[G1 General] alec.baldwin:
OK guys... I think it's time to have a coming-to-Jesus (or buddha, or Mohamed, or Spaghettimonster) moment. Over many months I have downloaded lots of Roms, followed progress here and there... and quite frankly my opinion is THIS PLACE HERE NEEDS TO GROW UP.

THE PROBLEM

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I mean it's great that everyone and their grandmother can express their creativity by bringing out Roms, by using test releases, adding a few themes and call them stable, by taking dogs and call them fast.

FACT is, most ROMs SUCK, most are unstable don't make it past a few weeks, they start out fast but come to a screeching halt. Or a week in you notice that wifi doenst work, or alarm, or gmail or voice... or gmail works, but you can't send emails... and you'd don't find out until one week later when you really need that feature (at least those of us here who work)

At the end of the day the Roms here are for the most part BS... mine is longer than yours, I am faster then you, I am a pony or not, or stupidfast or or just superfast or superD or fastest or fasttest ...WHATEEVER.. I'd bet that 90% of regular users stop by once, flash a few roms then just get ultimately annoyed by the prepubescent J.O. session.....without any goal or direction or common goal...

THE SOLUTION

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So this place needs to grow up. HOW, well for a start adopt open source dev. principles. Instead of every 12 year old kid with a keyboard releasing their own orgasmicallyfast and ultimaterock stable rom, how about having a few development TREES.

Have different trees, that focus on FAST, STABLE, FUNCTIONAL. Or some mix that is clearly defined in a mission statement. Then have people commit improvements, changes to those trees and have official releases that would actually bring each tree further and add improvements. Have the most respected devs. manage those trees while all the newby devs contribute. Make contributions, being the creator of X or Y be the thing to be known for, not the "being creative in coming up with some dumb rom name".

Why, well it works in the opensource community, and if you look at that model, you'd actually see commercial companies entering the picture, sponsoring developments, donating code, paying salaries of developers, and with the option that some of the best devs. here actually can make a living of the work that is done here. Right now there's so much bs going on, a few minor things are real improvements, a lot is just cosmetic, same thing over with a new label or new mix

With the current situation devs spend hours and hours without the remotest chance that this work is taken seriously by the industry. Do you think they go and flash 100 rom's and test'em all to figure out what works.

Also what is better, to have 1000 Roms out there each used by 1000 people, or 10 used by millions.. in fact it would be a lot more. You'd find more mainstream users using the Rom's and you'd find the industry taking a look and things would move forward, there's evolution.

FINAL WORDS

Sorry to interrupt that happy kumbaya session here, and I am sure I'll get lots of hate/fu comments.. which quite frankly I don't care about - I'll just ignore you.

This is an idea, I want some of the leaders here to think about. Taking this mess and unite devs to actually contribute to some meaningful path forward, that is documented, has a standard, and people and eventually the hardware industry or telecoms or 2nd users (often in developing countries) can rely on, rather than being the side-freak show it is now, mostly created by all the 3rd rate devs that just remix while the people that really make progress are being flooded by the all the garbage out there...

Do whatever you wanna do with this comment... if this ends up being some angry comments flame war thread.. I'll just not gonna come back to it...and if no one sees my point.. then well, feel free to keep dwelling your nice little ecosystem here... and just dream about what this could be... for now I'll move on to my faster android device.. so long everyone.. and would be great if at least a fraction here would agree...

UPDATE:

How about having 2 sections. One for official ROMS - Have the community pick a handfull of ROMs. Each one needs to fulfill a basic set of requirements in regards to bug management/reporting, documentation (including credits), supervision (someone in charge approving code/additions). Also each ROM should have a mission statement as what the goal is of the ROM: f.e. stable and fast, or HERO, or Eclair, or max features, or keeping up with latest Android, etc. The goal is people can read the purpose/strategy/mission of each rom and decide which ROM they want to use and support (also financially) and keep track off. Each ROM needs to have 2 or 3 lead devs in charge.. so if one leaves that continuation is not an issue. If I can follow one Rom and use it for months.. I am much more willing to contribute $ then continually having to jump ship because of abandoned Roms...

If we would structure things this way, the leads for each of those main Roms, likely can live on this part time, we'd get dedicated people, and continuous progress, and results people can use... and it would open the development work to a more mainstream audience...