ReactOS 0.3.11 and end of October...

[EmuandCo]

OK, you don't get it. OK, alright!

Once and for all and very slow:

"All I've said is that I don't get why it is considered an insult to ask when thenext major release of ReactOS might come out. Information would be better than insults and name calling thank you very much."

As already said three times now... i meant this "Why is one thread that asks about 0.3.11 locked yet other threads that ask about it aren't? There is a total lack of consistency on these forums." There IS Consistency. I lock threads which pollute the forums right now. The other two were not updated anyway, so why locking them?

"As far as the gay or a 14 year old comment, where is that coming from exactly? I find that comment to be extremely rude. Maybe you should moderate yourself Ed. Calling people gay or incredibly young is incredibly rude. I don't care what your girlfriend thinks of me. She doesn't know me and frankly you don't either."

As already said, this is not my comment. I just think you are some sort of student who has not the slightest Idea how difficult and time intensive coding is. You seem to think that the existing bugs are fixed by a one liner. Fucking NO! We need to debug all this crap till our brains start to shrink. Then we need a appropiate bugfix or maybe even implement right now stubbed or fully non existant methods to get things run. Approximate time to get things done: some days to some months, depending on the complexity. Some stuff even will take way longer, like ReactX.

I already told you ages ago that ppl wont change their way to talk to you if you don't change your demanding writing and implausible nature.

[Lone_Rifle]

Once and for all and very slow:

No don't bother, seriously. He'll only get upset.

[Otiose]

In Nute's defence, he's just trying to get some information about the product, and there's a consistent (and admitted) lack of information about releases.

May I suggest either eliminating parts of the website that require frequent updating, because it's what users turn to when they want to get more information. If there is no information available, why do those sections exist?

Anyway, Nute is a user - translate that to a customer. He may not be paying for anything, but ReactOS's adoption will suffer if users aren't treated a little better.

I'm well aware that it can be frustrating for the developers to get these questions all the time, but if you can't give a polite response, the best action would be to just ignore the question (though it risks making ReactOS appear to be an abandoned project...)

[Aeneas]

I know you did not like nute's questions - but you do understand that there is some interesting point in them, don't you? It has to do with corporate sponsorship, too.

His questions were HARMLESS, after all. Now imagine someone is sponsoring you. From old boy Maecena's times things have not changed all that much: You are being sponsored, yet not because "your eyes are so beautiful", but rather because people EXPECT something from you. It is pretty close to a contract, actually. They are going to withdraw the sponsorship whenever your performance is not really suiting their needs.

Now, suppose IBM wants to have a supercomputer installation running under ReactOS and wishes to inject USD 100 Mio into ReactOS - purely hypothetically, just assume it. How long do you think you can call IBM's people gay (whether some of them are really gay or not, you mean it as an offence) and telling them about your girlfriend before they send the support for that project to hell? Their questions would be WAY more demanding than nute's, AND they might appear more arrogant. (I am not saying they actually ARE, but they would definitely in the position to BE. That is the downside of corporate sponsorship.) And do you think they will wait with the supercomputer installation forever because "it is ready when it is ready"?

You understand, of course, that the avoidance of criticism does NOT make the points of the criticism disappear. I observe that some of the ReactOS people sometimes are apparently allowing themselves rather harsh outbursts, rather than reacting coolly. I do not want to hear the reasons for these outbursts, as I can entirely well imagine them - even may have empathy. But it does not change the fact that thelike is pretty inacceptable, in particular if you ever want to do something largescale with commercial supporters. This does not depend on how much anyone contributes, either.

[Lone_Rifle]

Until you realise from searching nute's past posts that he has been asking the same questions, over and over again, and being generally reactionary in manner when he doesn't get the response he wants. Even patient people have their limits.

[EmuandCo]

I said it once and i will say it again. A Project in Alpha State needs NO static release plan.

So, "when its done" is the correct answer.

I have no problem with his questions, only with the way he asks them. We have a nice Phrase in Bavaria which fits well here. "So, wie man in den Wald schreit, so kommt es auch zurück." Happy translating. This is the last thing i write in this topic. Its non existant anymore for me.

[Lone_Rifle]

ReactOS's adoption will suffer if users aren't treated a little better.

All the better then. I never like giving tech support.

[Aeneas]

Sed tamen difficile dictu est quantopere conciliat animos hominum comitas affabilitasque sermonis.

(And yet, it is difficult to tell how much kind manner and affability of speech conciliate men's minds.)

