Publicly expressing my concern about the hard-coded hard fork to 2.0

[fav]

market the GUI as early beta / alpha and make it visible. and implement a feedback function asap.

as for the launch,

I only really care about

* Stable Network
* Referral Program

Affiliate Program will not be ready for the launch...

[wackou]

Please note that I do want to have it released as soon as possible, and I know the devs are doing everything humanly possible in order to achieve that. But I'd rather be on the "too cautious" side of things rather than "too optimistic".

Also, I think that my opinions (amongst others) have been clearly stated here, so I will stop posting in this thread, in the end it's Cryptonomex's decision and responsibility when to release and endlessly arguing will not change their mind. I do already have my fingers crossed, though, so that everything goes fine next week, and would be praying too if I believed it could make a difference...

[Pheonike]

At least make the wallet upgrade flawless. A new/ old user should not need CLI commands to upgrade to 2.0 . its already confusing enough with knowing the differences between wallets, keys and accounts.

[monsterer]

Can we please distinguish the UI from the Backend (blockchain)

The reason that the GUI doesn't fit everyone's needs is not good enough to not release the backend in time ..
We could run the blockchain .. let exchanges integrate with it and tag the UI "experimental" .. and we can do this by next week .. that's more than people around ethereum have running!

I am referring to the blockchain.

[wackou]

It's already released, it's called testnet. Beta is far different than alpha.

Can we please distinguish the UI from the Backend (blockchain)

The reason that the GUI doesn't fit everyone's needs is not good enough to not release the backend in time ..

I want to agree with you, but I can't. End users will not (and should not) care what is the root cause of the crashes that they will see. They will only care that it crashed, and that BitShares sucks... (note that I'm not talking about missing features but about stability here) And nobody is going to run the CLI client, everyone will be on the GUI client.

And even if we care only about the backend, then judging by the latest testnet thread and the github issues there are still some fundamental issues to be fixed. Just an example:

bitshares-argentina  can you please let me know if you have changed your software in any way because it appears your node is consistently producing blocks even though you are not in the set of active witnesses.

That doesn't inspire a lot of confidence that it will be industrial-strength in less than a week...

We could run the blockchain .. let exchanges integrate with it and tag the UI "experimental" .. and we can do this by next week ..

that's ok for a first release, not so much for a 2.0 release....

that's more than people around ethereum have running!

We should stop comparing ourselves to ethereum but rather to our former selves (BitShares 0.9.x). What if BitShares 2.0 is released and it's better than Ethereum, but worse than BitShares 0.9. Will this be a success or a failure?

[fav]

market the GUI as early beta / alpha and make it visible. and implement a feedback function asap.

as for the launch,

I only really care about

* Stable Network
* Referral Program

[jakub]

It's already released, it's called testnet. Beta is far different than alpha.

Can we please distinguish the UI from the Backend (blockchain)

The reason that the GUI doesn't fit everyone's needs is not good enough to not release the backend in time ..
We could run the blockchain .. let exchanges integrate with it and tag the UI "experimental" .. and we can do this by next week .. that's more than people around ethereum have running!

That would be the best way to handle it.
The GUI is not ready and it's easy for everyone to see - as of now it does not offer a full replacement of the previous GUI and even if the devs can somehow manage to finish it this week, it will not be thoroughly tested.

UX was meant to be our priority in 2.0 but the GUI has not been tested in a way that even remotely resembles the accuracy of the blockchain's tests.
 
As for the 2.0 blockchain itself, BM is in the best position to make that judgement so if he says we are good I'd trust him.

Therefore it's a good idea to release the blockchain on Oct 13th but give the GUI a couple of days to settle before announcing it publicly.

Apart from the UX aspect, the GUI is important as it handles the user's private keys.
If it does something stupid or unintended by the user (e.g. placing an order with a wrong price) it will hurt us badly.

[xeroc]

It's already released, it's called testnet. Beta is far different than alpha.

Can we please distinguish the UI from the Backend (blockchain)

The reason that the GUI doesn't fit everyone's needs is not good enough to not release the backend in time ..
We could run the blockchain .. let exchanges integrate with it and tag the UI "experimental" .. and we can do this by next week .. that's more than people around ethereum have running!

[monsterer]

then why not communicate this ? We could also publish as an alpha/beta version .. don't we ?
google mail was over 2 year in beta modus AFAIK

It's already released, it's called testnet. Beta is far different than alpha.

[cass]

as bytemaster said:  If we wait to release it when no "bugs" are present, we will never release it!
Time will not stop at 13 October, we will make more updates after this date, nothing wrong with that!

There is a HUGE gap between 'perfect' and 'alpha' quality - right now we have an 'alpha' quality product, which may not be fit for purpose.

then why not communicate this ? We could also publish as an alpha/beta version .. don't we ?
google mail was over 2 year in beta modus AFAIK

[wackou]

as bytemaster said:  If we wait to release it when no "bugs" are present, we will never release it!
Time will not stop at 13 October, we will make more updates after this date, nothing wrong with that!

There is a HUGE gap between 'perfect' and 'alpha' quality - right now we have an 'alpha' quality product, which may not be fit for purpose.

can't agree more. If there are some bugs (crashes, UI problems, etc...) we, the already existing BitShares community, won't mind that much (I know I won't), but people from the outside, to whom we've told that 2.0 is going to be better in all aspects than 0.9.x, more stable, better UI, etc. will probably think that we're a bunch of incompetent, under-delivering guys when they see that their wallet crashes not even 1 day after installing it. As discussed at length in other threads, it's all about perception, and I'm really worried that 1 week is not enough to fix everything left that's required to give you that "wow!" effect that we promised.

There are a *lot* of people watching for the 2.0 release, and I think "better safe than sorry" should be a guiding principle as to when to do the release. And we should talk about it now, because if current delegates have to downgrade to 0.9.2 (or upgrade to 0.9.4 that removes the hard-fork with stopped block production after the deadline), then we should be preparing for that already.

[monsterer]

as bytemaster said:  If we wait to release it when no "bugs" are present, we will never release it!
Time will not stop at 13 October, we will make more updates after this date, nothing wrong with that!

There is a HUGE gap between 'perfect' and 'alpha' quality - right now we have an 'alpha' quality product, which may not be fit for purpose.

[liondani]

as bytemaster said:  If we wait to release it when no "bugs" are present, we will never release it!
Time will not stop at 13 October, we will make more updates after this date, nothing wrong with that!

[jakub]

It would hurt bts much more if we delayed... The product needs to be released in the 13th

Apart from the known issues there are important aspects that have never been tested outside CNX, e.g. the referral program, going through the full cycle of collateral positions, market charts.
It's quite certain that there will be bugs popping up so it's just a matter of guessing how critical these bugs will be.

For me the main point of BTS 2.0 is to prove that we've learned our lessons. And one of the main lessons was about bad UX hurting us a lot.
And now we are going to release a GUI that looks and feels great but has never been fully tested in all major aspects. That's a lesson we did not learn.

[lil_jay890]

It would hurt bts much more if we delayed... The product needs to be released in the 13th