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Is there a place where you can know the release dates (roughly speaking) of the next q2a versions ?

And possibly where you can see which new features will be added and which bugs will be fixed ? yes

Here ?

I've seen some old posts about the 1.5 roadmap, but if I'm not wrong, at the moment, nothing is known about the next version...

Am I wrong ?

About the "place", if there is not one, why not use github basic issue tracking and milestones management ? smiley

Or more advanced tools such as jira ? (that if I'm not wrong is free for open source projects...) smiley

It would not be bad to have an official place where to track all feature requests, issues, and milestones...

Even if I agree with the fact that it's an additional overhead.....

 

Q2A version: 1.6.2
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100% agree with you
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It would be nice!

1 Answer

+2 votes
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edited by

Well, this issue brings up other issues :o)

From my 2 years experience with q2a and using this forum here over and over again, being in PM-contact with the main developer regularly I conclude, by Nov 2013:

  • the q2a core is only developed by Gideon Greenspan, see user gidgreen
  • q2a is not his main project so he is spending his "free time" to bring q2a further
  • he tries to help by answering recent questions from time to time
  • but as he is alone he cannot manage all requests (which brings disappointment to some dev/users)
  • that is why I would suggest to build a developers team soon
  • however, documentation is not easy for beginners, I still don't know how the core really works
  • but nevertheless, I learnt to handle the q2a engine (see my plugins)
  • Scott and NoahY are really good plugin developers and could help with the core as well (however, NoahY seems to not be active for some months)
  • jatin.soni arrived last year as well, and is also passionate about q2a (see q2amarket.com), as well as sama55 who also develops plugins
  • and there a lot of other developers coming to the forum (and leaving again)

This is just a 100 % "writing down" from experience and ideas.

The requested roadmap would be great, of course, but I think gidgreen will not be able to do it. Especially if he does it he could be blamed by others, why he did not solve bugs x and y in time etc. Kind of stress.

I am eager to use the next 1.6.3 for another project, finding bugs, and still improving things. But I have no idea when he will release it.

So, for now and for the recent future, I think this will not change. On the other hand, I like to be surprised =) but at least I would see a bug list on github. The bug tag here in this forum that gidgreen asks developers to use is just not powerful enough (solved bugs are not marked and appear still open).

My two cents, hope they help.
Kai

 

PS: 3 weeks ago I sent gidgreen all my core hacks, about 30 to 40. It might be (at least I hope) that he is implementing most of them into q2a. The hacks make things easier, esp. usability of the forum. Maybe this is the reason why the next release takes longer.

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edited by
> the q2a core is only developed by Gideon Greenspan, see user gidgreen
> q2a is not his main project so he is spending his "free time" to bring q2a further

so my "doubts" are justified....
I wrote this question since, in 2 months of activity with q2a, I'm already having difficulties in managing my q2a instance (full of hacks) and trying to understand what's happening in the product evolution (about which I've actually no idea.... nor about features, nor about bug fixings, nor about release dates).


> but as he is alone he cannot manage all requests (which brings disappointment to some dev/users)
> that is why I would suggest to build a developers team soon

I think *this is the solution*.
A distributed development and management of the core.
Obvioulsy with gidgreen as the "master" supervisor.
The development can be accelerated, bug and feature requests could be tracked and eventually promoted, macro-dates could be planned.
I think that this could help a lot the product too.
Because, as you write too, I think that many developers/users come here, but also go away after some time.
I think they come here because the product is very attractive (personally I'm enthusiast about it), but it looks like there is something still lacking in it (I'm not talking of sw quality).


> This is just a 100 % "writing down" from experience and ideas.

You have said the right word...
I think q2a needs to be a bit more "engineered" (see distributed development and management)

> The requested roadmap would be great, of course, but I think gidgreen will not be able to do it. Especially if he does it he could be blamed by others, why he did not solve bugs x and y in time etc. Kind of stress.

----> distributed development and management of the core....


> So, for now and for the recent future, I think this will not change. On the other hand, I like to be surprised =) but at least I would see a bug list on github. The bug tag here in this forum that gidgreen asks developers to use is just not powerful enough (solved bugs are not marked and appear still open)

I agree, this q2a website should be only a place where to have discussions/general questions....
From here should then arise bugs, features, ideas....


> PS: 3 weeks ago I sent gidgreen all my core hacks, about 30 to 40. It might be (at least I hope) that he is implementing most of them into q2a. The hacks make things easier, esp. usability of the forum. Maybe this is the reason why the next release takes longer.

You confirm to me that you do not either know what's actually happening .... :-)

@gidgreen
I'd like to specify that I do not want to do negative criticism, as I said I'm enthusiast about the product
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agree with you guys! we are all concerned
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Hi Kai and others. Your analysis is generally correct. Q2A is something I work on in my spare time. Sometimes I have more and sometimes less. Unfortunately at the moment it is not very much because I am working hard on a major new (unrelated) product to be released early 2014. So if it should become a community developed product (and I can see the logic) I will not be able to reliably manage this, because it would need my constant attention to work with many developers, assess pull requests, discuss new features, etc... But often that attention will not be available.

