A new direction for Dolphin 7.1.x/Dolphin Classic

I propose a new direction for Dolphin 7.1.x/Dolphin Classic.  The community takes over development of Dolphin Classic; including renaming it something other than Dolphin to differentiate it from Dolphin U since Andrew refuses to rename Dolphin U.  The community will work on the fixes and updates for Dolphin 7.  We will have to work out the licensing structure; perhaps Boonex pays part of the licensing fees to the developers that work on Dolphin 7.  This change will mean that Dolphin 7 will not simply die from neglect on the part of Boonex and instead will grow.  We can push out updates more frequently, as often as we think are needed.  If a major fix to an issue is done and we think it is important enough for an update, then we push out an update.  This can be a good thing for Boonex and a good thing for the Dolphin community.

LOL

I'm all for community involvement, but I'd rather not encourage BoonEx to abandon Dolphin 7. Trac shows continued development activity for it, so I'll wait and see what happens.

I have not seen WordPress die yet.  On the other hand, Boonex appears to be ready to kill Dolphin.  Andrew himself said that no new updates for Dolphin would occur until after the beta release of Dolphin U; so it could be two, three, six years before we see a new update for Dolphin.  This would seem to indicate that the developers have been pulled from Dolphin and placed on Dolphin U.

As for my proposal, of course developers are free to come and go as they please just like in any software application.  If development for Dolphin is driven by the developers in the community instead of Boonex, Dolphin won't die, it will grow. 

@Nathan - you are in serious denial - Dolphin Classic has already been abandoned - 14 months with no updates it the same as dead, even if at some point they publish a few fixes - that is totally the wrong way to do it and makes for a garbage product.   

@Geek Girl - what you have suggested is probably the "one move" that could be made to save this product, and you could even make a pretty good case that it is in Andrew's best interest.   I wouldn't hold my breath though - he hasn't shown much interest in doing the right thing. 

Here is the problem you would run into giving it to the 'community'...Who is going to be in charge? Would you be in charge of fixing and updating everything for 100k+ users here? Willing to take responsibility for misakes/faults? Deano, Prashank, Modzzz, HL??? Technically, you can take the software and do anything you want to it now. You have improvements or new features for D7, then go ahead post them in the Market.

Without some type of structure behind it, giving it to the community with a message of 'Here, you can have it' would turn into a big ol' cluster..

I currently have no intentions of running DU for a long, long time.. Right now, it's just a new toy that the kids want to play with. Not trying to be the bearer of bad news, but that's just the way it is. 

 RE

 What trac are you looking at Nathan?  It must be a different one than the one I'm looking at.

Just out of curiosity what is the licensing situation with D6?  Even the people who don't yet realize that D71 has been abandoned, as D7.0 before it was, can certainly agree that D6 was dumped long ago.  D6 wasn't that bad in many ways - the search was much better, the join forms more sophisticated and the profile photo system much better.  There are lots of sites out there - including business sites - that "forked" and continued to be developed by individual companies.   It would be interesting to know what would have happened if they had continued being developed from that version.

I don't think you realise how such things works.  I have been part of an open source project.  We were a small team so it did make it harder to have the volunteers.  Plus, if Boonex would give part of the licensing fees to those developing Dolphin 7; I am guessing that Alex and Andrew are not coding for free; then that would help drive developers to help fix issues and code improvements.  You have a system in place where you offer your fix for a review to be added to the code.  Others checks out the fixes and reports bugs.  If bugs found, then it goes back to be fixed and then submitted again.  Another round of checks.  If OK, then those that have the authority to submit the code to the branch do so.  We had the nightly snapshot where one could download the latest package; then we would release a new version to main site.

The problem is that everything can not be a module; the fixes to the core issues need to be through updates.

If it is a true open source project running under a license that will allow a fork, then yes, you can fork it.  Dolphin is not under such a license.  Dolphin is running under the Creative Commons license.  You can use the application freely but you must give proper attribution to Boonex on your site or pay a fee to have that attribution removed.  You are not allow to distribute the software.

By the way, D6 needs to be updated to run under newer versions of php.  One of the operators of a D6 site came in the forums a short time back with an issue where the host had changed to a newer version of Dolphin and the site broke.  The only solution for the person was to find a host that offered the version of php they needed to run D6.