- Cicero

[Haos]

@Otiose

He is asking same questions again and again and again. Just search forum for his posts. You can answer same questions many times, but heck not to the same person, especially if one shows total lack of reading skills. He gets his answers and refuses to accept it.

In general he refuses to accept the main thing about this project: there are no deadlines, just possible dates. Those may or may be not kept up, because of many different reasons, mostly the thing that our developers aren't paid and are working in their SPARE time. This thing may be applied to most of nute's questions, like why no one is fixing this or that regression, why is that not working yet or why ReactOS has not been released yet. Every one of us here (some being more patient than another) have their own limit for other's stuborness and lack of perception so you must understand harsh reactions of some.

[Otiose]

I'm not interested in starting issues with anyone here... I'm just stating my personal perception here. I've been following ReactOS since 2006, and been lurking the forums since 2007. I've noticed that there is a typical negative response to anyone who asks about the project and the timeline.

The important point is you can't blame anyone for asking, because on the very front page of the ReactOS website, there's a section saying when the next update will be. I've been following enough to know that usually that "deadline" isn't met, and has to be pushed back a month or two. Perception wise, I can say that seeing the release date pushed back comes with disappointment. That disappointment increases when I see negativity on the forums, and people who ask simple questions get berated in such a way.

You don't have to take my advice of course, but there is also no harm in me giving my advice. When the primary users (who will one day say "I was using ReactOS it from the beginning...") are being insulted, and made fun of, that is by no means a good way of promoting a product. As an employer, I would look negatively upon any employees that publicly insulted customers. As I customer, I would look negatively on a company which insulted it's customers.

Just for amusement, let's take a look at the first two posts of this thread - the original post has nothing insulting, or offensive, just questions. The second is curt and gives no information... Answering "When it's done" to all questions is not only a rude response, it's also a nonsensical answer, when you consider the questions asked:

Why is one thread that asks about 0.3.11 locked yet other threads that ask about it aren't?
When it's done.

How far out is implementation of different log ins?
When it's done.

How close is ReactOS to running on an ext2 file system?
When it's done.

I'll finish by noting that if one were to take note of Google's tactic to incessant questioning, it usually is in one of a few ways:

1) They write everything in a blog post, and don't respond to comments.
2) They respond to comments - all comments - in a polite and respectful fashion.
3) They give some small indication of what they're doing, and leave it at that. People will have to wait for the rest.

Timelines are not the issue here (GMail stayed in Beta for many years...) the issue is communication, and treating your users with more respect, and if you cannot manage that, don't give them the opportunity to pester you with questions (much like how certain Google products have no visible support channels.)

ReactOS may not be as big as Google, or have as much money as Google, but that doesn't mean ReactOS can't use Google as a model of approach.

[Z98]

More than one developer has advocated completely removing the forum since they view it as useless and a waste of time. Those same developers avoid the forum outright because they don't want to interact with the people that only use the forum and keep coming up with excuses about how using mailing lists or IRC is too hard so they won't even try. Those are the same people that remain unsatisfied by the answer of "don't know" when we really don't know. When will ext2 support be done? Don't know. Why not? Cause no one's working on it. Why not? At a certain point, it isn't worth the effort to answer these questions if the asker won't even go through the effort of trying to understand the answers or won't believe the answers. Communication is two way. If someone won't listen, then however loud we shout they won't hear and there won't be any communication. So using this example, where we're dealing with someone who has refused to listen to us in the past, as an indication that there isn't good communication, well, is hardly representative of the project as a whole.

Incidentally, EmuandCo, despite my own opinion of nute, let's lay off the insults. Not exactly helping the situation any.

[Haos]

Again Otiose, this is why i asked you to browse previous nute's posts, not only this particular one.

Please do tell me: how many times are you capable of answering same questions, having the same answers, the very same person? How long will you remain calm and polite? Two months? Three? What about two years? We are nothing bar human beings so dont expect any superhuman traits from us.

Back to your comparison with Google, i don't see how we can adopt their approach without their resources.

[swight]

I think I remember the answer is supposed to be 490 times(70*7), but for many of us the answer seems to get obscured for some reason.

[Otiose]

Hey Guys,

I've said my peace, I don't want to get into an argument about it. I just wanted to note what an outside observer's perception might be.

All the best.

[asd1!]

How about a pinned topic titled "When the next version is gonna be out" with the answer "We don't know"?