The way I see it, true it's not a perfect world. But I believe that, considering that, we are very fortunate to have Solus as is.
Roadmap
EbonJaeger Agreed, and 'nice manner' goes both ways. :-)
majamee You hit a nerve because people have been making claims like this since Solus started. It doesn't matter how much work we do, how often we post blogs, or how many people are formally members of the project. People have always claimed that we are going to die in the near future. So can you really be surprised when yet another person makes similar claims that long-time members of the the community are annoyed?
Also, I'll kindly ask you to stop arguing over statistics. With your Budgie example, that's wholly unfair. Ikey created and spent a crap-ton of time on it over most of the last decade. Josh didn't need to contribute back then and focused on many other things. We've also publicly stated multiple times that Budgie 10 will not be receiving major features or upgrades and that all of that will be the focus for Budgie 11, which isn't on the table until next year. It's also a huge fallacy to equate Budgie's development with Solus development.
@Harvey posted those links to point out that there has been active development on Solus-focused software since the beginning of the year and that we haven't just been sitting idle. He wasn't trying to equate the scale to that of Ikey working as a full-time developer for Solus. And just looking at the software we write is not enough to gauge the amount of work we do on a regular basis for Solus. A ton of work goes into keeping things up to date, adding new software, fixing bugs, and providing user support. Maintaining the project doesn't mean we are in maintenance mode. Maintenance-only would mean no stack upgrades, security-only updates, and minimal user support. Describing our day-to-day efforts as "maintenance" is insulting to the time the people have so graciously donated to the project. So please stop describing it as such.
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So please let me know your experience and why it seems I hit a nerve?
I think its beaten to death now especially with DataDrake basically saying what I was going to. But I've had a cuppa and will try explain it to you without calling you any names.... I'll try at least.
I help the community look on my forums/reddit/irc history. I also have started maintaining some small insignificant packages for Solus (2 currently) with intentions to contribute more in this area. I work in IT as a systems administrator and have previously done web development work, come to think of it I actually have a open PR for the software center. Not entirely sure what that has to do with you not knowing what you're talking about in terms of "maintenance mode".
You "struck a nerve" because calling the work the developers do and continue to do "maintenance mode" is insulting, DataDrake said it himself. It also means the time invested by others without pay be they helping someone on the forums or helping with packages, submitting fixes, documentation, translations etc pointless if this were the case.
You realise maintenance mode for a distribution is death right? You move forward, or you die. Simple as that.
Thing is "maintenance mode" aren't even my words. Also even if they were, my understanding is a little different: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_maintenance#History --> compare perfective maintenance.
Also the official communication channels did go pretty quite lately and I have to stand by that. So please don't be surprised about people asking about the status then. Also the unfair budige example of mine was originally brought up by @Harvey. I started the thread because to silent followers of your project it does matter how often you inform. Any project looses a lot of its transparency and trust IMHO if
- the roadmap is outdated and noone seems to care to update it from time to time
- the blog is not actively maintained since months
- the ongoing development plans/ work isn't announced to the whole user base
But it is okay, I will never say anything remotely in that direction again.
Thank you @EbonJaeger as I have to admit, I have never ever seen such tension when discussing about a project like I just experienced here and I think his input is very good. Especially https://discuss.getsol.us/d/2630/26
Have a good night everyone.
majamee With respect, I don't give a rats-ass whose definition it is. It doesn't apply here. Solus isn't a piece of software. It's a living, breathing entity and the sum of countless hours of human interactions and efforts. You are diminishing its value by defining it as anything else.
What you don't seem to get is that our plans haven't changed. The roadmap was never intended to be a set of deadlines that should be updated if no longer valid. People like you are the reason I regret having calendar months in the roadmap at all. We have been fully transparent to anyone willing to ask about it. We have also made it perfectly clear in previous posts like this one that we have no intention of publishing an updated roadmap.
And again, all the tension comes from the fact that you are being unnecessarily dogmatic in your assessment of the project and unreceptive to disagreements.You are arguing with people who are in contact with us Solus developers daily. They are trying to dissuade you of your position based on their interactions with us and their having a daily "finger on the pulse" of Solus development. And you are continuing to ignore and disagree with me, the Core Team member saying that your assessment is not accurate and negativity unnecessary.
- DataDrake explained why I linked what I did perfectly.
- DataDrake said Solus isn't in "maintenance mode" end of discussion as far as that label goes.
- Roadmap is a list of on going plans. My understanding is the time frames were intended as how long its expected to take not ETAs as Solus has a long history of not giving ETAs - IMO any mention of time should be removed it.
- Blog is for important updates only. People even complained when there was a blog about infrastructure upgrades behind the scene because they only care about gnome stack upgrades, you can never keep everyone happy. What would the blogpost be about? "There have been some delays, all is good, cya"... pointless.
An if you think I have been too harsh in my in my wording (even though I don't think I have been) I will unreservedly apologise for any offence you have taken from the words I used to describe why you are wrong. (Not being sarcastic).
Just my 2 cents as someone who works in IT. Maintenance mode isn't even inherently a bad thing in industry. Lots of companies routinely have such periods where all "new" development is at a standstill for 8+ weeks just to give time to catch up on bugs in software.
But even discussing what is considered "maintenance mode" is besides the point since the dev-tracker is literally in the sidebar where you can see daily progress being made on a ton of things that are not bugs.
I would rather wait for an ambiguous floating deadline and know that my computer will continue to work as intended than seeing updates that break things or a million blog posts where nothing is actually news. If I wanted either of those I would use some arch derivative or Ubuntu.
