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Asmo
Site Admin
Joined: 26 Oct 2004
Posts: 663
Location: Undernet
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 Posted: Sat Jun 24, 2006 11:47 am?? ?Post subject: UnrealIRCd Contest to Attract New Coders
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Syzop announced a contest on the website of UnrealIRCd to attract new coders for the Unreal3.3* branch.
"Since a year or so I'm the only active coder left for 3.2*" Syzop said in a reaction to IRC-Junkie. "[...] the plan is not to add (m)any features to 3.2* anymore, so to make it mainly a bugfix branch." All development will now be targeted at the new 3.3.* branch. The project is recruiting new coders for this branch.
All new features will be pointed at the new branch, to prevent new bugs entering the stable 3.2* branch. "There are quite some items on our "wish list", including a web interface and internationalization of the ircd (translated messages/numerics/etc). UTF8 support is also under serious consideration. [...] with 3.3* we will have a chance to restructure everything, do major recoding, and add new experimental features... All without causing stability trouble for the existing 3.2* branch."
"In the current situation it would simply be impossible to get Unreal3.3* started," Syzop starts. "therefore we really *need* new people. I hope some good coders with some spare time will sign up for the contest, and join development." Syzop also likes to stress that also without 'official coder" status everyone is able to contribute to the project. Anyone who feels like doing something form the todo list is free to do so, and guidelines for the coding can be found on the wiki how to help out.
Part of the shortage of coders is due to the current coders having to re prioritize their time. "Until a year ago (especially in the beta* days), I was a very active coder, I worked on UnrealIRCd 20-30 hours a week. I'm no longer in such a position. I still work 10-15 hours a week on Unreal though, and it will probably stay like that." Also the other coders have to cut time on the project. "Codemastr has more important things to do (school, etc). Stskeeps is toying with next generation IRCd ideas (Unreal4/Unreal-TNG), which is currently entirely experimental, but perhaps we'll hear more about this after the summer."
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Asmo
webmaster www.IRC-Junkie.org
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idani
Joined: 25 Jun 2006
Posts: 5
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Posted: Sun Jun 25, 2006 10:52 am?? ?Post subject: I have to say..
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I'm a regular visitor on irc-junkie.. but never register to post a reply even when the news "requested" it..
But now im fu**ing angry
1-2 (more like 2) years ago, i used the Unreal IRCD..
After a while.. i wanted to help the communety and code something my self..since unreal is open-source
after spending more then 400 hours I ran into a bug that couses the IRCD to get a fatal error.. after rechecking the code I relized its an Unreal IRCD Core bug (version was Unreal 1.3.something)
I got connected to unreal server to get help and asked syzop\codemastr if they can point me out to the problem.. after answering all questions so i'll get a voice, they told me "you build it, we dont help you with it, good bye."
so Syzop
"you build it", you can go to h*ll with it, "good bye".
you didnt helped me (or the community) when I (they) were trying to help, you made modules that costs money, you didnt really tryed to do anything usefull to help the new/older programmers.
thats my point of view, sorry if it hurts.
dont ask people for help when you are 'down', if you dont help others when you are 'high'.
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Asmo
Site Admin
Joined: 26 Oct 2004
Posts: 663
Location: Undernet
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Posted: Sun Jun 25, 2006 12:41 pm?? ?Post subject:
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Hmm, stuff like this happens in commuities like open source, and IRC networks and such. There will always be someone who is unhappy, for any reason. And more then once these unahppy folks become strongly anti-project and vent their feelings publically for years after the event occured...
The reason might be very valid though, but it can also be based on reasons that are only valid to that user in question. I've had personal cases where I couldn't help someone for a very valid reason (no reop in a registerd channel or for example stuff people need to go to the police with (I aint a ircCop)), but that in turn made the other party *very* unhappy, and sparked off very unhappy responces much like the one you stated above, occasionally years later as well.
Projects like IRC networks and opensource projects are all run by volunteers, who need to do it all in their free time. This is something very fundamental people need to understand. People do it for *fun*. That also means handling requests and problems with users in their free time. And occasionally you will meet them ina bad mood. Shit happens, they aint paid for their job, and paid to keep a smile on, no matter how the 'customer' meets them...
Maybe you just met them on a off-day idani? Please remmeber, both syzop and codemstr and all the others have spend *countless* hours on a project you can download and use for free. If you then want to contribute (and thats *very* applaudable, as 99.9% of the users of such software don't put back anything at all) and then get a responce you are not happy with at all, I can very much understand you are very unhappy with that. But does that really warrant a message like you put above, publically saying they aint worth it to put your time in?
