Fairy tale

Sure, the rebuilt of this site is due to a server crash.


Quote from http://www.phpbb-mods.net/viewtopic.php?t=2

"As you may have seen, the site has been down for some days... this is due to a server crash. To cut a long story short, I have created this basic forum setup purely for the phpBB Support members that were registered here. If you were an active member here before the server crash, please feel free to re-register, and I will activate your account.

Again, this site is just a tempory forum untill I get the new forum designed and restored."

Personally i think it is always better to be honest to your visitors and clients and tell them what really happened.

Because they do not know what they did

I post this here because i fully agree to micheal.

To re-iterate, phpBB 2.0.21 in it's vanilla form is *not* affected since no code is run within includes/functions.php (only a collection of functions as the file implies). Now, phpBBXtreme seems to be - of course also breaking the GPL by not abiding to it.

It's getting on my nerves

Again and again sourceforge seems to have problems with their CVS services - even if it is not their fault, but it is getting cumbersome.

Now i am sitting here, having over 100 modified files ready to be committed and not being able to since the 30th of march. Additionally we planned on releasing .20 the last weekend and now being planned for "when sf is up again". :/

If anyone is interested, the quote from the status page at sf.net:

(2006-04-03 05:55:21 - Project CVS Service) On 2006-03-30 the developer CVS server had a substantial system failure. Due to the implementation of the CVS service, there is a single point of failure with multiple points of recovery (there is more than one data source we could potentially recover from if there is any data loss as a result of the failure). This outage currently affects developer CVS access directly, but we have disabled tarball updates and data syncs from the developer CVS server to the anonymous pserver/ViewCVS hosts as an additional level of precaution. Our main focus since the outage was detected has been to safegaurd all data on the developer CVS server as well as possible. We are currently attempting to backup the data on the host, which is taking longer than we initially anticipated it would, but is a necessary step to fully safegaurd the host's data. Next, we are going to perform some data validation to ensure the data set appears valid. Pending successful completion of those steps, we'll reenable developer CVS access. A few days after, we'll reenable CVS tarballs and syncs to anonymous CVS. In the mean time, we're currently advancing plans for a CVS architecture change based upon the knowledge we gained during Subversion deployment to eliminate the single point of failure that developer CVS currently has, add horizontal scalability and overall service resiliance. However, we still do not have an estimate on when developer CVS services will be restored, but we have been, and currently are actively working to restore access to CVS. We appreciate your patience with us while we work to properly resolve this major outage.

The positive is of course my team is able to work locally on their sections, but we need to be careful about the commit order. ;)

Things seems to speed up

First of all, my take on Pauls leaving:

i hope he will join us again some time soon... :) He was a great mentor and were always my idol regarding development. He managed to think up well designed solutions as well as pushing new ways forward, inventing new ways of how to do things. Sometimes this led to saying "no" to other people. I will definatly miss his judgement, contributions, posts, just everything he did.

That he would leave was not at question, but that this happened from one day to another was a bit surprising.

Now i have to fulfill his development position as best as i can and trying to continue his visions as well as bringing mine more into public view. Within the last weeks i was able to code again a bit. :) There is still a lot to do though.

And rest assured, we will take steps to prevent what happens with Olympus (the long development time), but after olympus has been released. Communication to the public will get an overthought too.

I want to take the oppertunity to re-post my thoughts i expressed at our development forums here too:

What i want to make clear is that phpBB 2.0.x is still a stable product and no one would care if there would be no next version in the work, because no one would know. I think the mistake made was the beginning of announcing the next version too early, creating a hype which is now "not wanted" in some respects. But still, the majority of users are not knowing about olympus and are very pleased with what they have, a stable, free, easy-to-use bulletin board. With the mods and styles created by the community, users are able to adjust it to their needs (which would not be possible without those writing these things of course - and is one aspect of the success of phpBB).

Open Source does not stand for open development, to make this assumption is bringing comments like "why am i not able to provide a patch" up. You are not allowed because open source does not mean you are allowed to code within "our" branch - people are able to make modifications, change the product, fork the product, etc. but it does not mean we have to take others code. :) It is a general descission how you want to run your project, some do otherwise, some do the same as we, and both has its pros and cons.

