My opinion on Denora IRC Stats(Thales so called Successor)

]Daniel · Idler Joined: 05 Jan 2006 Posts: 316 Location: Boise, ID

So ive tried NeoStats, Thales, Exile, and now Denora. I read the site expecting it to be 95% compatible with the ircd I use, apparently it wont even get past the burst. When I asked for support I get nothing but attitude from Trystan(which my "own opinion" is the worst coder out there). I did get upset cause all I got was "submit a bug report" over and over. IF he cant even get past the burst stuff of compatibility he shouldnt even advertise the ircd on his website. Now I know Trystan is going to get all defensive and say I did all this and that, and to save him the trouble, yes I got upset and told them why they cant ever code anything right. I may not be a coder, but Im technically an "End User" like everyone else who uses other programs. You don't get paid for this, that's still not an excuse, don't advertise a product thats unusable, something I learned at this new job. I spend 8 hours a day at work as a Testing Engineer, writing over 50-100 bug reports every few hours on a good day. Last thing I wanna do is write a bug report cause a coder can't even do his stuff right. Again this is my own opinion. If anyone has gotten this software to work, please share with me and maybe you can point me to where I went wrong. If you use Unreal, Come on, Unreal is supported by everything. Im talking about the REAL ird's, like hybrid, ircu, etc.

Thanks for listening to my rant. Point is, if you don't have the right knowledge, resources, team, then JUST DON'T DO IT AT ALL. Its better to not release something then a so called "Stable" release that doesn't work.

Daniel

PingBad · Guru Joined: 05 Feb 2005 Posts: 1982 Location: New Zealand

Being a programmer myself, I find this rather disheartening. Trystan has poured hours of his life into the Denora project. Stable, in my mind, implies that the product won't suffer random crashes and bugs in a "common operating environment", not that the product is compatible with every combination of "supplementary products". Perhaps Trystan hasn't tested Denora with the IRCd in question?

To quote from the Denora site itself:

GeniusDex · Lurker Joined: 16 Aug 2003 Posts: 150

Trystan is a great coder, before he started on Denora he has been helping us out a lot with Anope, and his code quality is good.

As for the poor support, you can't actively check if all the IRCd's you support still function well. If one is broken, even we (Anope) hear it from users most of the time, and we support less IRCd's than Denora.

Open source software is a community effort, not only from developers, but also from the end users. They have to provide bug reports and need to be willing to help fixing it. Instead of seeking needless attention over here, why didn't you open a bug report so he could look into it, and fix the issues? IRCd's change, and it's close to impossible to monitor all changes which might affect software connecting to them...

Rob_ · Idler Joined: 13 Dec 2003 Posts: 309

This link is particually good and worth a read, altho im sure most people wont bother: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

On a side note, what more do people expect? he asked you to raise a bug report, which implies he will spend time looking at it in the future.

Speaking from a developers point of view, if i was busy, and a user had a problem with some software, which i couldnt address right away / didnt want to address right away / didnt think is important enough to address right away - then asking them to raise a bug report is the most sensible course of action.

Alot of project's insist on a bug report being raised before anyone looks at a problem, as the bug report provides a nice audit trail of who had what problem, who looked at it, what the fix was, this can often be very helpful to other people etc....

I personally would find a user who is too lazy to fill a bug report in, but

a) expects an answer then and there
b) would take the time to post on a un-related and public forum about the fact there too lazy to fill in a bug report

well, ammusing :).

--

What is it with people and expecting "immediate" answers these days? while i realise this is nothing new, recently another user joined our support channel and bascaily said "help me, right now, or i'll ddos you" - is this the kind of people out there these days?

chaz · Idler Joined: 15 Jun 2005 Posts: 279 Location: IRC

I also must defend Trystan (Thats 3 Anope Members now).

He's been nothing but exceptional whenever I've asked him a question. I can appreciate its disheartening if your IRCd isn't properly supported by Denora but surely opening a bug report makes sense so it gets handled?

marc · Posted: Jun 23, 2006 7:09am Post subject:

ok ok ok, enough is enough.

while i wasted time reading (most...part...ok a bit) of this thread, i had a thought..well, no not really.

I just got home from work, and reading all this crap on the board is becoming slightly more than just it's usual irritating side.

daniel - if you have a problem with the developer, talk _calmly_ to him about it, follow his instructions and wait patiently. while I am on your network, and I did see the problems that you were suffering, why don't you read the site where it says "95%" again... that's how far through your ircd they have gotton / doing the testing / whatever it is they do.

anope coders - while you guys do a bang up job of your services, of which i don't personally use anymore... i still appreciate the job you guys have done, and the effort you guys have put into your project... but maybe instead of speaking for the "accused" (so to speak), get back on the fence and watch...it may be interesting.

There are a few things in different services/ircds that I find pointless (eg: oper override in a few ircd packages... eg: so many damn ways to ban someone... eg: so many bots that do different things)... but some people like these.

While I have had my turn in slagging off a few ircds, everyone must remember that...