It's more than 4 years old (Dolphin 7.0.0 was released on Christmas of 2009). If you're still on it, you better have hired somebody to patch its security holes and keep it maintained. There should have been some patches for at least the first year, but that ship has sailed.

 Working as the Boonex lawyer now?   Some of this is semantics or different definitions of what a "fork" is, but as Zarcon pointed out, there is nothing that says you can't modify that crap out of Dolphin until it is barely recognizable.   Theseus' paradox - if you replace every part of a ship, is it the same ship?   That is a philosophical question, but what if you made the much ship better?   What if two of you then shared the improvements you have made to the ship?   Forks have already happened all over the place - after a certain point, Boonex and this community are forgotten and it is looked at as just another php/mySQL script.  .  With D6 business sites have been built that left the original code far behind - for example http://www.startupnation.com/   

Your solution is complicated because you are trying to negotiate a piece of the licensing fees.    I think it would be much better to cut the abandoned products free - let people do what they will with them.    At a certain point, the "law of the sea" should apply to software as well - if a ship is drifting at sea no longer supported by the captain or crew, the "right of salvage" applies.   A software program that is no longer supported by the current version of PHP is rapidly sinking.   A person who has updated that so it works with the current version of PHP has saved that ship. 

Conclusion is that we are all in the Sh** due the the fact that a small group or just One person have/has found a new toy to play with! It would be brave to take D7 on as a real project for the Dolphin C fans here...

I would love to take complete ownership of my D7 script and code without any restrictions... that way it's mine if i wanna sell when it's a MEGA hit and investors are willing to pay big bugs for it :-)

Seriously it's time to take some action Andrew as i believe that you will loose lots and lots of good dolphins here as you keep on driving the road that you are on.

I am simply stating the fact, Boonex Dolphin is not open source; read the license that ships with it.  You can make modifications in the code for your use, that is true.  However, you can not take Dolphin and release it as a new product.

Perhaps Boonex would consider releasing Dolphin as open source but I doubt it, a major part of Boonex's revenue comes from selling the licenses.  Perhaps after the final release of Dolphin U you can approach Andrew about Dolphin.

Why don't those interested just go out and make Dolphin what they want it to be?

I've been working with Dolphin since finding it in 2008 and before that I was writing a web app that pretty much was going to do what Dolphin does. When I found Dolphin, I used it as a base to extend it.

Sure it's got it's faults, but I'm prepared to live with that. I can find, fix, and deploy if I have to. A lot of the times, I don't have to. Accept the fact that every app will have problems. If you can't, then go out and make your own.

@Caltrade, I've created Business apps with Dolphin both for Web and mobile. I've created a REST interface with JSON output that allows full login and join from the app.

This stuff isn't easy. It takes hundreds of hours to code and produce. It takes only a few seconds to criticize.

It's all there everyone. The parts. The framework. The code. Everything.

Go out and do it. Get off the forums and produce what you're writing and complaining about. Then come back and release it.

 Well said my friend ! BRAVO !!

James, the standard "Go out and code your own Dolphin" response isn't going to work anymore.  You know damn well that most people here are users, not coders, and as such, must put their faith and trust in others to get work done. The reason Caltrade is so discouraged, is the same reason I am.  The Dolphin 7 product line stopped receiving updates 14 months ago. Not because there's nothing left to fix, but because Boonex stopped working on it entirely.  As long as Dolphin 7 was receiving regular updates, people around here remained optimistic.... hopeful than when a bug was uncovered or an enhancement needed, that it would get done eventually.  That was back in the day.  There were people here. Some were giving praise to Boonex... others were bitching.  At least there was a constant flow of emotion one way or another.  Now there's nothing.  On a good day, you're lucky to see 4-5 new posts here.

Ask any professional athlete, and they'll tell you the same thing.  As long as you're getting cheered or getting booed, you know the fans feel something about you...it's when they all go silent that you know you're through.  This community has been going silent. You know it. I know it. We all know it.  That should be something Boonex should be very concerned about.

We all know that Dolphin can be fixed and custom modules written.  The simple fact is, if you have something with a degree of sophistication you need done, you are more likely to find someone to donate a lung, than someone to work on your project.  A while back, I sent out a few "feelers" to various coders for some needed work.  I was prepared to hire someone for 6 months or a budget of $50,000... whichever came first.  Money was never discussed. I didn't want to be seen as low hanging fruit waiting to be picked. The responses were all the same... no one had the time.  Now I have serious doubts about that sort of enthusiasm about using this platform for my web projects.  At this point, I'll probably end up ditching all of them.

