Development & Beta Tests. How & Why

I know it's frustrating to a lot of people as they're waiting for Boonex to complete the Beta Tests of D7 & move forward with an RC, after all, the deadlines have been long surpassed and promises seem to be broken.  I'm going to try for once to not put my opinion in this, instead just relate the facts as we have learned them.  The best way to do this might be to step back and instead look at it from work that my team does on development.

We've found ourselves to be in a similiar situation that Boonex is in as we develop a new product and bring it to market.  The only exception is that we've made no promises as to what the release date will be for us as far as another Beta, RC or Final Stable Product goes.

We have spent months in developing a hi-bred version Dolphin 6 that utilizes the base and then varies off into a very specialized area.  What we have found out in the development and Beta testing of this product is the following:

1.  Glitches happen and they are unavoidable in development.

2.  We can not possibly test our product the way that end users will test it.

3.  End Users will through their use of the product discover errors that we can not possibly anticipate until they use it.

4.  Error Logs are our best friend in the world, as an end user will never describe a problem as accurately as the server will explain it in the log.

5.  When we fix a glitch other glitches can and do occur. 

6.  Items must be prioritized and higher priority items must get  what they need even if it means sacrificing a lower priority item.  In our case, security is absolutely paramount and all other items must fall into line behind it or the item is done away with. 

So, with that in mind, let's look at what Boonex has going on with D7:

So far we have 8 Beta test versions (potentially 9 as Beta 8 was just re-released with upgrades due to the security issues)

Boonex is encountering the same issues that all others developing software run into.  Glitches that only end-users can locate through random use of the software; Repairing glitches to only encounter additional glitches as the repairs happen and it goes back out to be tested. 

I'm actually suggesting that people continue to be patient and keep the following in mind:

1.  There is no ironclad date for an RC or Stable release of D7 regardless of what Boonex or anyone else says.  We can listen to what people say, including Uno, about when it should be out, but until it is and proven then that date is just a goal and nothing more.  Truth be told, this is development and as such we can only anticipate as it's a brand new product.

2.  We are better off with Beta tests until all the bugs are resolved than we are with an RC that has a ton of Bugs in it.  Look at it like this:  Had D7 B8 been instead the D7 RC1 how upset would everyone be when it failed as miserably as it did due to the inc/security.inc.php file?  I can only begin to imagine how much we would of heard on the blogs & forums in regards to that mistake.

3.  Be willing to participate in the Beta tests, especially if you have substantial experience with Dolphin and/or other CMS's and a community that is willing to subject themselves to it just for fun.  Don't underestimate your end users, they will keep creating things if they know it's just for fun and you don't promise them this is the last time.  You know it's not, so don't promise them that.

4.  If you have projects that are dependent upon D7 to third party clients and have promised them a date for D7, take a moment and think long and hard about what you have done.  If you are about to open your mouth and give a date you should immediately stuff a Twix in your mouth to give yourself time to think.  At this time, there really is no set in stone date for D7 to be released and you should not be promising clients a release date.  In the end, your the one that looks bad for this.  Look at it this way:  We are finishing up development of a D6 hi-bred that we spent months working on for a specialized industry to help them accomplish a goal that was completely neglected by the web/software industry.  We anticipate that we will spend 6-9 months of development time with D7 before we even mention to our clients that we have it as an optin for them.  Yes, we woud love to be able disclose all the great things D7 has today, but we know that our clock will not start ticking until D7 is stabilized and the same will go as far as Poisedon is concerned (anticipating release in the spring but not holding our breath on it)

Basically, I'm just saying that we all know Boonex is working hard on D7 and they have developed an amazing piece of software that any of us will be proud to be running/marketing once it's completed.  This software does out of the box what many have imagined their sites doing when they first downloaded D6 and we're amazed to find in it and then started looking at mods.

In closing, I just want to say I'm not trying to toot my own horn or anything like that, rather just using the personal experience that has been gained through  development of our package in hopes that others can begin to better understand the position that Boonex is in.  When the newbies come into Unity they read the blogs and a few have started to comment that it feels like a war and Boonex doesn't care by reading the posts of members, when we all know that is so far removed from the truth it's not ridiculous.  Let's just take a moment and give Boonex a break on this as they have made incredible strides in their work.