Guys,
im one of the members of eC Dev Team. But im very frustrated because eC development is near death. I joined the team march 2007 to expand, fix and enhance the brand new eC4. Our plan was to release the new program near to October/November 2007. We reached amazing milestones: reduced the number of bugs to a 1/5, reduced the code size to 2/3 and optimized brutally all aspects. Ok, it took a bit longer than the planned.
Its important to say that eC Dev Team is quite a small team and since we started to work on eC4, eC3.4 basically deprecated: no more fixes and features. You dont know how confusing and hard is to maintain both codes.
But eC4 already is here. Well... sort of. Despite the code is ready for a broader range testing phase (aka Beta or even Release Candidate), Gordon refuses to tag it as so. Results: people still uses eC3.4 and still report the same bugs that we already fixed on eC4. The issues list more than triple since 19 jan.
19 Jan is a important date for me because i basically stopped all my job on eC4 to dedicate more to my own project. Its a eC site (which uses Drupal6), but it also needed a lot of non-eC programming. Now that a good part of all non-eC is there, i need to implement my old buddy eC4. There is a problem, however: i use D6. Gordon's plan is to only start the D6 port when the eC4D5 is RC or something. Im trapped.
So im publicly asking Gordon (since ive already did in private) to release eC4 to Beta or RC or even Final. People are all stopping to use eC because it lacks development and moving to Ubercart (im my opinion, not as good as). I see no reason to build a software that nobody uses or forcing people using a deprecated program. At least start the D6 branch, so i can start all the porting work. We can add new features on 4.1, 4.2 so on and people will start to use the best eC suite for Drupal today.
best regards,
massa
Comments
Honestly I'm considering
Honestly I'm considering moving to Ubercart myself because quite frankly the support for eC stinks. I've tried asking questions on Drupal.Org forums, here, and even PM'd Gordon a question before and I never get any results. What's the point of using an open source CMS if there isn't an active community presence?
The prospect of another
The prospect of another version of eC for Drupal 6 sounds exciting but back in the real world, many people are still on Drupal 5.x & eC 3.4. I'm just not enough of a developer to use any software marked as unstable or alpha (eC4 for 5.x) on a live store.
Managing an eC 3.4 site has become a headache, since there are a lot of known bugs that crop up, and need patching, but are not going to be committed until eC4 is released.
I considered Ubercart when I was setting up a store, and the development looks like it's better than eC because patches actually get fixed, but at the time it was early alpha and not ready enough for me.
What are non developers meant to do, use the cutting edge releases and hope all is well? Is eC even meant to be a solution for non developers? It feels like it isn't with eC 3.4.
I can see you need a D6 version of eC4 Massa, but won't that split the teams efforts further? It seems like a guaranteed way to set eC4 (for 5.x) to get abandoned just like eC 3.4 has been.
I'd just like eC4 to be stable at the moment, Drupal 6 is still a fair way off in the distance as an option for my current eC site.
Drew
e-Commerce is not dead, just in hibernation
Hi,
Yes I know movement has been slow, (Wait I see a glacier passing it) and I want to respond to this properly.
But for all concerned, we are not far off the first beta. I just need to complete the the ec_queue module which will solve a lot of problems and then I will release a beta.
When I get sometime to properly explain it all I will post about it, or I will do another podcast.
--
Gordon Heydon
Lead Drupal Developer - Lonely Planet
--
Gordon Heydon
Szeged session
Hi Gordon,
Is there a chance of seeing you in Szeged. I know it's far for you, but... I've suggested a session about EC development, with the goal to help more people involved in EC coding, and it would be great if you were there, or if you sent something that could be presented there.
stick with it guys..
Hi Massa/Gordon,
Like Krythis, I too was thinking of starting to use ubercart...that is..until I tried it. Don't get me wrong, it's quite good but I think it would be a disaster for drupal if the only ecommerce option was ubercart.
Stick with it guys and have patience. I think I'm not alone in saying that if everyone knew the status and what's going on with version 4, instead of a brief update post now and again..it would make a huge difference.