So you see, custom coding isn't as easy to come by as you suggest.  Most of the time, the only option is blindly putting your faith in some "coder" half way around the planet that can barely speak or write English.  You have no idea whether or not they can do what they claim, or the quality of the end result. 

@Houstonlively,

Lung donations are hard to come by. But yes, I guess, I see your point. The athlete analogy  came through loud and clear.

Understand, that before being a programmer I was a graphic designer and illustrator. I knew nothing about computers. So in a way, I can understand how frustrating it can be. Because I wanted things done a particular way, I ended up having to learn to program. I took courses, I read books (lots of books), I got certified. It took me about 2 years when I got my first real programming gig.

re:"So you see, custom coding isn't as easy to come by as you suggest."
If it came across that I was suggesting it was easy, then I apologize for that.  I felt I clarified that a bit more when I mentioned, "This stuff isn't easy. It takes hundreds of hours to code and produce. It takes only a few seconds to criticize."

At any rate, to be sure it's not going to be easy to learn how to do this stuff or get a group to do what needs to be done, but it just might be worth it for those involved.

I know of at least one website out there that has been SELLING Dolphin for years as "Facebook Clone".. Boonex hasn't even tried to stop them. I say this to let everyone who wants to fork, split, recode, redistribute or whatever know that Boonex DOESN'T CARE. Much like being concerned with updates and listening to everyone giving suggestions here.. Boonex DOESN'T CARE. There are only one or two of us that have been here since way back and I can tell you they have been the same way since day one. The only thing that has changed is the staff of 8 to 10 has dwindled down to 2 or 3 people.

One simple thing could probably make a whole new world in my opinion.

Allow now Prime License owners to sell modules in the market.

Most of the market items are related to Dating/Adult sites. My projects are all related to the medical/health industry, and thus my created modules are related as well. With the cost of the Prime license, I will never offer any of modules in the market. The cost/risk ratio is not within reason.

But, if those of us who have different types of sites and modules can offer them in the market, it may open up more inspiration for other site developers.

I have solution for DC/7.1 updates 

1. Andrew make a separate tag in forum by name DC/7.1-Extras.

2. Members/coders post new features ideas or preferably the codes.

3. Members try the Extra features in demo testings. Which ever feature work perfectly push them for weekly update. 

Now problems

1. No one want to do it for free.

2. Many new features will kill the module market 

3. Weekly/Monthly new version releasing is hassle by compiling it n testing before release. 

4. Making DC open source might endanger DU product. 

So you people should know why I support DU cause of weekly silently bug fix and updates. Which isn't quiet easy to do with DC. 

That's my humble little opinion :) 

 That is another way of making the point I was making here about the "destruction of value".    As any Silicon Valley investor can tell you having an active community behind a product is huge - It adds immensely to the product value.   Here, of course, that community has mostly been destroyed - by neglect, lack of leadership and simple apathy.  A second major source of value would be to have actively supported products already out there in the market - but by abandoning those products they have destroyed even more value - our value.   Like it or not, we all have unsupported software installations without the backing of an active community. 

It is not hard to see the actual strategy for this product and community - they want to build a "cha-ching" money machine where they give away a virtually non-functional core product and everyone needs to buy modifications to make it work.   In other words, they are building a market not a product.    Andrew may think that is a brilliant strategy for himself - it is not, but for the rest of us it is a loser strategy - at best, it is extremely high risk bet where they have taken most of what remains of our value to the roulette table. 

The reason most of us are here is to salvage an investment -  and investment in money, specific learning we have had to do for this platform, and a massive amount of work on our own platforms.   While we may have to do this, it is hardly an inspiring reason to stick with a technology. 

That leaves us with a bunch of choices - but none of them are great.   We can keep developing dead products, we can use our masochist nature and eventually upgrade to the UI piece of crap, we can migrate existing sites to another platform, or we can do something resembling a "fork" - meaning that you start to see your sites more as PHP and SQL code.   As the late Mrpowless used to say, "starting with Dolphin saves you about $30,000 in development costs.   As you pointed out though - even if you are in the position to hire programmers that will become increasingly difficult. 