I dont want to say that what they did/say to you was right or wrong, I have no idea at all really becuase I was not there. Maybe there was a misunderstanding, maybe they had a bad day, or I dunno what else might've gone wrong, but I refuse to believe that people who spent so much of their free time to contribute to the community are 'bad' people...
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Asmo
webmaster www.IRC-Junkie.org
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idani
Joined: 25 Jun 2006
Posts: 5
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Posted: Sun Jun 25, 2006 7:24 pm?? ?Post subject: Reply
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Asmo, i didnt say they are "bad" people.
I agree with your point, those things can be really annoying.
i kept using unreal and improved it, even released the source in sf.net
Its not like i think about it ever day, but its a shame they can "throw" someone since they hed a bad day.
I worked in costumer services, and i do have bad days somethings, but since Unreal is "alive" becouse of the people that use it, if someone like to help they dont need to tell him (in my view to "fuck off") or "goodbye"..
they put there hurt on this project (since i work as programmer i know)
those answers can get you really frustrated. good luck with the next unreal version
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codemastr
Joined: 27 Oct 2004
Posts: 23
Location: United States
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Posted: Wed Jun 28, 2006 5:37 am?? ?Post subject:
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After a while.. i wanted to help the communety and code something my self..since unreal is open-source
after spending more then 400 hours I ran into a bug that couses the IRCD to get a fatal error.. after rechecking the code I relized its an Unreal IRCD Core bug (version was Unreal 1.3.something)
I got connected to unreal server to get help and asked syzop\codemastr if they can point me out to the problem.. after answering all questions so i'll get a voice, they told me "you build it, we dont help you with it, good bye."
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Well to begin with, I'm assuming you mean Unreal 3.1, since there was never a 1.3. Also, let me just say, I have absolutely no recollection of you, so I'm not responding to your case specifically since I don't remember anything about it.
When you modify Unreal, you void your eligibility for support. That's the way we do things. We were never under any obligation to provide support for the project, the GPL license pretty much says, once you d/l it, our responsibilities end. However, we do try to provide support. Why? Because the users do indeed matter, despite what anyone may say. Once you make changes though, it becomes very difficult to prove your changes aren't the problem. The only way to prove it is to reproduce it on a copy of Unreal without your changes. And I assure you, if you had demonstrated it on a pure-Unreal, I would never tell you "it's your problem." This isn't some Unreal only thing. Even pay products do this. Go call up Microsoft for Windows XP support and tell them you're running a custom theme. They will immediately tell you that custom themes are not supported and it can void your support. Simply put, we're not responsible for your code.
We receive hundreds of bug reports, most of them are from people who make changes and then introduce bugs. We simply do not have the time to fix other people's code. You may be 100% right, the bug was in Unreal. But given the number of other reports we get, when we can't reproduce the problem, and user X tells us it happens all the time, and the only apparent difference between my system and user X's is he has code changes, it doesn't take a genius to realize the code changes are likely involved.
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| you didnt helped me (or the community) when I (they) were trying to help |
We have supported numerous developers throughout the years. I myself started out as an Unreal user. Stskeeps is probably one of the major mentors I had in learning C. He didn't know me at all, yet he took the time to help me when I was just some 15 year old kid who wanted to code. I've done the same with others, I could list about 7 or 8 people I've helped learn to program.
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| you made modules that costs money, you didnt really tryed to do anything usefull to help the new/older programmers. |
I have to take extreme offense here. You say this like somehow I'm not allowed to charge for my modules. Why shouldn't I make modules that cost money? Free software doesn't put food on my table, it doesn't put gas in my car, it doesn't put clothes on my back, all it does is serve the community (something you're claiming we don't do). Somewhere along the line, people got this idea that all software should be free. As a professional software developer, I can tell you, if all software was free, I would not be writing software. The reason Imade those modules was an attempt to keep unreal going strong. First of all, we have to pay to make Unreal. We have to pay domain registration fees, hosting fees (though most of our hosting has been graciously donated), developer tools (go look how much Microsoft Visual Studio .NET costs), Internet bills, etc. Why is it my job to foot the bill for all of that? In order to provide Unreal as a free program to everyone out there, I, personally, not counting anything any of the other team members have spent themselves, have spent about $4,000. You're trying to tell me that I'm under some obligation to just spend $4,000 so you can have a free program? The purpose of the modules was to help cover xpenses. Furthermore, the idea was, if I made enough from the modules, then I wouldn't need to get a full-time job and I could devote more time to Unreal. That didn't work out so well, and hence my recent lack of activity. I need to eat, and the only way that happens is when I have a job that pays me. No one is forced to buy those modules, and you'll also notice I and Syzop both made free modules as well. We also list free modules created by others on our website. We encourage everyone to make modules. But somehow implying that we MUST provide everything for free is ridiculous. Just like you have bills, we do too, and we have to pay them somehow.
