General support topic for Aeva Media (Latest release: July 28, 2010)

[calvinhobbes]

lol it's amazing how ppl here degrade other cms's/forums like joomla/vB etc....joomla sucks , vb sucks lol ....well maybe they do i don understand much about frameworks or am not too deep into programming...but it's not hard to see joomla and vB everywhere on the web...

sad to see no official bridge for smf to joomla ....due to some licensing problems..otherwise that would be great way to go...i would use SMF for what it is a good forum and wont have to worry about modules for smf ...as the rest of the website would be powered by joomla..which and its modules are very well supported.

i usually talk more from the side of marketability ...not from the side of programming or which forum is the best etc...SMF might be great..but without marketability...there wont be many ppl using it and which will lead to its demise.

[Arantor]

Joomla is very good for what it does, however you seem to assume that everyone has the same requirements as your site.

I can tell you now, hand on heart, that Joomla - official bridge or not - wouldn't really help my primary site in the slightest.

[Rowdy]

I didn't say Nao was evil because of some particular incident. I didn't even read the latest conflicts I successfully predicted. He is evil because he believes he has the right to dictate how other people live their life, how people think, and believes he is superior to other human beings. He is also irrational, denying reason in favor of emotive diatribes, usually making no sense. He is so irrational he is willfully destroying his own interests for revenge against others who in the end won't really care or get hurt much. It isn't even the first time. I celebrate Nao's decision to cut off his own balls and stop maintaining the mod which could earn him business for his paid mod. Irrationality should be punished and reality always obliges.

[Arantor]

weightman, he responded to you the way he did because he strongly dislikes those who take a strongly right-wing view of matters, and for whom bigotry is a natural way of life. I'd hardly call that dictating how people live their lives, ironically it's AGAINST dictating how people should live their lives.

I don't disagree he was being a little irrational but 1) far less irrational than you seem to imply (have you ever actually spoken to him, rather than derided and mocked him?) and 2) if you bother to read what went on, which you even admit you haven't, he didn't write Foxy for serious profit. The problem is, as I said, he spent too long with the mod, and finally got fed up of people demanding so much. It takes its toll.

[MultiformeIngegno]

Arantor: believe me, try to export-> import joomla's articles or modules.... and then tell me the results..
Seems written 10 years ago..

[rd]

I also hate Joomla...

I've made SMF be what I want, with free and custom mods.

I want write a CMS system for SMF but the problem is I don't want to commit.

Arantor, what do you think about my other post? Your mod will still be free.

[Arantor]

RoyalDuke: Hope you don't plan on using any of my code in there. Do what you want but I'd prefer you not to resell anything I've written.

[Rowdy]

As a "right-winger" Objectivist, I oppose all violations of individual rights. So, of course, all his name calling is based on complete misunderstandings of philosophy. But this is irrelevant. If he isn't trying to make money off his paid mod, that is also irrational, given his constant complaints on the matter. I have no interest in speaking to Nao at this point after his irrational diatribes and name calling, lol. I find him distastefully irrational, not to mention he shows all the signs of a frustrated power-luster- a failed politician, which is a very dangerous personality. That said, I don't mind you trying to make this about me, and it might even pull Nao back in if he has an enemy he can focus on, but in the long run it won't matter. He will destroy himself and the project anyway, as he is doing just fine. Justice.

[rd]

Okay Arantor, I respect your wish.

[Nao 尚]

Because he didn't think about the users...

Sure...
Aeva (lite) was there to be used. I didn't have any plans to keep working on it after v7 was released. I still don't, BTW...
So I thought, the only way I could add stuff to it, would be to add permission profiles. But then I did have them in SMG, and SMG was using a lot of Aeva features as well. It seemed only natural to merge them both. It still does, even though I never came around to implementing perms for the auto-embedder. Not a hugely requested feature anyway...
Thus, it was as much a decision for my own interest (maintaining a single mod is easier than two), as a decision for the community. I always left the last stand-alone of Aeva 7 online on the mod page. Heck, even the last stand-alone version of SMG is still available as well...

I only want a streamer not an entire gallery. I know I can hide it from people but still, there should be a choice!