In the same breath, I think I'm not alone in saying that I don't mind waiting for ecommerce 4 if it needs more work to get it right. Knowing that it's relatively close to a new beta is great news.
cheers
phil
Ubercart not a Fork
Just for the record:
Ubercart is not a fork of the E-Commerce modules. The vast majority of the code in Ubercart is written by Ryan and Lyle from scratch. I am sure we have copied some snippets of code from E-Commerce (that is what open source is all about) but I would guess that less then 1% of the code is shared.
I'm confident E-Commerce development will continue. Gordon, keep up the good work!
Peace,
Andy
After today's talks with the
After today's talks with the ubercart team, I'm working my way back to ecommerce.
I swollowed the uber-pill last year, since it looked so shiny and useful. Its quite nice actually, but there are some severe flaws, including political ones from those developing it.
http://pastebin.com/f3f951a57 --> IRC convo with ubercart devs with chx
So I hope to see a new found excitement in the ecommerce module. As soon as my immediate ubercart projects wrapup, I plan on getting into ecommerce once again.
Are you serious?
You are dropping your use of ubercart because Ryan made the mistake of pissing of Chx with a PM_Lite module?
Seems pretty petty, espescially considering the conciliatory tone of Ryan's responses.
So you/people are mad that Ryan and co. made ubercart instead of killing themselves trying to fix a monster of a module? Get over it. Ubercart just works better than e-commerce (I don't see any DEATH posts for it, for example, nor are there massively growing lists of un-addressed bugs). What's next- should Image Module become the only image solution because it was the first? Should video module... You get the point.
Use the better module, i.e. the one that works. In this case that module is Ubercart, despite how many times Ryan pisses off chx or litwol.
Alex Urevick-Ackelsberg
ZivTech: Illuminating Technology
Alex Urevick-Ackelsberg
ZivTech: Illuminating Technology
No there are MANY other
The debate about PM_Lite is not petty... it shows that they don't do research on modules, are too lazy to figure out what a module does and doesn't do, and in the case of ubercart, decide to fork ecommerce instead of help this community. That is not petty. Ubercart's initial design was based on ecommerce... why didn't they just join this community and start submitting code?
Is ubercart functionally better? perhaps for now. Does it have the same fundamental design flaws that ec_v3 had, yup. I'm not saying th ubercart is bad in of itself. In fact, many of the UI and functionality traits of ubercart should be brought into ecommerce.
It'd be nice to see UC come back to EC fold, we'll see
Negative turn
I do not like the way this thread is going.
There has been some turmoil concerning e-Commerce and Ubercart recently and interoperability, and for some reason this has made it way into the groups and other areas.
I have in the past had plenty of problems with certain people within uc causing problems in the ec community and I have never said anything, and thankfully the offending party has stopped.
I never said anything as I did not want to cause this kind of thing that is happening now. I believe that both projects have their place, and as the lead for e-Commerce development I have always tried to have e-Commerce be as good a member of the Drupal community and this kind of bickering do not server anyone.
I would love to go on further as to all the other issues surrounding this event but that is not in the best interest of the community.
This should be the last on this topic, as I will remove any new threads and delete any comments.
--
Gordon Heydon
Lead Drupal Developer - Lonely Planet
--
Gordon Heydon
I am just a webmaster, not a coder
but I can tell you I am losing confidence in the whole of Drupal. I am sure Drupal is filled with brilliant coding concepts, but here at the working floor Drupal-life remains miserable. It is one and a half month ago since Gordon said he would release the beta soon and there is still nothing. Meanwhile the struggle to keep EC 3.4 going and all those other crappy functioning modules just goes on. I really wonder wheter there will ever be a Drupal 8 and personally I am looking for a commercial equivalent of Drupal. No idea if it exists, but I can not work this way. What an enormous waste of time. Grand visions are no replacement for usability.
bit neg....
yikes, that sounds a bit negative.
The trouble is, drupal is what it is, and nothing more. A framework - an opensource and free one at that. It allows us to build sites with rich functionality without having to reinvent the wheel every time. Sure it has it's drawbacks, and annoyances, but I'm not ready to give up on it yet.
Negative
Well, call it negative, the people I work for want webshops and they react quite funny when I tell them that the main programmer has gone into hibernation.
