[Touch Diamond, MDA Compact IV ROM Development] mastabog:
Let me first say that I appreciate and have been using your roms for quite some time (i actually flashed v3 today) so many thanks for all your efforts and your continuous help towards your users' issues with your rom. You're always there to help which is really nice and inspires confidence. Also, I hope you can reach a stable rom for everyone even though your initial goal was to customize a rom for your personal use and share it with the others at the same time -- you're not *actually* responsible to fix the errors we get with your roms. I hope everyone knows that.

Now please allow me to be critical as well :)

Speaking as a developer (not for WM though), I believe you could improve your versioning scheme. Your roms' versioning is quite confusing. Examples: your roms appear to increase (major) version numbers with sets of (minor) fixes; the RTM story -- RTM should be final and it doesn't really make sense for a rom in this case to be honest; a version increase when the changes consist of bug fixes should not make, for instance, 2.9 go to 3.0 as it leads people to believe there were real major changes -- usually a major version increase, i.e. v2.* to v3.0 implies there was something really big (2.10 would have been more appropriate in my opinion).

You said a few posts back to the quoted one above that you'd leave v3.0 out therefor a longer while and stop this excessive flashing. Now you're talking about releasing a v3.1 because of a few bugs you fixed: a bug in the camera in conjunction with the bs14 radio and the youtube volume bug. Normally, this should not mandate a new version release. If it's possible, a patch (cab) would be great to give the people who flashed v3.0 the possibility to upgrade without flashing, saving valuable time and hassle. Or if you really want a new v3.1 release just for those fixes then fine, but offering a cab patch if possible would be very useful. It would be nice to actually strive to offer cab upgrades whenever possible -- i.e. if it's possible to have a cab patch then go for it, people will love that! i can assure you, it would save everybody so much time -- rather than releasing a new version days after the previous. It's crazy, really. It will never stop like this and you will most likely lose fans who are not flash-junkies.

I love your roms, I really do. I used v2.3a since yesterday (damn glad I flashed before getting that expired error) and many v1.* prior to that. I've been reading this thread almost daily since v2.3a and the reason I didn't flash any of the versions released between v2.3a and v3 was the amount of bugs or bug reports that kept accumulating from one version to the next -- it's kind of scary, really. Also, new versions were released very soon after the previous one and the series of bug/error reports afterwards made the rom look like there wasn't enough testing done prior to releasing -- which is not true in many cases, since I know you have your group of beta testers (although in some cases quick fixes were added right before the release).

I already had more issues with v3 in one day than I had with v2.3a in 2 weeks (e.g. extreme slowness after a call, a crash with a black and white dots screen, locked touch panel and a couple others). They could all be because of incompatibilities with software I added but they were all working fine in v2.3a. This all pertains to testing before releasing but hey, you can't install every possible software out there to make sure it's working for your users. At this point (also with the rate of new releases being so high) I'm thinking of either going back to v2.3a or even -- maybe -- shamelessly try another rom.

As a minor issue, maybe it's worth setting up a bugzilla or trac page for your rom ... the rate new messages are posted in this thread is alarmingly high (messages are posted literally while reading). It would make the bug reports more relevant and probably easier for you to cook. Your call depending on the hassle and time you're willing to put in setting up and maintaining a bugzilla or trac page.

In any case, please keep up the great work (and thanks for reading in case you were that masochistic :p). I have rarely seen such dedication coupled with patience and promptness -- and I've seen my share. Congratulations for all this. You should really be proud.

Cheers