MaidSafe Dev Update - January 18, 2018

They don’t need to employ any time traveler, just be realistic about what they wanted to release and the solutions they had in place to accomplish their goals when they came to the public arena.
Didn’t they know that they will need a kind of sharding for the network? and a kind of ledger or similar? Come on…Blank paper supports everything, right?

If they had said this, then they would have been transparent with everybody:

  • we gonna release an autonomous and decentralized network without blockchain but we need to R&D first some of the parts before will be functioning in the wild, therefore we gonna spend several years to finnish, stay tunned.

  • Instead of that we had this (2014): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FnOBlJlFpM&feature=fvwrel#t=25m19s
    Later on, the public statements have been always the same: The release is imminent (when really never was) and this is a shame, to put it mildly.

Now, to clean the mess and don’t repite the same mistakes of the past they decide to don’t give any timescales so they can work without that pressure over their shoulders. It’s ok! Now people who want to invest, develop, use the software don’t have any clue what is all this mess about. Socrates style: I know that I know nothing. Excelent public relations campaign! Bravo!

For this reason there are even community members working and helping actively in the development at this point as mav or tfa. Good point mate.

Then why you deny this can help? Your arguments are falling clearly into demagogy…

Same for you…

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This reminded me of what a business professor of mine at University of Chicago once said on entrepreneurship: launch with one product, one market, one geography to solve a tangible need with a clearly defined solution. While there can be exceptions to different parts of this equation, it’s rare to see successful launches that deviate too far from this model.

At any rate, with regards to timelines etc., one solution is to take the detailed (and presumably more aggressive) internal, calandered roadmap, add in lots of slack capacity (I.e., internally we think we can hit this milestone in a quarter, but we’ll call it 6 months in public), and publish that version of the timeline with a strong caveat that “in such unchartered terrain things can and likely change…”

This would satisfy the desire for more transparency while providing the opportunity to under-promise and over-deliver. On the whole, I don’t think people doubt how hardworking and passionate the Maidsafe team is; moreover, I think the team has increasingly taken steps to take us behind the curtain (e.g., routing and crust dev plan). Many people just want greater, tangible insight into the process the team has laid out for themselves to follow. I think it’s unrealistic to expect absolute perfection closer to and even post beta. I don’t think history has ever shown us an example of such flawless execution. However, I think what people desire is transparent navigation—where are we going, what’s the course, when should we expect to arrive, are we still on course, why did we deviate, how do we get back on track, and how does that impact our estimated time of arrival. As per usual, my two cents.

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My opinion is they know it will take at least 3-6 more years and disclosing this could make things worse

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It’s gonna take as much time as it does, right.

One thing that has me wondering though, what’s the point of not giving out timescales for the fear of disappointing someone and getting complaints when you end up disappointing people and getting complaints for not giving out timescales anyway? :smiley:

I mean, the latter, in the context of this story at least, seems less serious and severe, but still… If people want it, be honest, give it to them and deal with their bitching like you do with any obstacle on the way to your goal. It’s unavoidable. The hard core will stand by you anyway.

EDIT: It will be also pretty fucking (sorry) hard and dangerous to market this any further without giving out a realistic delivery date. I mean, can you imagine actually catching people’s eye, multiplying the number of users of this thread and then having them run into the wall of “we prefer not to say just when, because we don’t want you all disappointed and pissed off” --?

With this approach, let’s not market this just yet. Because the more people you attract, the more people might turn into your worst enemy overnight once they find themselves unsure whether the promised land is two or ten years away.

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Even if that is true, defining a roadmap of objectives and milestones without time scales will let people be the judge of that.

IMO, it is clear that more clarity needs to be presented for where we have been, where we are at and where we are going. There is a patient and loyal following of this project, but visibility would reallt help.

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I would imagine that once there is a realistic finish line on the horizon and not just a mirage, then they will post a detailed timeline. Perhaps it will cover 3 months, 6 months, or 2 years, but they won’t and shouldn’t until the goals are realistic ones. Something general like “we believe a healthy expectation is that we will reach beta within 1-2 years (or 6-12 months)”, for example, would be acceptable at the moment. Barring either of those cases, and beyond the claims to not want to nurture potentially false expectations, I just assume that they don’t know at the present moment.

That said, in a discussion that I am having elsewhere in the forum, it’s a good idea to put things in context and realize what is going on politically on a number of fronts with regard to secure and private data. A project like this might be better incubated without the fanfare that comes from a lot of unwarranted and unwanted attention before truly being necessary and desirable. While I think this project will provide massive positives and is potentially the most important project in the world at the moment (no bias at all), the potential for this project to disrupt the status quo and the incumbents is nothing to scoff at. They would be biting at the bit to destroy this development, co-opt it, or worse…

The Art of War is not a relique for intellectual discussion. It’s a manual for the world of men(and women). When the enemy is big, be small. When the enemy is loud, be silent.

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100% agree. A timeline showing past milestones (including brief descriptions of what they mean) would put future plans into perspective and give an idea of forward motion, even if the dates are necessarily a bit fuzzy.

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You don’t know what you don’t know.

How are they to know that a certain line of development will end up at a dead end. If they knew it then they would not have gone down that development path for that (sub)component.

Everyone wants a broad outline of the components still to do and we’ve been told that the roadmap is being worked on since the last one was alpha 2 specific.