He may be in a divorce, struck by disease or have other very legitimate reasons for stopping this work. But whatever you call it - 'Drupal is what it is' - there are many people dependent upon his work and whether you are operating as a diehard capitalist or as an open source hippie, if you let these thousands (?) of people drop dead on the spot because you prefer to hibernate....then you still have every right to do that but you are destroying the faith people had in you. And that will ultimately be fatal.
No I do not give up, I simply can't tell the people I work for that the past year and a half were for a large part wasted, and that despite all the work they will probably not get the functionality they and I are looking for. Today I was trying to get the Premium module to work. very useful thing that can be, but it doesnt work, it isnt updated and that is just one of many examples. And even if there were an alternative I couldnt afford to spent time on the migration.
I still do not understand why those module makers do not charge 10 or 25 dollars for every succesfull install of their module. I think quality would increase tremendously. But this is just another example of the tragedy of the commons. We apparently never learn.
Have you tried Ubercart?
I know that eCommerce has it's adherents, but Ubercart is an absolute joy to work with. You still don't have to pay, but someone did and is still paying for its development, which does make a big difference (imo). Try installing and configuring it and see if you still think life is so hard with Drupal.
And please don't make broad claims against Drupal because of a contrib module that has long been a sore spot w/in the community.
Alex Urevick-Ackelsberg
ZivTech: Illuminating Technology
Alex Urevick-Ackelsberg
ZivTech: Illuminating Technology
version 6
I reckon that the first ecomm module to be released for drupal 6 will be the one I'll use from now on. I kind of hope it's ubercart. I just hope that someone manages to find the time to make the necessary port to 6 soon, cos I need a shop !
Ubercart has a Dev version for 6
It's only 4 days old, but check it out:
http://drupal.org/node/280820
Alex Urevick-Ackelsberg
ZivTech: Illuminating Technology
Alex Urevick-Ackelsberg
ZivTech: Illuminating Technology
Yeah exactly the point.
Yeah exactly the point. I have used eC3 for nearly a year but I'm planning to move to ubercart for all ecommerce projects now since eC is not quite active.
Re A switch to Ubercart:
I sponsored an EC-module to connect to the Dutch payment gateway iDEAL. Ubercart has that only in the development/planning stage afaik. My gateway works allright but I cannot get the EC-UserAccount module to work and there is no support at all. So I am basically a prisoner of a bad module. Besides that I have invested so much time in EC that the people I work for will not allow a switch, they'd rather quit.
And regarding my broad claims about Drupal. I am not a coder, but I am certainly not a newbie. I have some very good experiences with individual modules and individual supporters, but on the whole I think the balance is not positive. I have setup 4 sites so far. Setting it up without contributed modules is very easy and reliable. The contributed modules are a jungle however. And there are too many module that promise and do not deliver or deliver only under circumstances that you will never know. Finding that out is so awfully time consuming.
I understand...
I'm really sorry to hear about your experiences, and to hear that a single module has turned you off to the project as a whole, but that does speak to just how important e-Commerce solutions are for the health of the overall Drupal project. I'm sorry that you went so far down the EC path and now find yourself stuck, and I wish there was something I could do to help you out, but even the other developers on the project don't seem to be able to do much about it.
Your frustrations with navigating the often choppy waters of contributed modules are shared, I am sure, by many, and it's an issue that is on the radar screen of the entire community. I know it's little consolation, but your concerns are not going unheard nor unaddressed. ATM drupalmodules.com provides some of the review functionality that would be a necessary part of a better contrib module section on d.o. and hopefully we'll have a better module section at d.o. itself soon!
Anyway, if you or your boss decide to switch to Ubercart I'm sure you'll find their team's support to be both timely and excellent.
Alex Urevick-Ackelsberg
ZivTech: Illuminating Technology
Alex Urevick-Ackelsberg
ZivTech: Illuminating Technology
BRMASSA: when I complain
about Drupal I always hear: why not do it yourself? My answer is: I can't code, but sometimes I am able to sponsor something. I cannot judge this, but if Gordon fails as a lead programmer, is there a possibility to get him replaced? Or to continue on your own?