runrev 4.0 - kudos and a gripe

[David Bovill]

2009/6/28 Bill Marriott <wjm at wjm.org>

What is *not* going to be in the first version of the plug-in (e.g.: talking
> with JavaScript) is something that has only recently been decided, as we
> approach the betas and release. This is typical of the software development
> cycle; you cut features you don't think will make it as the ship date nears.


Where was the discussion - did I miss it? Do you have a url I can refer to?
My experience was that I was unable to find out any information regarding
the plugin on either the use or improve lists, over the last 9 months. Even
after booking a ticket to the conference, largely in order to find out about
the plugin and it's features I was not able to discuss these features with
anyone, there was no forum, email list and I was not asked any questions /
sent any surveys. There *was* an email link on the Pioneer web site, where
you could post questions - I emailed pioneer at runrev.com twice with questions
and received no reply. I forwarded these emails to Heather, but still no
reply to the questions regarding the plugin.

The company has grown a lot in this respect and I would suggest it's now
> superior in this regard compared to many other software publishers. It's not
> that we don't know what our users want, or it didn't occur to us that
> communication with JavaScript (or richer text fields) was a desireable
> capability. It's that we have a long list of things we want to do and have
> to choose carefully what comes first. Based on the overwhelmingly
> enthusiastic response to the plugin, I think we've demonstrated it will be
> quite exciting and usable and worthwhile even without this capability in the
> first release.


I agree - I'm looking forward to it as well. My comments are focussed on the
lack of openess and sense of participation in this process. This has closed
down considerably since MetaCard days, and in the mean time many other
companies have moved closer to a open development models with early and open
beta testing etc. With new developers familiar with this sort of development
process coming on board after the launch, I think we'd all benefit by
ramping up that sort of open discussion and interaction?