Where is the Songbird 1.4 FINAL release ?

I accord to K. Need a "more" usable Songbird.

And what about Songbird_1.4.0-1335 ? What is this version?

@K
I'm sorry but delay can't be a cause of concern for us, users, unless you are willing to pay for additional developers to help speeding up the release, don't you think?

Just also wanted to highlight that Songbird is developed by a company that has a second agenda in addition to please all of us, users, who get their product for free: as any other company they need cash. Using some of the add-ons will give them some revenue (like the Concerts one), but that is not enough. Maybe you have read in these forums about a deal Songbird has made with a major device manufacturer, likely to provide them with a iTunes-equivalent for their devices (no, something better than iTunes!)
Of course, this brings some new constraints and product requirements into the game, hence unexpected changes in planning.. unexpected and also unexplained, for good reasons. We even don't know the name of this other company, or very few know.

All that to say to we should not be concerned, we know that thanks to such a deal the Songbird company is sustained and that is more important than being on time!

So, please be patient :)

Cool - all the extra info on what is going on is great - and helps me understand where it's all at. That was the main gist of my question/post above. All the readily available sources of information had dried up (bug lists, calendar, roadmap, bird-baths, etc). I am impatient for a release (cos I like the app!), but more important for me is a little bit of information that keeps me informed about what the team is up to and what the plans and thoughts are for upcoming releases.

Thanks for all the work on Songbird guys - looking forward to the next stable release.

@ klint
The concern I was referring to was that of people who want to use songbird; it is easy to image them being concerned that songbird may be slowing down and becoming unreliable. I understand the "be grateful for free software" mentality, but there are other free options out there. For someone hoping to use songbird, taking a look at the roadmap without supporting information is definitely going to cause concern (we've all seen promising software bite it before).

Thanks for the rest of that information, it definitely helps explain the lack of final releases recently. Unfortunately that information also brings to light another issue. I'm sure that what you typed up is from information available elsewhere on the site. Unfortunately, unless someone is really working to dig up answers and keep up on the news, I doubt they would find the info you're talking about.

What does that mean? Consider the following; A user searching for an alternative to iTunes finds songbird, downloads 1.2 and find it isn't quite there yet. Well I'll bet they realized that songbird has potential and maybe they will check back with the roadmap and the home page to see when the next great, bug free final version is due/available. What do they find? They'll find that version 1.2 has been the only final release for months and there are a lot of delays listed on the roadmap and the version that should be out just isn't.

Now, a lot of users probably aren't going dig around enough to find that good info you posted klint. If they did, it would probably give them a little more hope. My point is that there should probably be some brief explanations for the delays either ON the main page and/or WITH the roadmap.

Thanks again for the help klint.

Yes, that could be a simple and helpful information to be added on the home page "Next version cooking and coming very soon. Want to try Songbird? Just download current version 1.2, install it, use it and you will be notified automatically when the new release is published".. Maybe a feature-wise "what's coming next" in a few and big words could help, still prominent on the front page (and not hidden in the roadmap one or two levels deeper).

As I'm not hired by Songbird, I hope a company's employee will have a look to this post :)

About all the information I mentioned in my post above, this is not official information that the company can display on its website for the moment, as the deal I mentioned is more a rumor confirmed by some Songbird people interviews found in other places and close observation of development cycles and documentation. You can understand that there are some non-disclosure agreements likely in place.
But I'm able to to talk about it here because 1) I'm not hired by Songbird, just a user like you who likes this product&team 2) it's only made of information publicly available if you dig a little bit the Songbirdnest. 3) we are on the company&COMMUNITY-based support site.

All that being said, I must also stress the fact that beyond the nightlies every night, you can follow the *constant* progress of the releases by following bugzilla, the release pages on the wiki, the weekly development tasks on the trackers there. Songbird has implemented and made visible a very strong and neat development methodology, very nice to follow.

@ klint,
I absolutely understand the need to keep that sort of information private. Unfortunately, not releasing any sort of explanation for the delays (multiple ones) is going to chase users away. A large amount of information is provided in different places, but most new users like jaconiel (see above) are willing to dig through a huge amount of information. Even those who have been following songbird for a while now are unlikely to do more than check the main page and the roadmap. That's just the way it is. Most users will not be receptive to the idea of installing nightly builds either.

Installing Songbird 1.2 and waiting for news, isn’t likely to end well. Songbird 1.2 shows that the program has future potential, but that’s about it. Users aren’t likely to be willing to instal and use version 1.2 until another final release is offered up. Neither betas or nighties are going to cut it for most users either. Songbird needs to either start putting up some easy-access, consolodated information. This info needs to set out future dates for final releases and offer some type of explain missed deadlines. If we don’t see something like this quickly, I don’t think songbird should be surprised when user numbers begin tailing off at an increasing rate.