Because not everyone aspires to be a programmer.   What if your skills lie in other areas? - should you have to drop everything and learn to program - even though you will be bad at it, in order to make a software program work with its most basic functionality?   GeekGirl is fond of saying that this is only a platform for programmers, and while that may be true now it wasn't always the case.   I think D7.0 marked the dividing line between when a "power user" like me could set one up and when it required the help of a programmer.  

Just 6 words:-

Stop making more of these topics.

 @Prashank  Why?  - Geek Girl proposed something positive.  You may disagree with her approach, and you are free to say so, but that is FAR different than making the argument that certain things should not be discussed.

Just discuss this in same topic. Autopilot will make more for you.

@Pranshank - what "same topic"?   As far as I know, this is a unique proposal that isn't being discussed on another thread, and I don't know what you mean by "autopilot".   Unless you are one of the moderators here, you shouldn't really tell people what should or should not be discussed.   Just because you are not interested in this topic, doesn't mean others aren't. 

 RE:

I don't see that ever happening.  It would take leadership, and a core group of developers that are willing to devote their time to the project for little or no reward.  I would be truly surprised if you could find one single person with ALL the needed skills and experience to make that sort of commitment.  Besides, if the users of Dolphin can't put their faith and trust in the people that own this platform, why should they trust that anyone else would be any better?

Lets call for volunteers..am up for testing and giving ideas ;) coding is not my thing :/

Any 1 else beside moaning and doing some real work ?

I agree that it is an extreme long shot, but you can look at it in a different way.   Everyone who has been stopped when Boonex dumps a version - D6, D7.0 and now D7.1 but continues to develop it as their own PHP/mySQL script essentially has done their own "fork".   It is not that hard to imaging two or three of these parties getting together and cooperating on improving the "core" so that their own projects could continue.   Not likely maybe, but not impossible either.

 RE:

 You, and just about everyone else here.  Good will and warm fuzzy feelings aren't going to get anything done.  Professional coders donating their time is what will get things done, and the likelihood of any developers around here freely donating large amounts of their time is as close to zero as it gets.  Maybe someone will prove me wrong, but I doubt it. Besides, as long as someone at Boonex is alive somewhere, they are not about to turn over a licensed product to someone else.

Either Boonex resumes development on the 7.x.x product, or it just doesn't happen... period. 

I agree. 

And you ask, what if my skills are in other areas? You know what I do? I hire people with the skills I don't have. For example, I don't fix cars. So I hire a mechanic, because he is a professional. He can do it in less time. I also don't fly planes, so I hire a pilot and etc.

My point is, can I learn to fix cars? Yes I can. Can I learn to fly a plane? Yes I can. But is it worth my time? Nope. Not at this time.

I am certain there is a version of Dolphin running that is doing EXACTLY what the site owner wants it to do.

To this day, I am STILL dealing with sites made with Dolphin 6!

Am gona create a post "DC/D7.14-Extras.. volunteers only"  ;) unless you got a better name for the post to only discuss what needs to be fixed or updated. We can discuss step by step what changes need to be made in DC/D7.14. Also what kind of server setups are best to run dolphin unless you guys prefer paid hosting. What you say ?

If one reads the original post, what I suggested was that Boonex turn over the development of Dolphin; I am not going to continue to call it Classic, that is just stupid; call it Dolphin and Dolphin U if you will, to the community.  Boonex would continue to sell licenses and part of the license fees would go to the developers that continues Dolphin's development.  Boonex wins, the community wins, and the developers that continue to work on Dolphin wins.  While Andrew may say differently, Boonex is going to eventually kill Dolphin by neglect.  If that happens, then no more licenses for Dolphin will be sold.  Boonex is focusing on Dolphin U and a new model for making money.  Perhaps the sales of licenses have drop; I bet they have with the announcement of Dolphin U.  However, if the community can keep Dolphin alive, then Boonex may see more Dolphin licenses being sold than they are selling Dolphin U modules.  I never said anything about Boonex giving Dolphin to the community; I said turn over development to the community.