The best answer I can suggest is to simply fork the project, and create a community-developed spinoff under a different name. This is allowed under the GPL. It would not upset me at all and would have my blessing (and a link!) I would continue developing the "original Q2A" as and when I have time. But this fork could then adopt a life of its own, however you and others who are involved would want to see fit. This happens all the time in open source projects and is a healthy thing.
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edited by
Hello gidgreen,
why not give a try do a distributed development model on the "original" q2a.
Github has an "organization" approach (I post the link, but you'll know it already : https://github.com/blog/674-introducing-organizations  , free for public open source projects) that allows to have a project owner (you) and a team of "mantainers" with push-pull permissions that "help" the owner in managing the master. It's a model adopted in many successful open source projects (such as html5 boilerplates, twitter bootstrap, etc etc...). You can decide who the mantainers are, they'll do the work for you or with you. And if things won't work, you could always remove them from the team and rollback all the changes.
I have some doubts that forking is the right solution for q2a success....
I think instead that it could take some "damage" to the original project (at leasts it creates "confusion") and it could not give benefits, in the long term, to the forked project and to the whole q2a community (now compact).
I would give a try to the "maintainers", I think that 2 or 3 of them can be found directly here.....
You can always go back to the "old" model whenever you want.
I think that the q2a product will benefit of it, the users will benefit of it, and the markets that are emerging and growing up around q2a (themes sellers, plugins sellers, custom services sellers) would also benefit about it, because there is a constantly evolved core, that attracts more and more users.
I would give it a try..... you could always rollback at any time...
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Thanks for your response. I am open to it but the question is who will be these maintainers and do they agree to take on this responsibility? Perhaps you can ask the people you are considering and see what they say?
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I am glad to help, to put all the core hacks I have in my 'distribution' as options into the q2a software :)

Using q2a for a while, I have to say the main benefit for me is gaining more and more programming knowledge, and getting better each day. New challenges mean personal growth.

The only concern I have is that q2a developers, busy with their own projects / clients, will not find the sufficient time to fully get involved.

PS: And there is still the problem that interested developers new to q2a will not find an easy guide, how q2a works. I'd love a simple graphic or text explaining the structure, in which order everything is parsed, how $qa_content works (that everything is a huge multi-dimensional array) etc.
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Kai, I appreciate the offer, but the issue is that the people who are managing the community project have to be very experienced programmers, and as you say you are still learning a lot about programming.

Apart from bugs which can slip in, there are issues of ensuring that any architectural changes make sense in the big picture, and also of watching out for security problems, which are often invisible until someone nasty discovers them and starts exploiting them. For comparison here is a list of recent WordPress vulnerabilities:

http://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-2337/product_id-4096/

Now you could say that WordPress is very successful, so no one cares about the vulnerabilities, but I would say that there is a core WordPress team which is constantly responding to these issues quickly and releasing updates. While Q2A is popular enough, it is nothing like on the scale of WordPress :)
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True, I am not as skilled as others in PHP and q2a. But I get things done :) My suggestion: Scott and NoahY should be considered core-contributing q2a developers.

PS: I never liked wordpress.
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I upvote Kai's post : +1
:-)
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My suggestion : Jatin Soni and Sama55
But of course I do not know if they are interested or if they have spare time...
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And also Kai.
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If nobody is interested or doesn't agree with my proposal about q2a "evolution", just forget my post or downvote me :-)
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I think it was time to raise this issue and to get a clear statement. Thanks that you took the initiative. And let's wait for the other developers to reply.
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edited by
Hello to all involved in this conversation...

I am agree with Gideon and all others too. Q2A is really good script and it should not get down just because of time limits.

I am sure there are many Q2A users running their website and not just running but running well and may generating revenue. In this situation this discussion can loose trust from them.

So now it is our responsibility (developers who involved in core Q2A) to take some responsibilities on our shoulder so Gideon can just watch about the quality control and other major aspects. That's how we can still continue with feature updates and bug fixes.

I am ready to take responsibility but again it is not one man job to keep things up to date all the time, otherwise one day it would happen same like now.

Solution:
As Gideon said let's make a fork and get started but I would request to Gideon do not completely leave this project as we all need you, after all you are the God Father of Q2A :)

I will try to find and get back to you folks soon with something practically possible proposal.

EDIT:

BTW, it may not possible to make this happen with single handed. Also may not possible that anyone who has all skills. But if we can make a group. Like 1-2 great PHP devs, 1-2 great UI/UX designer etc.. than we can continue this in great way..
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Thank you maxj. This is my opinion.