This is information for songbird to see obviously. I'm not implying that you work for them or have any sway over this.

it would take 1 minute for the team to write

"hi folks, we will delay songbird 1.4 with few weeks/ months... don't worry, we work hard to deliver the best music player..... etc etc etc etc"

is not that hard.. isn't it?

@asd (and others)
On one hand, I could almost agree, but on the other hand, you already have far more information than you would have for any other project just *one or two* clicks away from the Songbirdnest home page (and if you are here, reading a post about 1.4, it means that you have already been browsing the Songbird website deeper than the home page, correct? So, you know how to find that info)

And what does this info tell you?
- yes, ok, the October gate has already been missed by 15 days.
- yes, the Songbird team is working hard on the Korn release, you can see a dynamically updated planning for the week, bug by bug. And guess what? There is even a date, end of November (I should not hard code it here, it will be used against Songbird in case of more delay :) )

So, what can you easily conclude from that? simply that they delay songbird 1.4 with few weeks/ months... don't worry, they work hard to deliver the best music player. Does that ring a bell? ;)

To conclude, the paradoxal "problem" with Songbird may be that actually TOO MUCH info is transparently displayed to users, which gives a (most of the time correct ) impression of extreme precision and confidence. But, as always as in any software project, many unexpected things occur, and documentation/roadmap may not be accurate for a little while.

By the way, can you tell me when the next release of iTunes will be delivered and what will its exact contents be? Well, for Songbird, with an acceptable error margin, I could tell.

PS: again, I'm not working for Songbird at all, just helping users and testing coming release. And the above does only reflect my personal opinion.

PPS: again, please, be patient :)

in an open source project, generally, the community is more involved than in a closed one... so, my opinion, it would be a mistake to compare the development of Songbird with iTunes...

klint, i really understood you, as well as you understand me... we both have some points... but, for me, it is wrong not to inform the community basic idea when concerns appear (this is a reason why we have this discussion - concerns)

most of us do not want novels or 10 pages.. just an idea about what is happening....

so, while u say there is ok not to give to the community just a little sign of hard working (and i know it is true, they work really hard), i disagree with u here. we deserve more.. google is what it is because of the people use it.. same microsoft.. same yahoo etc... same songbird

and yes, i;ve searched enought hrough songbird pages to have an idea about what is happening... but i should have had that idea from an accessible place, like the blog... in the end, that's why the blog is there

probably we all should end this discussion here and wait patiently for the developers to finish what they have to do... i know it will be great, i just know that

(english is not my first language, i guess i have some mistakes here.. sorry)

the devs want to be able to tell you wants going on, but the new CEO is a little less "open" than the previous one from what i gather, but he's also doing great things for songbird, so its a trade off.

Just dropping in with the opinion of another user watching the release schedule pretty closely. klint has raised good points defending the Songbird team's transparency, and I agree that there is quite a lot of information out there if you know how to search for it. However, planned releases are more significant than day to day bug-squashing and get more attention from outsiders who don't invest the significant effort required in developing the kind of bugzilla awareness it takes to suss out project plans from activity in the bug-database. In my opinion, this makes changes to release plans important enough to warrant some "summary" type info for folks who can spend a few minutes checking status but can't track global bugzilla activity, and I think there are three things the team could to do improve release transparency for these kind of folks, and from the outside they seem very simple and low-effort:

1) Mention the slip in the weekly birdbaths or on songbird-dev. There has been *no* human readable summary of the change in plans anywhere to my knowledge. This is a 10-minute project.

2) Fix the release dates at http://wiki.songbirdnest.com/Releases. Folks seem to be saying at this point that Kanye isn't "TBD", it's "Cancelled, replaced by Korn". That's fine, but folks are checking the Kanye schedule because the roadmap says it's the next release and the information they're getting is confusing and misleading. This is less than a 5-minute project.

3) Add Korn to http://wiki.songbirdnest.com/Roadmap. This is more work and I expect it's either in-flight or determined to be too much work given the (hopefully) short release schedule. Still, a placeholder with a quick note referring to the "Releases" page would go a long way to alleviate confusion.

So while there is certainly information in Bugzilla for those with the time and skills to track it there, I still think there's a place for summary information for roadmap release change plans, and it doesn't take a lot of work to produce it.

Thanks,
Mike

Actually, I think things would be a lot easier, if there was a counter on the front page to the time for an expected release, that hyperlinks to a release history. Something similar to: https://fedoraproject.org/static/imag...

It doesn't need to be exact (it can say "approximately 4 weeks remaining for Korn (Kanye cancelled)". But if releases like 1.3 are knocked off the roadmap, it can hyperlink to an explanation why.

This would be the most transparent way of doing it I'd say, and users would know when a new release should be expected approximately instantly

Mike and Andrew, well said; both of your posts contain excellent suggestions. I really hope some of the Songbird staff members take a good look at this thread and decide to implement the changes you've suggested.