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| I worked in costumer services |
Where I'm sure you were paid... again, you paid nothing for Unreal. You were paid to say "have a nice day," regardless of how much you really wanted to punch the idiot in the face. In many cases, the only reason CS reps don't tell someone off is because they don't want to lose their job, not out of some sense of moral decency.
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| dont ask people for help when you are 'down', if you dont help others when you are 'high'. |
No one is under any obligation to help out. If you don't want to, don't. It doesn't hurt us. We want to keep Unreal going to help the community. I don't run Unreal. If Unreal died, it really wouldn't hurt me much at all. We want to keep Unreal going because so many people rely on it. We want to make sure that people can continue to receive the reliable IRC server that they've counted on for several years now.
You claim that we do nothing for the community. I say, *everything* we did with Unreal was for the community. People don't necessarily know the history of Unreal, so allow me to enlighten you.
Unreal really started to become a project when there was a very popular IRCd called EliteIRCd. One day, the coder, Potvin, decided to start charging for EliteIRCd. Suddenly, you had the first shareware Linux IRCd. Stskeeps, the only Unreal coder at the time, hated this idea and released Unreal to the public with many of the features of EliteIRCd (older versions of Unreal were based on an older version of EliteIRCd) and many others. He vowed that Unreal is, and would always be, free - a promise we have kept to this day. Stskeeps did this out of a sense of obligation to the IRC community.
Within a year or so, Unreal became a smashing success, far exceeding expectations. Considering that when Unreal really gained in popularity, both of it's head coders (Stskeeps and myself) were only 16 years old, it was pretty amazing. In some sense, the shortness of our tempers was likely due to our unexpected fame in a sense. To this day, whenever I post on a forum or talk in an IRC channel with the name "codemastr" there is always at least one person who says "the codemastr from Unreal?" I've even had a couple dozen people recognize me on the street! That, plus the fact that we were 16, still immature kids, certainly added to the problem. But we pressed on. As
Unreal started to gain popularity, we decided to adopt a model that hadn't been tried yet in the world of IRC. Again, the IRC newbies (and I use this to mean people who've been on IRC less than 5 years) probably don't remember this. Back then, IRCds were made by networks, for networks. Dreamforge and later Bahamut was for DALnet, Hybrid for EFNet, ircu for Undernet, etc. There was no IRCd for everyone. Each IRCd pretty much accepted suggestions only from its own network. Unreal changed this. We decided to listen first, and foremost, to the users. Many of the features in Unreal didn't come as a result of our own imaginations, they came because users had great ideas; ideas that likely would have been ignored by other IRCd coders of the day. This model became wildly successful, as the sheer number of such "general" IRCds available today shows. But this wasn't enough even still. We wanted Unreal to be customizable.
Not only should we be able to add features, we thought, so should the user. We didn't want to just involve the user in the idea phase, we wanted him/her to be able to implement new ideas as well. Again, while modules may seem commonplace today, Unreal really was the first IRCd to implement a true module system designed for expansion (csircd had one, but it was designed more to be maintained by comstud, not to have additional modules written by others). This too proved successful. A large number of Unreal users began creating and releasing modules to the public. Suddenly, you could decide how Unreal worked on your network.
Unfortunately, as time went on, we got older. Bills were no longer the 16 year old wanting to go see a movie for $8 with some friends. They were now paying for a car, rent, etc. Spending 80+ hours a week (and for several years, that's about how much time I was putting into Unreal) just couldn't cut it anymore. We needed money. But, we wanted to keep that promise of never charging for Unreal. We began trying to push for donations. And it worked for a while. We have received somewhere around $3,000 in donations. That was certainly welcome, but with 3 main coders, $3,000 wasn't enough to pay the bills. Since we now had the module system, we decided that we'd sell some of our modules. The idea was, more complex things, which took more time, could be sold. Unreal would remain free, but at the same time we could make some money. Again, it worked OK. We did make some money, but hardly enough to live on. The next step was the Google ads. They helped too, we make about $30/month from them. But again, that's not enough for 3 people to live on. At this point, I personally decided I needed a job. As a result, I've had little time to work on Unreal. I hate that. Unreal is the reason I know how to program, and I like to work on it. I like the fact that any old guy can go download our free software and setup a server. Unfortunately, the reality of it is, Unreal doesn't pay the bills.
