Thomas wrote:

> --- In Firebird-general@yahoogroups.com
> <mailto:Firebird-general%40yahoogroups.com>, "Claudio Valderrama C."
> <cvalde@...> wrote:
> > > That's a bit silly. One of the first things you see on the Firebird
> > > homepage is a list of current and recent activities.
>
> Yes I know, but for some people a (major) release or an accurate roadmap
> is more important :)

Most (potential) users who visit the homepage will primarily see the
info that's most easy to access and understand and ignore the rest. This
means, with the current layout:

- Version number of latest release.
- Roadmap date (VERY OLD! RAISES A WARNING IN THE READER'S MIND!)
- Development news, mainly the frequency of events and maybe some
details of the topmost one or two events.
- Maybe go to the documentation page, and find that documentation is
fragmented and scattered among several different sources, and at first
glance probably incomplete. This may be wrong, but probably appears that
way. (RAISES A WARNING IN THE READER'S MIND!)
- Maybe visit the roadmap page, and find that planned dates are in the
past while the planned event hasn't happened yet, e.g. 2.5 "We hope to
see the final release going public in Q2 2009" while at the start page
it says "8-Feb-2010 Firebird 2.5 Release Candidate 2 Now Available"
which is about 3/4 of a year later than the roadmap says. THIS RAISES
TWO WARNINGS IN THE READER'S MIND: 1) The roadmap is very outdated - why
don't they maintain it? 2) They're behind schedule with the development
work. Why? Is the project dying?

I could go on. The web contains a lot of little warning signals that the
Firebird project isn't very healthy.

> The homepage is the first thing someone gets to see. And a roadmap "as
> of 2008" in 2010... - well it does sound out-dated.

Not only sounds...

> > Between 31-Jan and 6-Feb there were 111 write transactions. Each
> transaction
> > may involve many files and indeed the amount of sync I've done with my
> local
> > tree recently is huge. Unfortunately, I don't see stats on the number
> of
> > changed files.
>
> I am aware of this. But this is not what a first-time user (or some
> "just looking") will have a look at. Especially someone who is "just a
> user" might not be interested in CVS commits but probably a lot more in
> the roadmap and the planned and actual release dates.

Right. That's what easy to see and that's what you do see.

What to do about it?

1. Always, always keep the roadmap up to date. This shouldn't require
too much work and would do lots to give a better impression for
potential new users who visit the homepage.

2. Try to put even more effort into creating a full and unified
documentation set. I am very much aware that this is extremely difficult
considering you have limited resources and put more priority on
development work (and rightly so I believe).

3. Maybe add some very visible info (statistics) on the start page about
the development work, e.g. number of commits per week or something, and
maybe the number of active developers. This would show there's a lot of
activity.

4. Maybe something like "Firebird in the media"?

I'd like to contribute, but like most others I have limited time so I
just can't. Maybe in a few years when my children are a bit older.

Kjell
--
--------------------------------------
Kjell Rilbe
DataDIA AB
E-post: kjell@...
Telefon: 08-761 06 55
Mobil: 0733-44 24 64