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I think it’s cool that you describe pretty precisely what you would like to see =)

Let’s see what comes with the next version of the website - you might get satisfied already there :blush:

Exactly what maidsafe is doing =) they create a data and communications platform working in a (high level) simple structure that enables scaling and provides security and censorship resistance by design :slight_smile:
They are not trying to make the next Facebook/snapchat/uber or target to conquer the world - they are just enabling it and creating the foundation on which true decentralization can flourish

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This line of argument is for the most part irrelevant. I personally have never worked on a project that has not had multiple dead ends or improbable solutions. @neo line of argument is focused on Problem Solving. Where, problem solving can only happen AFTER you have a Problem Statement. Problem Statements are usually turned into User Needs/Requirements From there you can define problem solving solutions.

Again basic project management/ structure. I have to believe if the project is as active as it is, that all the requested info is created, but not shared for some reason.

Perhaps this is the nutshell:

3-6 more years is an infinite amount of time to wait with the current transparency level.

SolarDude

That 3-6 years is completely ridiculous - if you followed the project along for a while you’ve seen great progress and great changes

All my initial doubts (e.g. How will this launcher thing work with mobile…? No clue because I have never programmed anything for a phone/tablet… ) are resolved by now and the path maidsafe has chosen looks ideal to me from any angle I can think of…

Of course that’s only my very private opinion but I think the most difficult part is done now - the hardest part is still to come after release of the first network (the 80% of work to ‘making it perfect’) but there is no need to rush too fast with the other 80 % - those can be done mainly through external engagement and be implemented while the network is live (once we have the ability for live upgrades ; )

So yes - there are still some points not 100 percent defined for now but I assume we’ll just suddenly be online at some point :blush:

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Problem recognised by the development team

Oh can you tell me why non development members (the public in other words) should be privy to the inhouse project management documents. I have not availed myself the knowledge if other such “crypto” projects do this for the public. I know from (public&private) civil and engineering works that the internal project management documents are not made readily available to the public. Only highly sanistised overviews are released.

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3-6 years…I hope you are wrong.

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Most Crypto projects live or die within 1yr. And, crypto’s are not private/public companies “yet” Governments are quickly tiring of that though. All these unaccounted for funds. I am waiting for the governments to start kicking in doors on all these crypto developers for tax evasion. (Whoops tread drift)

That is a inaccurate statement. You will find that every public project is overly defined in all respects. Example: Whoville needs a bridge. User Requirement = Bridge to cross river
Performance Specification = Must be able to drive large truck on bridge
Acceptance criteria = Bridge does not collapse when large truck is driven over river.

In any case even a highly sanitized overview would be ok if there was a metric to measure progress within scope. That would be a very good start.

To answer your question: Why should Maidsafe publish User Requirements > Performance Specifications > Acceptance Criteria > Road Map?

Maidsafe/ @dirvine has made an incredible display of fortitude by continuing to exist and even grow the team for an extended amount of time. However, all good things come to an end. Maidsafe cannot continue indefinitely without revenue generation. I don’t know what the Burn Rate is but, I can tell you it is substantial and growing. It is not likely that Maidsafe has infinite funding, that said funding always comes with accountability and restrictions. Funding also always comes with some exchange of ownership and control. My direct concern is that this project has great potential, with that comes great responsibility. The longer this project drags out, the more certain it will fail or be overtaken. With precise direction directly from a User Requirements document, everyone including internal employees will know if the project is going astray and increasing the potential of intervention, or failure. Maidsafe is doing a poor job of leveraging the interested parties by ignoring the direct requests for information. In addition not leveraging the free or discounted resources available by not directly addressing concerns as many have stated. Most everyone here is a Stakeholder to some degree as well.

SolarDude

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Although Maidsafe is a company and files its duly required tax returns and company’s documents as required by UK Law. You can do the searches on government websites and find them. So all above board there.

Ummm if you read what I actually said it is correct. Inhouse Project management management documents are not what you described. You changed what I said and then argued that. Thats fine if you want to comment on what you did, but don’t misquote me so you can argue with me.

I think you are confused, as your statement describes “in-house” I am not asking for in-house granular documentation. Are you proposing the status quo is sufficient? In your analysis what is the status of this project? Please use facts to drive your analysis. Please show outline of what the scope is of the project, and then to make it simple show level of completion defined by a start and end criteria. Please stick to objective measures.

If you can provide that you will have provided information not currently available.

SolarDude

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Again - you are comparing apples and oranges, Maidsafe uses crypto as a tool, but Maidsafe is a private company.

Crypto’s are inherently unaccountable, there is no entity.

SolarDude

“A delayed game is eventually good, a bad game is bad forever.”

― Shigeru Miyamoto

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I partially agree to this. I would say that I am not sure that the target customer/user has been clearly defined and narrowed down to “one market,” and I don’t think the launch is specific to “one geography.” I’m not saying that the model needs to be entirely adhered to in Maidsafe’s case. For example, it doesn’t make the most sense to only launch in one geography at first given the nature of the product. That being said, I think it does make sense to have a cogent plan that is customized for launches in different geographies. I also think (looking in from the outside, mind you) more could be done in hammering out customer segmentation and targeting.

Generally speaking, when an organization is secretive, I tend to believe it’s because they are hiding poor performance or unethical behavior. In Maidsafe’s case, I don’t believe either is the situation at hand (and, boy do I pray that I am not kicking myself for saying this 3-6 years from now…). I think the fact that they are so aggressively shifting their focus towards marketing and front-end development does signal that they believe they are nearing a tangible launch within a short time frame. Otherwise all of these overhead-heavy investments would be a marker of terrible business judgement. Once again, (I’d like to believe) that is not the case with this team.

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And again you are misquoting to argue.

I was simply responding to you talking about tax man coming after projects and thought I’d let you know that Maidsafe (developers) already pay their taxes. And was a response to your comment


And nothing to argue with here, but also nothing to do with what you quoted from me.

Oh well.