vb 4.0 beta not public.

I didn't apply to be on the team so I have no real thoughts or concerns but what are your thoughts? Is this a good thing or could this be a decision that bites jelsoft from receiving an abundance of suggestions, ideas from the rest of the community.

 

Heh heh...I have been keeping my thoughts on this to myself, as everyone will know....

 

Actually mark, Your concerns are valid. IMO They are. I have lost interest which is why I have no real concerns on the matter but I'm sure the rest of the community who feel left out by this decision for jelsoft to retain a privately beta is a decision that affects alot of people and well worth discussing.

 

You are right of course Shelley. To be honest, I've lost interest in vB4. Nobody is still able to tell me what is DOES...forgetting about the suite and such nonsense. Apart from minor stuff like video bbcodes and the "asset manager" (which I still cannot explain what it is), there is, errm, nothing. Really, nothing. Not for the end user anyway.

And on vbulletin.com people just tell me I should have applied for the beat....I don't want to....I don't agree with the process, and I'm not going to "beg" only to then be told no.

 

There isn't anything added to vB4 from my understanding, its merely rewritten code (and apparently only a small portion rewritten?) with the ability to have a "Suite" tied in with it all.

Frankly, not having an open alpha is some what acceptable I suppose, but completely closing off beta is odd imo. There are literally thousands of different server setups out there that would need to be tested and there is no way they've included even half of these various setup's in the beta program.

I beleive the only major thing is the keywords in the URL? heck maybe that isn't even in 4.0 I dunno. Sad part is, thats a pretty moot point anymore for SEO, and the ole fashioned showthread.php?t=4932 format works just fine.

Expect a fun filled 4.0 release, loaded with bugs, problems upgrading from earlier versions and who knows what else. Especially to those folks who use odd setups. I know I personally won't be touching it with a 10ft pole until required new features are added.

 

I got no issue with all this till I stumble over to Broken Snooze Media and see you are advertising vb4.0 updates when they come out.

Why are you beating on on the process so hard with one hand while holding the other hand out to profit from it.

 

if people want to upgrade their forum, who am I to decline them as clients? I'll advise waiting a little bit to make sure bugs are worked out, but its their decision since its their forum.

 

Personally I think the more bugs found by the smallest group of people the better.

I've work software QA before. Engineering knows the code and people other than the engineers do the white box testing using documented Test Cases before it goes to SQA. SQA then independently writes white box Test Cases and performs those on a varitey of predifined inputs.


For vB that might mean 3-4 different databases of various sizes and configurations where a few hundred combination's of test cases are performed on each database before it ever gets to the public. It sounds time consuming but it isn't.


I'm voting for private beta.

 

I dont know about with jelsoft, but most software companies will have a closed and open beta session.

Closed beta is when they want extra input from the public, but the company knows there still might be some bugs.

Open beta is just one step from going gold.

A lot of game companies will do this. They will have a closed beta, then a few months later they will have an open beta. Blizzard did it with Diablo II,,,, and several other companies go the 2 beta route path.

 

The problem is that there won't be any 'open beta', as it's been understood. No open anything, we all jump to 'stable' (by IB's definition).

Is this a good idea? Realistically, no. The more testers you get, the more bugs are found and fixed. The more testers you get, the more environments you get.

I think we'll see 4.1 as the "stable" release, if it even gets that far.