Well, technically there is. Still, you're not a customer and I'm not releasing "products", so you really shouldn't be telling me what design choices I should adopt. I make my own choices. If the Aeva audience doesn't like it, they can stay behind, no problem. If they do, good for them. I've always made Aeva Media for myself first and foremost. For my site. But now that I'm seriously considering switching to some other forum software, I also have to consider dropping support for SMF when it comes to Aeva Media. And I'm saying it out loud -- this is likely to cause many people to switch to some other, "more stable" gallery system, but I don't mind at all. Really, the less users at this point, the less complaints. Leave me in peace everyone!! I can't stay away from the Aeva boards for an entire day without having some people complain about something. Heck... Even if I *were* paid for this, I would still consider dropping the job. I'm actually very much surprised that I kept doing that for SO long. Giving support is just not my thing. At best, I'm neutral when answering, never "nice and everything", just plain informative. At worse, I'm ******y. That's how I am when it comes to giving support. I've been like that for as long as I can remember -- way before I even heard about SMF.

One of the reasons forum owners who want to run professional, profitable communities buy paid forums and mods is exactly this one. They dont go bust.

Oh yes they still do.

I feel like going over to vB. It's a bit expensive but it comes with peace of mind.

Hold that thought. vB 4.0 was a total mess, released only because the management wanted it out, not because it was bug-free... This caused quite a stir in their community, especially since they upped their prices by a fair margin in the meantime. It tends to show they're mostly in it for the money.

From what I've read, if you want a paid-for forum software, you should look into IPB. I used to use it back when it was free, and I loved it. If I were to change to something else, I'd either go for some free, very light package (such as PunBB, FluxBB etc.), or IPB. (Until Phoenix comes out of course...)

SMF seems to have the attitude..we are the forum..got nothing to do with mods or themes. They dont realise..it's the mods+themes+forum+support which leads to marketability. Just the forum is of not much use to many people. It's the whole framework.

Tell that to the manager.

A mod of this magnitude should have been a paid mod from day one ... would eliminate all of this ... i have seen the power of the mod and the endless support threads, this is not your average few lines of code mod...

Sure. But it still doesn't warrant paying for it.

First of all, AeMe wouldn't be there without two other mods:
- Karl Benson's AEVAC, which was a free mod. When I offered to take it over, I promised him it would remain free. Even though I've rewritten most of the mod since then, and probably no more than 20% is directly taken from his work now, I still have no reason to make it a paid-for mod really.
- Dragooon's SMF Media Gallery, which was also a free mod. When he gave up on the mod last summer, he allowed me to rebrand it and take the majority ownership. There was no discussion on turning it into a paid-for mod, but if I ever did, people wouldn't be using AeMe, they'd still be on SMG, outdated or not. A question of logic.

Secondly, the Foxy! add-on is really here to represent the paid-for aspect. It doesn't make much money (it's not as popular as Dragooon's Facebook mod for instance), but it doesn't matter, I never planned to get rich with SMF stuff. I just wanted something to thank people for donating money.

Look at all the other galleries, those are quite fine for people looking for just your average gallery...

I second that. vbgamer45's free version of SMF Gallery is quite okay if you only want a couple of albums, no videos and no lightbox system. And he's certainly more loyal to SMF than I am. (It's not really that I'm not -- it's just that I feel like my loyalty has been put to test too many times in recent months.)

Or, of course, there's also SMG, although it is now deprecated.

I have responded to Nao's PM and hopefully we can come to some sort of understanding. I understand why Nao reacted as he did (and Pegasys... If you are reading this, I am placing YOU on warning status as well) and I understand why Nao was set to a warning level, even if I did not completely agree with the level. Nao, those of us who frequent your posts know and (mostly) understand your temper and frustration levels.

It's not so hard to understand I'd think... I think you've quite rightly evaluated the situation. For others:

My offer to the community:
- two years and a half working for the community nearly fulltime, popular mods, translations, very active beta testing, many posts on the forums, etc.
- requested many times to join the dev team and get the release schedule back on track.

The team's offers to me:
- a non-team beta tester position 2 years ago,
- some team members who are obviously resentful to me (Amacythe saying several times that she didn't want me in, SlammedDime banning me twice without warning...)
- 2 temporary bans, as mentioned above, for lashing out at people who were treating me like crap.

You told me both bans were due to these people "reporting" my posts and the moderator never taking the steps to actually read the posts that led to my replies. So, either there's larger trouble on the horizon than I originally thought, or SlammedDime is doing a *hell of a bad job* for the community and certainly doesn't deserve his LEAD customizer position. Heck, isn't he supposed to be an example for mod authors? Then why won't he even fix one of his mods to work with the most popular SMF mod?! I actually PM'ed him the exact changes to apply to his code several months ago and he never even replied...

Also, you made me an offer by PM, I'll evaluate it but I fear I'm currently not in the "mood" to accept it, even if it would help in a lot of situations.

Please realize that some people who get the reports do not always get the full context.

