Unapdated mods - is death to our sites.

Hi, guys.

What we have to do with developers, who put their products on market and after some time stops to make updates?

I'm stuk now with two critical modules of AndrewP - Albums and Blogs (for Groups). They're not updated for years and I can't update my site because this two modules.

I'm stuck in 7.3.3

On my e-mails I can get no answer for years, on my comments in his support forum - too.

I put the blame on Boonex:

1. If in Groups was blog and album (which is very natural to do so, agree, "naked" group is totally pointless), I was good now.

2. If some vendor put his mod in market - Boonex have to administrate it, to chek vendor's obligations, to be somebody who protect us, customers, from actions and behaviore like AndrewP's, for example.

3. Needs to be some protocol, maybe money deposit, for wendor, something to make him responsible on his products.

That's all I can say here.

Before I lunge into my personal views on the subject, have you looked at the module's config file? Somewhere up the top there will be a Dolphin version number. If it says Ver 7.3.1 change it to 7.x.x or 7.3.5. You may be surprised to find that the module still works.]

The config file is usually in the Install directory.

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It's very tricky. Each release of Dolphin is an upgrade, not a new product. If Boonrx supplies a facility for vendor's to sell their products the vendor should be required to upgrade his/her product and supply backward compatibility.

In all respects, this is what theoretically happens, but vendors can't be forced to maintain a product forever. As in the case of Deanio, a person's life can change and they may not have the time or ability to continue supporting their Dolphin modules.

Ideally, a developer should enter into a contract with Boonex to either maintain his products, or hand the code back to Boonex if he or she is unable to do so. Boonex could then offer the code to another developer who volunteers to update it and add it to his or her library.

If a developer doesn't want to take on the project, then we're back to square one.

Certainly the product should be taken off the market, or better still, listed in a new category called Legacy or unmaintained modules. The could even be offered as free downloads which could be then upgraded by the member or someone on his behalf.

That leads me to what I consider the best suggestion in your case. Ask a reputable developer such as Anton or Modzzz to quote on bringing the module up to 7.3.5 standards. You may be very surprised how little it will cost.

We already have some algorithms to have low priority for the products which aren't compatible with the latest versions. Also if a vendor isn't active for certain period then we will hide the vendor and all their products.

AndrewP looks like not very active vendor but there is some activity, so if we can hide him only if we receive some more complaints about his service/products.

So you are going to destroy the market even more?  The gripe was on modules that show compatible with 7.3.4 but not 7.3.5; which was a minor point upgrade.  If you are going to do a YouTube, then make the algorithm so that it does not remove vendors and products that are compatible with the current main release but may not show compatible with some minor point release.  

How about letting the bloody customers of Boonex made decistions on what we can see in the Market.  I have a damn brain, I can look at a module and decide; mmm, not showing compatible with the current release but it is showing compatible with an earlier release.  I think I will assume the risk of buying the module even though it is not showing compatible with the current release.

If Boonex keeps driving away vendors then it is going to hurt Dolphin.  Of course maybe Boonex doesn't care as long as UNA is there if Dolphin dies or not.

Quit hiding vendors, let US make the decision on what we want to see in the market.  You drive away more vendors and you are going to drive away more users of Dolphin. 

 i agree with this as it is what i do with mine. also you have to realize. from what i see is that some users are still using older versions of boonex.

> So you are going to destroy the market even more?

I didn't introduce any more rules. Everything is as it is, particularly

- If there are a lot of complaints about the vendor, we'll suspend the vendor until their resolve the issues with their clients

- if vendor don't login to boonex.com for some period of time, then this vendor is considered as inactive and we'll suspend him until vendor decide to come back.

but if the vendors product still works or if there are posts on the forum that can help make it work, then wouldnt suspending the vendor be a bad move? 

We suspend vendors which are really inactive with very outdated mods which wasn't updated for many years, there are almost no chances that the very very very old mods are working with the current version.