Maintenance

[Martin C 6]

It is coming up to a year now since Ubot Version 5 was launched and maintenance support for Version 4 ended.

 

There seems very little communication from the Ubot team as to what is happening with version 5, the updates have more or less dried up and I find that it is still too bug ridden to be useful.

 

Are people still paying their maintenance because I after a year I am seriously contemplating whether to cancel the maintenance until such time that version 5 is a robust production tool?

 

With hindsight version 5 was never ready to be released, but having been released there seems to be very little effort made to ensure that the majority of quite serious bugs are resolved quickly. 

 

What do people think? What do the UBot team think?

[malefic 48]

Last time I asked something like this, not as eloquently as you have put it, my posts were deleted, I was laughed at by Seth and told to go through the support desk. Seth also pointed out the blog (dated Aug 22nd saying they are internally testing the alpha version, STILL no ETA) and their Facebook page (same post as the blog updated after I kicked off).

 

Good luck getting information out of Ubot.

[Code Docta (Nick C.) 638]

and anyone stating real opinion here gets the thread either closed or deleted as stated above

 

 

I have not paid (for nothing) since Ubot 5 Beta (had to pay to see it)

 

 

I am still waiting along with you for something useful and many others have stopped paying as well,

 

Don't forget the 6 moths prior to U5 launch of paying for nothing.

a year and a half of nothing with any excuse is alarming to put it nicely and I am disenchanted with it all

 

started learning C# months ago was/is my solution and thinking about an open source competitive software

TC

[pash 504]

I will wait to see how this question will be removed or not.

[giganut 109]

At any rate, there where 9 new bugs added to the road map today, check that here.

http://tracker.ubotstudio.com/projects/ubot-5/issues?fixed_version_id=16&set_filter=1&status_id=o

[Martin C 6]

I've had a few post deleted from the forum myself when I have not been able to resits the odd barbed comment (normally wholly directed at UBot 5's lack of progress), which is a shame because the majority of people on this forum have an investment and want Ubot to do well. I dislike forums that censor negative comments, more so when it is totally justified.

 

I remember many moons ago I was invited to an application user group meeting because I was looking at investing in the software. It was an early document flow management system written by the now defunct Digital. It looked really good on paper (it would still beat almost anything around today) but it represented a big investment for the company I worked with at the time so I wanted to make sure that it worked as it was a relatively new product.

 

In the user group meeting the application seemed to come in for loads of criticism. Towards the end of the meeting I asked the thirty early adopters round the table if they thought the product was any good, the general consensus I took away from the meeting was that the product was brilliant, everyone loved the first version but having had their appetites wet they could see all the other functionality that was now a possibility and through the user group were keen to help it improve.

 

It has been my experience that all the good applications have benefited from a vocal and demanding user group and by the manufacture appreciating that passion they too have benefited from some critical but supportive users. 

 

My own view is that if I don't see or hear about some progress on UBot 5 soon I'm going to cancel the maintenance subscription and review my options because the current situation is just not good enough.

[Pete 121]

I think most have given up, even talking about the problems.

[AutomationNinja 194]

I fully agree.

"It has been my experience that all the good applications have benefited from a vocal and demanding user group and by the manufacture appreciating that passion they too have benefited from some critical but supportive users"

[UBotDev 276]

If I'm honest I never wanted to attend topics entitled like this one and I think a lot of other members also don't want to get into these waters (also according to response on this topic). I could wrote a 10 page long post but I don't want to bother and argue (v4 works for me in most cases and is quite decent if you exclude some problems)...so, just a few thoughts from my side:

 

I totally agree and support all previous posters; I think the main problem behind UBot is # of developers working on this project according to it's size (not to mention that the main developer left and took a lot of knowledge with him...I mean how can a project leader afford that?). 

It's been almost a year and we are still not able to use v5...in my eyes it was just a huge fail with a lot of hype created by "marketing department", without testing and bug-fixing their product in first place. I'm especially disappointed because instead of making a stable and bug free v5, they've bloated it with all features which were proven to make sales and already existed in form of community contributed plugins... I guess they did that to have more selling points, but I wonder why would't they rather focus on stability and their existing customer base first? Also the progress on fixing the bugs that still exist isn't really promising, so I totally understand frustrations of the users (a lot of them already looking for alternative).

 

I'll stop here for now... I still believe that one day, just one day we'll maybe have a usable version 5 and I wish all the best to UBot team when achieving that.

[rogeradvanta 0]

I have just cancelled my $9 per month subscription on the basis that it's not actually buying me anything.

 

I would urge anybody else still paying their subscription to do the same unless of course we get any replies to this thread giving us a good reason why we should keep paying. Even better why not release version 5?

 

Such a shame because ubot had so much potential…

[UBotBuddy 331]

Patience my fellow botters.

[Pete 121]

Philosophical perspectives

In Human, All Too Human, philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche argued that "being able to wait is so hard that the greatest poets did not disdain to make the inability to wait the theme of their poetry." He notes that "Passion will not wait", and gives the example of cases of duels, in which the "advising friends have to determine whether the parties involved might be able to wait a while longer. If they cannot, then a duel is reasonable [because]...to wait would be to continue suffering the horrible torture of offended honor

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patience

So it's pistols in the park at sunup

[Martin C 6]

Patience my fellow botters.

 

A little bit of substance behind that comment would be useful, I suppose a road map of planned releases would be too much to ask.

 

I would like to know if I am expected to go another year without a working product or if I should follow rogeradvanta's example and stop the maintenance until there is a product to maintain. Isn't a year long enough? It's the silence that is killing me doesn't anyone know anything about customer service, Chapter 1, communication?

[UBotBuddy 331]

I cannot tell you what to do.  Due to my agreement in here I cannot tell you what is happening.  Just know that things are happening in here and no one is being ignored.

 

You won't be going another year

 

Seth is hard at it.  Trust me. 

[malefic 48]

........Chapter 1, communication?

 

That, right there, is what I have been trying to get across for the three years I have been messing with Ubot. I started nicely and now I bitch like a hormonal woman about it (sorry to any hormonal women!) about that one single thing.

 

COMMUNICATION is #1 when you provide a service, just a few words here and there and the majority of problems would be gone, punters more at ease and Ubot Studio would have an easier ride. 

 

Passing 'hints' and marketing BS is not communication, it is just marketing - it may impress new comers but the old 'loyal' customer base don't really care, we have already bought the software, just get it sorted!

 

Glad to see I am not the only one screaming about communications!

[Martin C 6]

Unless all the bug items are being worked on simultaneously, which is very unlikely, I would be more reassured if there was a new release every month with 5 to 10 bugs solved each time, that would at least demonstrate progress.  

[MiriamMB 63]

Hello Everyone,

 

Thanks for your thoughts. For updates on UBot 5.5 as well as a list of all the updates that have been provided so far, please see our tracker here.

 

For announcements and general updates on how the UBot 5.5 project is progressing, please see our blog here.

 

As always, if you have any questions for the UBot Staff, we'll be happy to answer them at support.ubotstudio.com.