Well, they should! When someone reports messages to me, I always read them in context. Always do, always will. Sometimes I still read them wrong-- but I've also learned to apologize when I'm going too far.

aw06: No, I am quite happy that this never went paid. I would not be using it myself if it did...
and honestly, even if it did go paid, that does not prevent the author from dropping it.

Yes it doesn't.
But I'm not dropping it, really. Dropping it basically implies that I may be reliquinshing ownership to someone else. Well, I don't want to do that. I already told vbgamer45 that AeMe (or even Aeva) is not up for sale, whatever amount he may offer to keep it for the community. If someone comes up and offers $10k to save it, he's in for trouble. I may be up for hire, but I'm not up for sale.

I said yesterday that I was stopping development of AeMe for SMF and I'll port it to some other system. I realize it may have troubled some people, so I want to make my position clearer: I'll be stopping development of AeMe for SMF *as soon* as it's ported to some other system (probably Phoenix). This doesn't mean I'll be leaving Aeva Media on the SM.org website, though. I'll be making my decision on these matters later this week. (Currently, it doesn't really show but I caught a bad cold this weekend and I have a hard time even staying in front of my screen. Let alone take definitive decisions.)

@Royalduke> Regarding your issue with Arantor... I don't know what your mod is about, but allow me to advise against going paid-for. Even if you do manage to get a paid-for version out, it's really not worth it. You would be bored by pure numbers, but even for well known mod authors, from what I've experienced myself and what I've heard, it doesn't pay. If anyone had to rely on SMF paid-for sales to make a living, they'd be in trouble. If only because SMF users most likely don't expect to pay for anything when it comes to their forum software. And there's nothing surprising in that. Anyway, what I'm saying is: it may not be worth the trouble of putting Arantor into the situation of seeing someone try to make money off a mod he originally wrote.

Now for the fun part...

I didn't say Nao was evil because of some particular incident.

I feel honored to be considered evil by a fascist, really.

I didn't even read the latest conflicts I successfully predicted. He is evil because he believes he has the right to dictate how other people live their life, how people think, and believes he is superior to other human beings.

Isn't that the whole concept behind your objectivism? Lol... I thought it was about the right of the invidual to search for their own happiness, and to consider they're absolutely right and everyone else is wrong... After all it's basically what is said in The Fountainhead. So you should be celebrating my lone wolf tendencies, rather than denounce them. You should be telling me to do what I feel is best for me, rather than for the community.
Of course you don't get a word about Rand's ideas. It's typically well known that she was more of a left-wing thinker, but became a right-wing icon because some people (including Reagan) got her ideas wrong. To me it's just a cult like so many others... You think you've found your philosophy but you don't even know where to start with it. If you want to live by a philosophy, then try harder or prepare to be ridiculed more often than not.

He is also irrational,

And proud of it. That's called being human, as opposed to a binary-language machine.

denying reason in favor of emotive diatribes,

In this world, everything is about money. When money is out of the picture, then it becomes about everything.
Being emotional about my stuff just shows that, just like Arantor, *I care about what I do*.

you're not paid, it becomes about usually making no sense. He is so irrational he is willfully destroying his own interests for revenge against others who in the end won't really care or get hurt much.

What are my interests, according to you?

It isn't even the first time.

And it won't be my last. Neither will it be yours. You'll get denounced at some point, banned, and will come back using yet another name, like you did last year.

If he isn't trying to make money off his paid mod, that is also irrational, given his constant complaints on the matter.

I've never complained much... especially these last few days. I don't need the money. Ideally, the Foxy! money would be for me to gather and buy presents for my girlfriend, to thank her for having to share me with my computer time.

I celebrate Nao's decision to cut off his own balls and stop maintaining the mod which could earn him business for his paid mod. Irrationality should be punished and reality always obliges.

Lawl. I must admit I just love talking with you. It's not so much the ideas you care to "share". It's just how low you're ready to stoop while simultaneously trying to make yourself look smart. If you're so smart, then why are you still here, when everyone clearly told you you're not wanted? Just to defend your individual rights? Yeah... So smart eh.

[aw06]

The best way to go is for site owners to learn how to code so they can do their own maintenance then it totally ceases to be a problem.

That is abit too much to ask the average Joe would be nowhere capable of doing that, you saying next we should write our own operating system etc 

[Rowdy]

nao, you don't even know your left from your right. Objectivists are capitalists. We believe in laissez-faire capitalism, which forbids all State intervention in the economy. Fascism is a leftist ideology believing in State control, if not outright ownership, of private property. It is not surprising someone so confused would think Rand is a leftist. LMAO. As for my motivations, I cheer for goodness/freedom and seek/enjoy the destruction of evil. You are a frustrated little tyrant and watching your irrationality and power lust destroy your own interests is completely in line with our philosophy. Evil requires the sanction of the victim. Anyone who obeys you is in for a rough time. I do not. But, I do love your mod.