At the moment the cons are of course visible, too few core developer for example, but this will be addressed too. The community coding project is a possibility for us recruiting new developers, those currently participating are being watched for their "possible adding" - this should be clear to anyone with common sense. We do not add developers just because they "say" they can do it, they have to "show" that they can do it. :) Paul made this experience a lot of times, and he also wrote about it lot of times - so i am not repeating this here.

Regarding the community wanting to dictate us how to run our teams - i simply ignore it. :D We know what needs to be done, what went wrong. And especially in my resort (development) i know that i will change some things to make it better (hopefully!), but this is a process and is not able to be put from day one on. These changes will only affect the 3.x development line, the 2.x development line will stay feature frozen (except security related features) for example.

Regarding those saying that we do not listen to the community, for some features we previously asked for input, now we tend to do this team internal (there are a bunch of users team-wide, also running their own communities) because of too much input (yes, too much). If you need to decide the way you want to go for a feature you need a rough path in mind and only need feedback for what you are unsure about or to grasp feedback from persons using a feature more than you (for example as a dev you would use the mcp not that much - but having feedback from moderators using it is essential to make it usable). Users are already able to discuss features (the karma thread at area51 is an example). :) New feature suggestions are another case. These are normally suggested by other people within our feature tracker. If we deem it usable we think about adding it. Those not added are normally released as Mods by the community.

But we finally decide which features we want to integrate (after listening to our userbase and weighting the pros and cons - you would for example never see an integrated photo gallery or chat). :) This is the beauty of running a project in free time, as a hobby, you do not have to obey to your userbase (or customer would someone scream in). We have a huge responsability regarding support and fixes, of course, but not regarding future developments - we pressure us here enough. :D

Holidays nearly over

Currently listening to "Korn", i seem to be in the mood of some harder music. :) (Where is my Slipknot CD...) Normally i am listening to more chilling stuff (Massive Attack and the Mixes by Mad Professor are a welcome dream).

Holidays are nearly over, the time went by too fast. :)

Holiday

Finally, i got two weeks free from work. :) Today was my last day, i am so happy to be able to recover a bit. It is not common for me to get two full weeks, normally i am only allowed one week (but i expect doing work for at least 30 minutes a day and being available by phone). But still, the days should be refreshing, refreshing my soul, my brain, my coffee level. ;)


I should be able to get back to phpbb too, getting up to speed, getting stuff i have on my list done. :) I have to release a new attachment mod version too, letting those users alone for such a long time is not "ideal". :/ And of course i will visit friends i have not visited for a long time, renewing friendships.

At work my coworker are left with a lot of work i have to do, a cd-rom presentation (maybe using a modified version of portable firefox) and a very cool website to do (technically very hard to achive, but this is the fun bit of it, isn't it? :D). But those two can wait. :P

Within my personal life i had some ups and downs the last weeks... but this is a story i do not want to tell, it's just hard to get out of it, to reach a point where you are able to break out of the circle, leaving some alone, getting back to own basics.

To make a post short... i will enjoy my holiday. :D

Not much happened

Not really much happened lately... my best friend moved to Stuttgart lately, for a new employment. Let's see how he likes it. :) Last time he wanted to move he came back after 8 hours. Now, he already managed to stay for 2 weeks in a hotel and visiting us this weekend. :)

Now to something completely different!


Due to new appointments at work, i now have to create more and more websites. Normally i receive a psd file with the intended design and have to "make it" in a few days. This led to me learning a lot more about webdesign and css/xhtml. :) But i am still no css junky, rest assured. I try to be XHTML 1.0 Strict compliant and to only use tables where needed (for data representation), but still try to layout the html as simple as possible. :D Due to me having to make one website after the other i created an application i call "the simple container management system", a system made for programmers to easily setup a website framework with integrated cms functionality for the customer. The programmer is able to define the menu contents, define admin pages (only a simple array for a new admin page)... and most importantly define page/container elements for editable content. At the moment this system is doing what i need and is being further developed as i need new features. I do not intend to release it atm, so do not ask. Maybe some day it will be released... some day in teh future. :)