To Fred and Timo: Can we have a discussion about the future?

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Seymour Clufley
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Re: To Fred and Timo: Can we have a discussion about the fut

Post by Seymour Clufley »

I am very, very glad that Fred is open to the idea of discussion with the users. I think this will help him to make more money from PB, which will enable more development of PB. He deserves it. And of course, it will enable us users to have some influence on how PB evolves, which I think is right. I can't be the only one who is a bit frustrated at the moment.

A bounty system seems a fantastic idea. However, I would suggest an automated system. People could "pledge" their donation and then, if and when the feature was implemented, the donation would automatically go through. If the feature was never implemented (ie. if a certain minimum amount wasn't reached, or Fred decided not to do it), then nobody would lose any money. I'm sure there are websites that would handle this - Kickstarter, etc.

I have lots of feature requests - GIF encoding, compiling to ARM, 64-bit Date library, HTTP2, ImageMagick, etc. but presumably that can all "go to the vote", so no need to discuss it here.
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Re: To Fred and Timo: Can we have a discussion about the fut

Post by Mijikai »

Im certainly up to support PureBasic and would happily donate for features
or when i had a more clear idea on what to expect in the future.
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Re: To Fred and Timo: Can we have a discussion about the fut

Post by Thorium »

I am not using PureBasic as much as a few years back. But i still enjoy using it and there are a number of PB programs i made that still run in professional production environments and i still maintain them.

I remember, at some point, there was some talk about using LLVM as backend for the compiler. I think that would still offer great improvements. PB could benefit from the optimizers of LLVM and maintaining LLVM as "architecture" instead of compiling for multiple architectures directly should also save some development work in the long run.
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Re: To Fred and Timo: Can we have a discussion about the fut

Post by Seymour Clufley »

Is anyone else concerned that PB is basically dying? It took over a year for v5.7 to appear. And now, three months have passed since v5.7b1 came out, and no b2 has come out or is even being rumoured. I've been using PB for over 10 years, and this is unprecedented in that time. In addition, there is no sign of development of the "pledging for features" platform discussed earlier in this thread and apparently agreed to by Fred. These signs seem ominous to me. I really hope I'm wrong.
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Re: To Fred and Timo: Can we have a discussion about the fut

Post by swan »

Don't know about "dying" - bit of a harsh term, but I get your point though. It is unusual, I remember when new betas were almost a daily event.
I have to say my heart sank somewhat when Fred said "I don't think we will add a tons a new stuffs" and "we already added too much IMHO".
So some slowness following those statements sorta fits ....
Don't get me wrong - I don't think the skys falling in. It's just a pity being a big fan of PB and all....
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Re: To Fred and Timo: Can we have a discussion about the fut

Post by Dude »

Seymour Clufley wrote:Is anyone else concerned that PB is basically dying?
Are we seriously doing this conversation yet again? :x

Take a read here if you're concerned: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=45773

And see what Fred posted here: viewtopic.php?p=509722#p509722

Heck, I'll even quote him to save you clicking the link:
Fred wrote:Everytime, someone wakes up and tell the world than PB is bad and dying, that's the same story going on from years. The reality of it is it still is actively supported, got major releases and bug fix releases and support Windows x86, x64, Linux x86, x64 and OS X x86, x64.
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Re: To Fred and Timo: Can we have a discussion about the fut

Post by swan »

Don't get angry Dude.
We're allowed to have a say - aren't we ?
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Re: To Fred and Timo: Can we have a discussion about the fut

Post by wayne-c »

swhite wrote:Hi

I use PB for commercial projects all the time. I would certainly be willing to put money toward certain features or pay a yearly license fee. I am not interested in seeing PB become a bloated slow product but there are some features that are required in commercial environments now that were not needed in the past. To me the biggest one is the need for SSL support in FTP, HTTP and SMTP and Sockets.

What I like very much about PB is that it is easy to understand, fast, produces lean standalone executables and runs on both Windows, Linux and MAC.

Simon
I agree 100%
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Re: To Fred and Timo: Can we have a discussion about the fut

Post by Dude »

swan wrote:We're allowed to have a say - aren't we ?
Yes, but I was just pointing out that this "say" keeps happening over and over and over. Don't people search before posting? I've shown that there's literally dozens of topics saying PureBasic is "dying". And people keep posting them. Why? Just because updates aren't done every day or month anymore? The updates will come when they're ready.
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Re: To Fred and Timo: Can we have a discussion about the fut

Post by swan »

Agreed.
Easy to get emotional on something like this. Here's hoping Fred can pull a rabbit and please everyone .... :wink:
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Re: To Fred and Timo: Can we have a discussion about the fut

Post by Josh »

We should worry that Fred will have to live on Purebasic. If you are unmarried and have no children, you can also restrict yourself a little. But if you are married and have children (no idea if Fred has become a father), the whole thing suddenly looks completely different. You need a fixed income every month, which Fred probably can't achieve with Purebasic alone. Even a few hundred euros in income for paid features are of no use.

Even if I don't think Fred is working full-time for Pb anymore, why should Pb die? Everyone who bought Pb knew what he was buying and never had a right to further development. With a few exceptions (such as dpi awareness or https instead of http), Pb has been at a state where it is not absolutely necessary to offer some additional features.

Even if Fred would work over a longer time only on the removal of the most gross bugs, that would be ok for me.
sorry for my bad english
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Re: To Fred and Timo: Can we have a discussion about the fut

Post by Dude »

Josh wrote:You need a fixed income every month, which Fred probably can't achieve with Purebasic alone.
If you read the link that I posted above, you'd see what Fred said about his income from PureBasic:
Fred wrote:from my sale records, PB is still doing fine
PureBasic been updated more times than ANY other software that I've ever bought (which was on 11 Aug 2001, so 17 years of updates so far!). That says everything. Thank you, Fred. I know the next update will come when it's time. 8)
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Re: To Fred and Timo: Can we have a discussion about the fut

Post by the.weavster »

swan wrote:I have to say my heart sank somewhat when Fred said "I don't think we will add a tons a new stuffs" and "we already added too much IMHO"
Well I think too much has been added, imo most built in libraries should just have been implemented as wrappers for open source shared libraries. PB itself should just be the fundamental data types, structures, lists, maps and commands required for making use of the functions in those shared libraries. If PB had been implemented like that we might even have PB for ARM by now.
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Re: To Fred and Timo: Can we have a discussion about the fut

Post by Seymour Clufley »

Dude wrote:Are we seriously doing this conversation yet again? :x
Yes. As I detailed, the current slow pace of development is unprecedented in the period I have been using PB, therefore my concern is perfectly justified. Please don't fanboy at me; it doesn't help anyone, including Fred.
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Re: To Fred and Timo: Can we have a discussion about the fut

Post by DK_PETER »

Seymour Clufley
Is anyone else concerned that PB is basically dying?
Answer:
You're one of them. And it's a boring statement, which has been postulated over and over again.
It isn't true and you know it. You want something now and in your mind it is taking too long to get it.
Swan
Easy to get emotional on something like this. Here's hoping Fred can pull a rabbit and please everyone ....
Being emotional won't do you any good. You're using a tool not a handkerchief/tissue.
Please everyone? That'll be the day. There are always someone b*t*hing about something.
Pleasing everyone is an impossible mission.

To those who eagerly yearns for something special, PM the team and make an offer. If the price is right
they might consider pushing all other obligations aside and take a stab at your personal needs.
Dude
PureBasic been updated more times than ANY other software that I've ever bought (which was on 11 Aug 2001, so 17 years of updates so far!). That says everything. Thank you, Fred. I know the next update will come when it's time. 8)
I agree 100%
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