We're not in a "bad" state because we've given up, not because we let the community down, but because of the sad fact of open source software: maintaining software is hard when you give it away for free. All of the coders agree we want Unreal to press on. Many people rely on it and we don't want to let them down. I'm hoping to have some free time soon and I intend to try to work on Unreal again, but it's not enough to run such a large scale project with just a couple active coders. We need help!
You may think that Unreal has done nothing for the community. That's your opinion and that's fine. I argue that (and I hope I don't sound arrogant) Unreal changed IRC in a very significant way. It was written by a group of teenagers, and love it or hate it, we had an impact and we commanded respect. Many of the features you see in the big IRCds today started in Unreal. They may make jokes about Unreal being a kiddie IRCd in public, but behind the scenes, I've had many conversations with coders from numerous IRCds where we had great exchanges. Unreal made it so that everyone can run their own server with relative ease and with a robust feature set not common of free software. We did all of this in exchange for nothing at all. All we're asking for now is for those people out there who still love Unreal to pitch in and help out. You don't have to spend hundreds of hours working on Unreal, you don't even have to spend any time on it! Just let us know you want us to keep going. You can do this by reporting bugs, making suggestions, making donations, providing support to others, and yes, now by contributing code. I really wish I could spend more time on Unreal, but it's not likely that I'll ever be at the level of participation I once was. If you want Unreal to survive, you're going to need to help out. If you hate Unreal, well I guess this is your chance to help it die. Sit back and do nothing and it will make that possibility, unfortunately, more likely... I hope that Unreal never dies, but I think for that to be the case, we really do need your help.
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-- codemastr
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Bricker
Joined: 05 Jul 2006
Posts: 1
Location: Herndon VA, USA
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Posted: Wed Jul 05, 2006 12:41 am?? ?Post subject:
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Though I've never been able to submit bugfixes (i have submitted bugs) or code to Unreal, I have been a devoted end-user with this paticular IRCd since, well pretty much since Unreal is out. My first experience on IRC was on an UnrealIRCd user with some very nice people, and i loved the features of the IRCd. I have tried many other IRCd's and they just dont cut it, though I must say there has been one that I rather enjoy as of late, InspIRCd, but they can never compete with Unreal in my heart. 
Back to my point, though I've never been able to help that way, I am apart of the testers team and with the last two releases, I have come up with a great way to get the releases out very quickly, with only one mistake. (we missed a "?" bug but no big deal") I have also helped syzop personally with a few edits to wiki webpage and a part of documentation, and will continue to provide anything I can to Unreal. I may not be able to code, but I can write documents, submit fixes, and get Unreal releases out faster then ever before.
I've gone on to blab long enough, i will always support this project and all its contributers for how ever long I stay using this project. So I ask, as a normal user to others, just like syzop and codemastr did, Please help UnrealIRCd. It's a great project, and with your help, it will continue to be a great project.
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-Bricker-
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Soldier
Joined: 20 Jun 2006
Posts: 5
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Posted: Wed Jul 05, 2006 8:34 am?? ?Post subject:
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[quote="codemastr"]
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| We did all of this in exchange for nothing at all. All we're asking for now is for those people out there who still love Unreal to pitch in and help out. You don't have to spend hundreds of hours working on Unreal, you don't even have to spend any time on it! Just let us know you want us to keep going. You can do this by reporting bugs, making suggestions, making donations, providing support to others, and yes, now by contributing code. I really wish I could spend more time on Unreal, but it's not likely that I'll ever be at the level of participation I once was. If you want Unreal to survive, you're going to need to help out. If you hate Unreal, well I guess this is your chance to help it die. Sit back and do nothing and it will make that possibility, unfortunately, more likely... I hope that Unreal never dies, but I think for that to be the case, we really do need your help. |
Neutral Comment : Dun ever pull e plug manz & totally killed tis oredy dying IRC. IRC needed u guyzs to keep on surviving. Sorry... I can't help much cus Unreal is not my cup of tea. But maybe in the near future I can help out in sumthing else ... like donation. Ermm... toking bout donation.. it's reminds me that when e times comes, I can even push tis button ---> http://www.irc-junkie.org/donations.php
so that Asmo can have tis face  instead of this  ..... hehe 
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