And I guess a final point would be the core solus developers are a ton more active on these forums than any other distro I've seen. I don't think I've seen a post directed to them go past even 12 hours before being answered. And that's honestly better than blog posts I would imagine for 90% of people.
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@DataDrake @Harvey Please note, that my comment here https://discuss.getsol.us/d/2630-roadmap/13 was only about the part concerning the roadmap, right? I agree that you are not in maintenance mode and never said anything different, did I?
PS: Thanks again @EbonJaeger & also now @adurante for keeping their calm.
DataDrake I just stuck to the original topic, the roadmap. Therefore I said in the very same post as well:
"Good to see the development is not staling". I am sorry for any misunderstandings. Please be so kind to read my posts completely as I am still not a native speaker and I might need more words to provide enough context.
majamee If you had quoted specifically what you were agreeing with, originally, that would have saved you a lot of frustration. We are all reasonable people here and contrary to what you might think, I was calm and collected for all of my responses. I apologize for the misunderstanding, but hope you can see where we were coming from and why we might be upset by @c432's overall remark. Especially given they made an account today just to come here and say that.
@DataDrake I understand that, but I really don't get why you and others all the time felt the need to correct me, without me arguing you would be in maintenance mode. In fact, I tried to clarify here multiple times, just have a look especially at all the "PS:" parts of my posts, but I felt not even noticed. Nevertheless, if someone goes the extra mile like @c432 did just to answer here to my post maybe then it is at least worth considering, that there might be some truth to what I stated here:
majamee I started the thread because to silent followers of your project it does matter how often you inform. Any project looses a lot of its transparency and trust IMHO if
the roadmap is outdated and noone seems to care to update it from time to time
the blog is not actively maintained since months
the ongoing development plans/ work isn't announced to the whole user base
So I would be happy, if there could be finally some constructive discussion about the actual topic without any finger-pointing
So what about an update to the roadmap which really removes the dates, but instead would use version numbers and link to the still open tasks for each of the planned projects?
majamee I did not get the impression from your follow-up posts that you were clarifying for the opposite interpretation. I suspect the others had the same difficulty.
@c432 did not go the "extra mile". They came here to make a remark that they knew full well was inflammatory because of our previous responses here and other places. One that was rightfully treated as an insult as already discussed in our previous responses to you.
Now, if it's constructive discussion you want about the roadmap, I have already made our stance perfectly clear. Until such a time as the content of the roadmap (beyond the calendar months that I regret advocating for) actually changes, we will not be publishing an updated roadmap.
The Roadmap is not a description of goals for specific versions of Solus either. It's nothing more than a long-form TODO list to inform the Solus Community what we have planned for the near future. And once we get 4.1 out of the door, I think we will probably stop assigning new tasks as specific goals for each release. That way we can refresh the ISO more often, without getting blocked by larger ongoing efforts.
YAWNS
This kind of sterile discussions isn't just tiring but on the long run they are just toxic (this is just one of them but along the years there are many) and it's always the same people who have to handle these guys who criticize usually in a non-constructive or in a biased way because they only take some elements out of the global context, then they post links to demonstrate they are right, then quote themselves to show they are kind person and finally pretend to be the victim.
The time @DataDrake spent reading and answering this discussion (and the other similar ones) is time he could have spent working on Solus or on his PhD (and the soonest he finishes it, to soonest he will have more free time and thus time for Solus) or simply to rest and relax because believe it or not, he's a human just like you.
Same for the blog posts, perhaps it would make you happy to have a blog post saying we have updated MATE to 1.22, we have updated Plasma to version x.y.z, etc... but seeing Solus is a small team it would just be wasting time on details while it could be used on more important things... Don't you see the updates in the Software center ???
The ones who complain about the frequency of blog posts are also the ones that complain about things not moving fast enough... As if posting more on the blog would speed up things...
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kyrios As much as I too would like to see updates posted on blogs and roadmaps, I agree with you, I'd rather see real progress in the distro than social media updates. Shame there isn't someone that speaks enough technical lingo but might not be able to do development, to participate and able to update social as their contribution. Wouldn't that appease us all in a good way? I'm not saying we need this, but it would be a good thing, right?
I mean the most important thing I remember from teamwork/business/etc is communication.
dbarron I mean the most important thing I remember from teamwork/business/etc is communication.
IF things get done, otherwise it's fairly useless to say non stop "we are where we were 10 minutes/hours/days/centuries ago".
Announce what you've done (if it's relevant and useful) when you've done it: if you stay quiet it's because nothing happened.
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EbonJaeger
And what major changes Budgie 10.5 brought to the table if we exclude updating it to the latest Gnome stack and some cosmetic changes?
Harvey
Name one big feature that Solus got after Ikey left.
DataDrake
I know they are not deadlines but they are not supposed to be a list of good wishes without any obligations to follow them either. I appreciate your work guys, I know you're doing it in your free time pro bono but it's obvious that development stalled without Ikey, there's nothing wrong with that, he left a big shoes to fill in.
c432 It looks like you know what "big feature" means: Please, enlighten us and define what "big feature" is. Meanwhile, I recommend you check the Budgie part on https://getsol.us/2019/03/17/solus-4-released/
If you don't see ANY NEW relevant features there, then you are simply biased against the project.
You could check the dev tracker too, but it's been said and pointed out too many times in this thread (tip: look up there).
On a side note, I like how people spend their time making new accounts just for the sakes of toxicity. It's jokingly funny.