Hey Andrew, what you're hearing is the sound of the people having lost faith in you.  You've become unreliable & undependable, so this is the result of such foolish actions of yours.  No updates in over a WHOLE year, complete neglect & abandonment of your main product (D7), and now people are starting to think of an alternative way to "save dolphin".  

I know you're not listening, but Im going to say this anyway.  What you should do is ABORT ALL development on D8/DU, and concentrate 100% on 7.1.5 and release that IMMEDIATELY (before Oct ends).  Then focus on 7.1.6 and release that by Black Friday.  This will buy you time to play around with D8/DU and maintain your current users, so that they can still be around in 2017 when you release D8/DU.  You should also NEVER abandon D7 again, even after D8/DU is released. 

It says that there is over 200k users here, but about less than 20 is active (on a daily basis).  Since I've been here for a couple of years, I've never seen 2000 users...which is leading me to believe that you guys had to have made your own fake profiles accts for boonex!  But if those numbers are actually real, then those numbers should be saying everything that you need to be hearing.  At this rate, it will be less than only 2 people that are active.  Thats just my 2 cents.

 This is kind of a minor point, but an important one.   The D6 produce matched my "CalTrade" application pretty well.   The central idea of that site was that someone could express an interest in both an "industry" and in a "country".    So, for example, you, might be interested in "Germany" and "biotechnology" or "South Africa" and "telecommunications".    The search in D6 allowed you to drill down to that exact community of interest.    That was completely lost in the upgrade to D7.0 (the famous "null" search issue) though it was repeatedly promised by Andrew for the "next major version".   I was told that when they did D7.0 they "forgot" to include the correct code.   The upgrade to D7.1 further destroyed this site to the point where now I have a disastrous mess that is depressing to look at.    

On the other hand, I have an site I built with D7.0 that does match my application fairly nicely, and I am not "swimming upstream" nearly as much.   It is a bummer that I am using dead end, orphaned software that has been dumped by its developer though.  

By the way, does anyone know when they removed the D6 and D7.0 forums here.   Was it announced or explained?   That is something very significant and I don't recall it being discussed, but since I haven't been here that much I might have just missed it.  

 All true statements - the products are in the process of being killed, whether that is what they think they are doing or not.  No one doubts that D6 and D7.0 have been abandoned and orphaned, and the handwriting is more than on the wall for D7.1 as well.   It is also correct that instead of supporting their products, they are concentrating on 'a new model for making money".   As I have already expressed, that is a terrible "value destroying" strategy that is hurting this community and everyone in it.   Finally, I think it is an extremely safe bet that license sales have dropped.   It seems to me, that buying a Dolphin license now would be almost irrational - why would anyone do that?  I wouldn't be surprised if they haven't sold a single license since they made that announcement unless they found someone who did zero due diligence.  Their own community wouldn't recommend that software now.  

 That makes FAR too much sense, which is why it probably won't happen.  They have done way too much damage for a simple fix now, and only by slamming on the brakes like this does this community and product line even have a chance.  

I agree mostly, but I do think that even with as much damage that Andrew has caused, I do believe he still has the ability to recover & heal dolphin and this community by doing the RIGHT thing, which is LISTENING to his community before he has no community to give D8 to.  The number of active users & posts like these should be a huge warning sign to Andrew that damn near EVERYONE disapprove how he is going about handling things.  But at the end of the day, we all know that Andrew will not listen, probably wont even bother reading these posts, I just had to make those suggestions so that I can say I tried to give solid advice to save Dolphin. 

When my sites are successful, Im just going to fork it and use a good portion of the revenue to find some great developers to continue development so that Dolphin may live & thrive for other dolphiners. Yes, that includes you Alex T & whoever else currently working on D8 under the wrong leadership (cause its obvious that at this rate, there will be no boonex)

One more time Andrew, HOW MUCH WILL YOU SELL BOONEX & DOLPHIN FOR?  (so I can have a good figure to start working towards to)

Dolphin Classic update (likely 7.2) will come out shortly after Dolphin U beta. There will be Dolphin Classic betas and a lot more open discussion during the process to make sure we're prioritising things according to both the community needs and our strategy. 

We are also very interested in the idea of involving community into development of both Dolphins. For that to happen effectively we need to switch Dolphin Classic licensing policy to the same scheme as we plan for Dolphin U, which is something we hope to be able to accomplish in 7.2. Free core and base modules, some modules are available for a small fee. Once that move happens we anticipate a lot more interest from webmaster in general AND a lot more incentive for developers.