"They" is in reference to the developers.
"You" "Your" is in reference to the end user.

A) They don't only write their services for your use, but probably their own too.

B) They spend hours per week developing these services for everybody, and while disgruntled people can't get them to work.. how much do you pay to use their package?

If you go into a car dealership and complain about the engine dieing before the warranty's up, do you think that yelling and abusing them to no end will serve your purpose?
-- I'm sure they'll have some paperwork for you to fill out too.

trystan · Eleet Joined: 15 Jun 2005 Posts: 756 Location: SLC Utah

Thought everyone would love to see what help he really got last night and the many messages Denora has about ircd that are not 100% supported yet

Hal9000 · none Joined: 23 Jun 2006 Posts: 4

I think I must say a few words as well.
As coder of phpDenora I am constantly following Denora's development and helping out with bug reports and support when needed.

Denora supports so many ircds I can't even count to. You cannot expect the developer to test each ircd and each platform for each SVN revision. It can happen that something breaks in newer revisions, and as some ircds are not widelly used, it takes time before users report problems.
It can also happen that changes to the ircds (newer versions) cause problems.

Trystan, as most people active in open source, also has a real life and other stuff to do. You can't expect him to fix Denora immediatelly. You must provide him with a USEFUL bug report.

95% is not 100%, and SVN is not stable, and Open Source is not 24/7 emergency support.

To my knowledge Denora works well with a number of other irdcs. If it doesnt work in your case with Nefarious (I remember you from #denora) it means that there is either a problem on your side or a bug with denora. If it really is a bug, then you are the first to have noticed. So instead of complaining and insulting why don't you try to help out.

w00t

katsklaw · Guru Joined: 28 Jun 2004 Posts: 1029

ok I'll chime in.

Possible reasons Unreal is supported more;

Total servers:

Unreal - 3378
Nefarious - 82

Secondly, no one is holding a gun to your head and forcing anyone to use it.

Third, since Denora is Open Source, if you don't like how it works, code it your damned self!!

ciao.

]Daniel · Idler Joined: 05 Jan 2006 Posts: 316 Location: Boise, ID

Trystan, Im glad you did what any other person defending themself would do, NOT paste the entire thing, 2nd of all Nefarious does NOT show that "developmental" message, as far as I read, here, let me try it right now.
su-2.05b$ ./denorarc start
Starting Denora
su-2.05b$
Well, nothing there...
The compatibility page shows 95%, but wow, it wont even link. Stable should be considered that the program even loads, Ive tried Denora on multiple ircd's and never have been able to get it to work. That was about 6 months ago. So I try again thinking he maybe did "something" to fix protocol support. I mean, 95%, if it isnt compatible to even link with the ircd, lower than down to a mear 25% at least, maybe it has the other stuff right, but if it cant connect to the ircd without crashing, thats poor support for it. I honestly didn't want to bother with your bug reports crap cause last time I tried to submit a bug report, big bad Trystan who knows it all decided that my bug report wasn't good enough and made some nasty comments towards it and more crap like that. So ya, I have kind of a grudge again Trystan cause of his horrible attitude he holds, but I liked Thales, and Denora has a promising feature list. All I wish is that it actually worked. Im so happy people turned this into something its not. Im just sick of ALL the programs coming out, and maybe only 25% of them even work. If people don't have time for this stuff, then maybe they shouldn't be doing this at all. What happened to QA?

katsklaw · Guru Joined: 28 Jun 2004 Posts: 1029

Denora has always worked flawlessly for me ... on any ircd I've tried and I'm just user .. not any form of engineer.

Trystan works or has worked on numerous successful IRC related projects .. all seem popular and work for countless users.

I meant what I said, you seem to think that other coders are clueless or don't live up to your expectations. Instead of wasting time complaining about it .. do something about it and provide the community with your skills.

mouselike · Lurker Joined: 09 Dec 2003 Posts: 240

]Daniel · Idler Joined: 05 Jan 2006 Posts: 316 Location: Boise, ID

Ive tried it on like 4 different machines, I already found out Denora doesn't work on slow machines, he even told me so on that one, My box is a 2.6ghz Pentium 4 Dual. I got 1GB of ram, Tell me if thats not enough. Even the debug shows that its a problem with the way its sending the server commands. Here, instead of taking this fight any longer, Ill do what you guys want me to do...ill run it, find the problem, and submit a bug report? Im sorry it dragged on like this, but Ill let you guys win this... You'll see one soon...

Sorry Trystan
Sorry Guys

Hopefully something better comes out of this all.

FuRiOuS · Lurker Joined: 01 Feb 2006 Posts: 244

Would it have really been such a pain in the ass to just submit a bug report to start with? I doubt it, you have spent more time on here bitching and moaning about how upset and sucky the software is! This is ridiculous, perhaps you would like to donate to Trystan a large amount of money to fund the project, so he can afford to take time off of work and just work on your issues. I'm sure if you do that, he would be willing to bump the priority of your little issues up a few notches. However, the anger management issue you still have needs help from someone else.