[Arantor]

That is abit too much to ask the average Joe would be nowhere capable of doing that, you saying next we should write our own operating system etc 

Why is it a bit too much to ask? When you buy a car, do you not learn ANYTHING about how it works? Or do you get to know it just a little bit?


weightman, There's a difference between honouring requests and obeying demands. You do neither by your own admissions.

[aw06]

That is abit too much to ask the average Joe would be nowhere capable of doing that, you saying next we should write our own operating system etc 

Why is it a bit too much to ask? When you buy a car, do you not learn ANYTHING about how it works? Or do you get to know it just a little bit?

Come on, you learn how to drive it to the best of you ability, you can learn how to maintain it, but how much people really have the ability to be doing major engine mods, changing transmissions etc, I'm a car junkie, i do almost everything myself, but we can't expect the same from everyone, society thou sad at times is set up so people can piggy back on each other, gives us all something to do...

With regards to this mod, being that it is so important that it got it's own board etc, why not just implement it into SMF 2.0 Final as default feature  and don't say that's not possible lol

[Arantor]

You're getting my point though: people can learn how to maintain things and generally it's not that hard. Major engine mods... that's a bit different but the underlying principle is the same.

It WON'T be a default feature. 2.0 is feature locked, meaning no new features (yes, that's what the big sticky in Feature Requests says) and in any case, Nao has said he won't give anyone the rights to it, though in theory the SMF Team could ignore that if they chose to (since the SMF license allows them to reuse the mod in SMF itself if they choose to)

It's not that it's impossible just I cannot believe it would be added in.


Nao: As I said to you via PM (to SMG account since I thought your account was banned). Is gonna be a shame to see all this go to ruin but I fully understand your position.

[aw06]

You're getting my point though: people can learn how to maintain things and generally it's not that hard. Major engine mods... that's a bit different but the underlying principle is the same.

It's all relative, coding for many is a very daunting and tedious task, likewise working on cars for some, so their will always be people that excel at it and people that are totally clueless, they can learn it yes, but we all know that learning is not that simple at times,

It WON'T be a default feature. 2.0 is feature locked, meaning no new features (yes, that's what the big sticky in Feature Requests says) and in any case, Nao has said he won't give anyone the rights to it, though in theory the SMF Team could ignore that if they chose to (since the SMF license allows them to reuse the mod in SMF itself if they choose to)

It's not that it's impossible just I cannot believe it would be added in.

Something like this would make the release of SMF 2.0 really substantial in the forums community, giving it the advantage over most other platforms, not to cut noa out the picture of course, I'd hope he'd be the one they ask to assist with making it happen.

Ok, so who's asses to kiss to make that happen 

[Arantor]

Sure, learning isn't always simple, but I still believe if people are going to run websites, they should make some kind of effort towards it.

As for this being integrated into SMF, I cannot tell you how much I doubt it will happen, no matter who's behind gets kissed. Key word: "Bloat".

So many forums just don't need it. (Reason why it's the #1 most downloaded mod... because of all the automatic updates to the site list being routed through the mod site)

Reason why this mod has its own board? So it can be post moderated...

[Rowdy]

Pfft. Nao can't prevent this feature from being implemented in software he doesn't own. *If* there is a will, there is a way. Really, I'll make my second prediction. If Nao does take his ball home, the feature will be replaced in less than one year, unless something better is available beforehand. Freedom just works that way.

@Arantor, I grant requests when its in my interest. I do not demand the unearned or anyone's obedience.

[aw06]

Well i think most sites would make use of a gallery, the fact that all if not 90% of forums users upload pictures a gallery would just put a more streamline look and sophistication on things, likewise media embedding... in this day and age, when i see a raw youtube link posted on a forum it just looks tacky and i lazily click on it, these things should be standard IMO

[Arantor]

Rowdy: Actually, under copyright law he could if it weren't for the clause in the mod site license that explicitly grants them that permission.

* Arantor thinks you haven't read part of the ongoing saga where former developers discussed withdrawing their rights to use the code they wrote for SMF because they never explicitly granted a license to do so.

And actually, Nao asked you to stop using his work, he is entitled to do so under the terms stated on the mod's page, and it would probably stand up in court, actually.

aw06: You'd be surprised how few forums actually would make use of a gallery; probably 75% of the forums I've seen would not benefit from a gallery. As for a YT embedding, there are plenty of good reasons NOT to do so. Having a thread of 20+ videos is enough to bring most users' machines to a crawl.