Now, if you think about Classic and upcoming licensing change, you may see how valuable this product is for us. It already has lots of "detachable" modules and strong extensions Market. We plan to bring in the best ideas from Dolphin U and build a "complete" platform for full-featured social networks. 

Dolphin U, meanwhile, is rather quirky and we see it as a more "light" solution for more focused ideas - social sites for hobbies, family unit networks, hyper-local (like cafe patrons) networks, even individual blogs with strong social aspect. Things like that. Dolphin U is not meant to be a Dolphin Classic upgrade and we will try to communicate this point more clearly over time. 

So, once we have both on free license train, we'll be able to open our Git and involve knowledgable, motivated community members in the development process without hindering it with added management overhead. We are looking forward to it!

 RE:

Andrew, will you just call it something besides Dolphin already?  There is just no sense in staying with the name Dolphin for two entirely different products.  We all tried to tell you that in that first look preview, but too often when someone points out one of your bad ideas, you refuse to listen.  I don't know why you are so fixated on giving like names to two separate products, but whatever pent up emotion has control of your thought process, you really should try to let it go, and let logic take over.  Giving it a separate name would be a good first step in showing this community that you are committed to supporting two separate products.

Heck, you can even keep it in the Dolphin family with something like 'Porpoise'. Technically they are smaller than Dolphins, which would signify the "light" solution you refer to Dolphin U as being. 

Yea, or Vaquita. A very rare and small species of porpoise.

I said this back then, but I'll repeat it now. Shark, Poseiden, and Trident. Three excellent names that were all used at one point or another for what's basically Dolphin U. Dolphin is the social network and community script. It's all baked into the core, and I dont think that needs to change. But Dolphin U doesnt have this old cruft and can be whatever you want it to be. It can be a social network, or it can be a business portal, or maybe an eCommerce site if the module is developed for it.

I like Dolphin U. Not the name, but its potential. I want to use it for our front site. The lack of the baked-in social and dating features means it can be a powerful CMS, and we can integrate some social functions for our clients at some point. Just a thought.

It's a light solution. 

Like a guppy.

@Nathan,

That's how I saw it as well. 

I can see tons of potential. From what I can see, if required, it can also tap into Dolphin. BAM!

In the next update, you should make Dolphin classic responsive. I know this link below is an adult site, but go to it and change the size of the browser window to see what I mean. It is completely responsive.

p-o-r-n-d-o-t-c-o-m 

 You are still talking about at least another year before another major update to D7.  Best case scenario is another 6 months (which is NOT going to happen).  We've been having open discussions all over the forums and been informing you that your prioritizing is backwards.  We dont want to wait another 6mo-1.5yrs for you to fix the bugs in what we're already using and trying to earn a living from while you make a brand new shiny toy.  You haven't been listening all this time, and I dont think no one believes that we can having a meaningful discussion with you about things because your ACTIONS have shown that Andrew does what Andrew wants and disregard everything else.

I know this may sound stupid or 'too simple', but removing 'Dolphin' from the name will give people the ability to:

- Know it's a completely different product

- Stop thinking they can 'upgrade' their current D7 site to this.

- Stop asking if it will have the same features as D7.

- Remove the thought of 'I'm waiting for DU before I do anything else to my website'

- You can still (and should) purchase products for Dolphin 7.x if desired

- Developers can get back to producing modules for D7.x without the worries.

As stated before, a lot of people are suffering from this early announcement and taking it as the next Dolphin version. Which it is not. These forums have been idled more than I can recall in a long time. I can come here and see 3 day old posts (or older) on the first page sometimes. Developers are taking a huge hit, module development is at a snail's crawl. Everyone is in a state of 'waiting' right now to see how this develops.

Even during the first private release for testing, my first thought was 'How can I upload photos?', 'Where are the videos?'. But that was before I knew for sure that this was not meant to be a replacement.

I agree with most that 'DU' has potential to be something different, but if I want a social networking type website, D7.x is the way to go. 'Dolphin' has always been a social networking/community based script. Dolphin U is not that so it shouldn't bear the same name in many of our opinions. In the future, if I decide to build something along a 'portal' type site, then maybe I will give this a try.

This is just my 2 cents..