I feel same as Gid. The core (framework) development is different and difficult from making plugin and theme. The excellent engineer (commonly "key person") is necessary in new project by all means. I belonged to some other projects before as a manager / developer. Judging from my experience, this forum is still immature about engineering power, and, I think that there is not the true engineer including me in this forum. The reality has very few successful projects, and there are much more failed projects. Development speed may be relatively slow, but I like high-quality Q2A which technically reliable Gideon makes.

I said negative things, but agree to adopting convenient tools without changing basically present development style.
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I'm using Q2A since version 1.0 beta so I feel the speed at which Gideon is releasing new versions is good enough. I'm very happy with the way Gideon is handling Q2A and really appreciate his efforts.

Instead of forking project, we should focus on more useful/powerful plugins and themes. May be we can review each others plugin and/or suggest ideas to improve it.
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First of all I would thank ProThoughts for giving his opinion to this post and for his proposal.
I would like to remark that the main point of my post is the general situation of the product from a "management" point of view.
I see many people around this site posting bugs, requesting new features, discussing, etc. etc... , and I do not know if all of these requests are "handled" or not by who is responsible of the site. Maybe all of them are handled. But I do not know. Since there is no official issue management and no tracking.
And even if they are handled, I do not know when they'll be released, because there is no official roadmap.
To be sincere sometimes I feel like being in a very crowded community but without an official "voice".
I have known that the main (unique) developer (gideon) is very busy. Ok.
So, reading also some answers above, I made a proposal of creating a sort of more collaboration, in the management and in the development of the product, as the word "community" implies.
Because as a user I cannot say I'm satisfied : and I'm not talking of the quality of the product (of which I'm enthusiast, as I wrote).
That's my opinion.
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@maxjtechno Agree with you, when it comes to bugs reported by users, they need official answer.

solution to this is, Gideon must appoint some users as a Q2A experts or council members so if users get answer from them, they will feel comfortable.

Also bug tracking system is really required, may be like Bugzilla. If someone reports bug then official members will file bugs if they feel it is valid issue(Bugzilla permission should be given only to official members to avoid SPAM).
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According to me the best way to rid off this issue is Gideon himself make a team here and than can distributes work as per the skills.

Also we need few moderators to run and keep this board clean and helping. However currently we all are trying to help each other but sometimes we required answers from core developers.

I understand it is not possible for Gideon and anyone to define the milestone single handed. Since most of the developers are involved in Q2A as a least priority and therefore It is practically difficult.

Once we have a team than Gideon and we can define the milestone and the tasks for everyone as well. We can dedicated some weekly hours for this and So Q2A will get on the way...

I also agree to have some bug report section where we can track the bugs and fixes. Also we should have discussion board and so we can keep this board only for Q2A question and answer. Till Gideon get back to us with his opinion or decision, I have just started board here http://developers.q2amarket.com where we can simply discuss about Q2A stuffs..Once Gideon finalized something and if he is ready than we can move this board to Q2A site hopefully. I have to create some section but will be done in couple of days. So if you are a developers or follower than I would encourage you to get involved in discussion over there.

Hopping to hear from Gideon soon.. :)
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Just to comment on this discussion, I check all issues filed with the 'bug' tag whenever I am working on a new maintenance release. As for the rest of the suggestions, it is up to all of you. For me Q2A is an enjoyable project that I work on when I have time. If a group of developers want to get together to fork the project and take it forwards to another level, it will be fine with me, and I will help however I can. But otherwise please remember that I am doing this on a voluntary basis, not as a business or job, and as a result I think it is legitimate for me to work on it in the way that most suits me and which fits in with my other activities.
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@Gideon,

We everyone understand what you said and personally I agree too. However taking source code responsibility might be difficult and so that would be great if we all come together and create a road map for at lest next 6 months or a year and than you only watch the code standards as per your time and rest of the team take care of development. This how everything goes well.

With this approach you may not have to give more time but only checking the code standards and some required guideline to the developers. Since we already will have road map you can plan your schedule on early stage.

I hope this wouldn't be a much critical for you.
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I'm a bit late to the party here, but just wanted to contribute my thoughts.

I would be happy to contribute to Q2A and/or manage it, whether to the original core app or a community fork. The former could work easily by setting up a dev branch on the github repo then allowing write access to the manager (who also decides whether to accept pull requests).

I am not entirely convinced about a community fork. As maxj stated above, it could cause confusion for users which version to install. Are our community changes going to make it back into the original Q2A? I have plenty of ideas on changes that could be made and the direction in which Q2A could/should go, what if Gideon disagrees? What happens when Gideon makes updates to Q2A, are the two projects going to end up drifting further and further apart?

