for Boonex.com - a completely wasted effort in my opinion, so anyone who had been planning on that was greatly dissappointed.

On another post, someone wrote about the misuse of the word "soon" here.  I know I had a system that at least partly worked on D6 but decided not to mod it till D7 came out - which was a FULL YEAR of waiting.  I have been strugging to make D7 work for another year and have finally been getting some of the serious bugs in the software fixed when we got the great news that it would be dumped also, but there would be a new version "soon".

I think you said it best when you asked if Andrew was "playing with dolphin only for his own pleasure".  They obviously only want to do new product development - because that is the fun stuff, but there are many things that are just as important, if we want any chance at all to have successful systems.   Years ago I was promoting an event - it got big and I was the leader, and I remember making a joke about what we were doing and got admonished by a secretary who reported to me.  The event I had started had grown bigger than just me.  Other people had invested lots of time and effort into its success but I was being an asshole - acting like I owned it.

That was when I was 30 or so.  It was one of the lessons I learned - I had to grow up and take responsibility.

Hi Caltrade,

Unfortunately I think we got the point - developing new systems or doing some realy hardcore updates is prolly much more exciting for andrew and boonex programmers than fixing bunches of bugs. But they forgot main thing - they should develop dolphin for people not only for their own pleasure and selling commerecial mods and licenses. The problem is that there is still strong incomming traffic to boonex with many new members who dont know whats going on here and buying licenses and comm. mods - thats why boonex simply dont care about old members as they still prolly have strong income from new ones so they can do basicly whatever they want. I was waiting also same like you over year for 7.1 version - when I saw 7.1 gonna be scrapped I had almost heart attack - Booinex guys try to be more empathic. Try imagine situation of many members who waiting several years to usable version of dolphin and when we are nearly there you just scrap most important update  and decide to do some hardcore best ever ultra update with complete overhaul of system  which  will for sure take at least another year - more likely two years to reach same stability as is dolphin now.SO waiting another years to get where we are now and thyn what ... another stop and d9 ? If I know d8 will be for real version which will be really finished than Okay but after 3 unfinished versions I lost my patience and lost my believing that some dolphin version will be ever finished ....