Might be a bit "spendy" => but it's a REALLY cool toy 

 

My wife doesn't like a lot of tech gadgets, but she loves the Echo.  It's very responsive -- and everyone who sees it in action wants one.    It IS far more useful if you're a Prime member, so you have full access to the Prime music library; but even without that you can upload a lot of your own music to the library, and can purchase a lot of very inexpensive music to go with it.

 

... it's also constantly being improved => it can now control a bunch of home automation products.    I haven't added any of those, but if I did, we could tell Echo to turn lights on/off;  dim them; turn on the TV; etc. ... adding even more function.

 

The sensitivity of the microphone array is amazing -- I can say commands in a normal tone of voice from 25-30 feet away (in the next room) and it still responds;  and the sound is amazing for such a small box.

 

Well that's really rained on my parade... My Pi doesn't do that... 

I have been watching the past couple of months from afar as I am trying to get to grips with managing a new Program with work!

 

However, while there has been some great ideas:

 

- Community Developer Labels

- Organisation of the Docker Forums

- Continued development and stable releases of unRAID

- etc etc etc

 

I have to admit I am absolutely disappointed and bemused over LT's decision to remove any and all references to current and future development roadmap or schedule from the forums (or anywhere else for that matter).

 

As a patient paying customer and a supporter of unRAID I feel the least the team can do is advertise what the current development plan and roadmap is. Ever since I took my first Project Managers Job at BT in 99' I remember the dreadful phone calls and meetings with my Sponsor and their delegates. Its awful - expectations - working up to the nth hour to get a release out - even missed deadlines. But EVERY project needs a scope, a plan, some timelines .... as a paying customer I consider myself (along with the other members of the paying LT community) a Sponsor of this Project and as such I think we deserve the basic information delivery and reporting of a Project.

 

I posted back in Feb about a lack of this information and was told - watch this space we are making some big changes to the forums and this information is coming. September arrives, not only has the section been removed where this information was but all we have now is the odd post about future features (which I am excited about don't get me wrong) and a list of unscheduled features and a Boneyard!

 

Why oh why oh why is LT so scared of publishing its plans to the community .....

 

 

I have been watching the past couple of months from afar as I am trying to get to grips with managing a new Program with work!

 

First and foremost, welcome back!  Totally appreciate that life gets in the way at times and that had to come first.  Just glad to see you back.

 

As a patient paying customer and a supporter of unRAID I feel the least the team can do is advertise what the current development plan and roadmap is...

 

...as a paying customer I consider myself (along with the other members of the paying LT community) a Sponsor of this Project and as such I think we deserve the basic information delivery and reporting of a Project.

 

Just to clarify, no one is a "paying" customer here. No one is a "sponsor" of unRAID. This is not kickstarter. You are a "paid" customer. You paid for a product that delivered on the functionality promised at the time you paid for it.  If updates were sold under a subscription model, I think your desire for more information about the roadmap would be hard to argue against.  If we can't tell folks what we are doing to improving the product and when, why should they keep paying for a subscription?  That said, no one has been charged for an upgrade since the first version of unRAID OS was released. Let's keep that in mind.

 

Why oh why oh why is LT so scared of publishing its plans to the community .....

 

There isn't any fear here, we just don't feel like having to maintain a public roadmap.  We tried it, it didn't work for our needs, and so we ditched it in favor of providing updates in other ways.

 

There are plenty of software projects that do not disclose a public roadmap in detail, and we are simply one of those.  That said, we have leaked tidbits of things we are working on here and there (dual parity comes to mind), and will continue to do so.  I plan on doing a blog post on version 6.2 before its released, detailing out some of the features, so that will expose you to more information on what's coming.

 

It comes down to cost / benefit.  A publicly maintained roadmap is all cost with very little payoff.  Someone (us) needs to not only publish it once, but maintain it and respond to public inquiries on it on an ongoing basis. That is a huge consumption of time and we don't see the benefit. We will respond to feature requests and defect reports and that's where our time is being spent and our focus belongs.