I'm sure this can work, but I'd need to know what role Gideon would be playing before diving in too deep.
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Thanks Scott. Since it's quite involved I'll take the discussion offline with you and then we can update this thread.
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+1 for Scott :)
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Knowledge aside, time dedication is a big factor here. Whoever takes the role need to be able to spend time on this project. Thanks to whoever stepped forward, you guys will rock
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Just to update this thread, there is going to be a major change after the release of Q2A 1.6.3 (late Dec or early Jan). Q2A will indeed move to a community-developed model, centering on Github, and Scott has kindly agreed to devote a significant amount of time to managing the process, reviewing submissions, etc... This is great news I think for everyone, and thank you Scott for coming forwards. Scott is a great developer, very familiar with the Q2A code base, and he uses the platform extensively himself at http://pokemondb.net/pokebase/
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I think that this is a very important step forward, that will provide more strenght to the Q2A project, that will be able to reach the highest quality levels thanks to his community coesion, partecipation, activeness and common goals.
I could be wrong but I'm sure that q2a can become the top project in the q&a open source world, and compete with most commercial platform.
Thanks gideon for this news, that I consider as a Christmas gift :-)
And @Scott my compliments and my best wishes for his new assignment !
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Great! congrats and BOL :)
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I am quite late but I feel I have to comment as well on this ongoing issue.

Nothing against any programmer here, but there is no one experienced enough to handle a project like this. I think gideons first suggestion: "The best answer I can suggest is to simply fork the project, and create a community-developed spinoff under a different name." is the rigth and only one.

I am sure scott will make a great work, but developing q2a into a more actual community like script by having new media fields, blog and new content types like articles instead of questions or modern communication tools to be able to set up modern sites far beyond from a classic Q and A site is not inside his (actual) interest or possibilities but very important for many users to stay with q2a.

Tumblr for example is years old and since years q2a is close to it. Or any blog script is so close but we still can´t get there. Same for any media related discussion platform.

Same for a community script where not questions but smalltalk are the main interest, a small facebook, a groups realted community script or something in this direction is close but not possible. See ask.fm for example.

I see that there may be opinions that I am going to far, but I think this is absolutely not the case, because q2a is such a good work that it should grow into this direction and because the market is hungry for matching scripts.

I believe that q2a could be one of the very few leading scripts in the market.

This is the reason why I think that Gideon should take his baby to the 2.0 level before he steps a side a bit and different groups of developers follow the different directions.

There is nobody here who can do that if not he himself.
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Hi monk333, thanks for your response. Just to give you my opinion...

First, from what I've seen Scott is more than qualified enough to take Q2A in any direction that he and the community wants.

Having said that Q2A is primarily known as a Q&A script and not a general framework for community-generated content. So it's hard for me to see the sense in taking it in that direction. If that's the goal, I think it should be a hard fork.
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I completely agree with Gideon.

I have been working with Gideon since long time and now with Scott and found both have tremendous experience and skill which I never found in anyone here on Q2A community. They know very much goal oriented and know very well what is better for Q2A.

I also found Scott is very much active in Q2A development now and that you can see on Github.

Many people here asked about adding blog system and so on.. I really glad to know that Gideon has the same thought as mine. I always say NO to blog within Q2A since it is purely Q&A script. I would prefer to have more advanced features for Q&A rather than re-inventing the wheel by adding blog system.

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This is the reason why I think that Gideon should take his baby to the 2.0 level before he steps a side a bit and different groups of developers follow the different directions.

>> I am sure Gideon is still with Q2A and will always be :) but he had taken this decision just because of time constraint, and he wants Q2A to keep growing.
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Ok, as I see on Gideons comment, he does not see the sense in taking q2a into a "general framework for community generated content". I did not realize that this is the situation. I just remember the philosophy to follow in the scripts development the user input and I am sure that there have been enough posts which asked for more community / blog / media features.

And it is not about reinventing the wheel. There is no real light weight and save general community content script on the market. The advantage of q2a is that it is stable and incredebly fast, a framework, which could compete with everything else on the market easily. As I am no programmer I know very most scripts and I am sure that it would be great if q2a could grow into that direction.

As well I am sure that Scott is fully competent to maintain q2a as question and answer script. I have seen him from the beginning on and have seen how his competence grew over the years into an real expert level.

But, and this is what I truly without offending anybody think, Scott like Soni in his last comment, are only interested in a question and answer framework.

In summary I just can repeat what I wrote before: It would be great if Gideon could take q2a to a community content 2.0 level, or saying it in his words "If that´s the goal, I think it should be a hard fork". Because otherwise I believe q2a wont get there, and "just" beeing an excellent and well maintained question and answer script. It is that "hard fork" which only Gideon could do, I am sure.

I read about what the community members say, but I as well see that many "young" members did not follow because they missed modern features.

However, I am happy to have found q2a years ago and I will stay.

(Besides, I would pay much money for having a q2a community 2.0.)
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