File Transfers Not Starting

[haruki]

What I find relatively concerning is that your own personal lack of interest in an issue (seemingly, and correct me if I'm wrong about that) immediately reduces any priority that issue might have for other Adium developers

Well, we ARE doing this in our spare time. We work on features that interest us, yeah, that's how it works. We wouldn't be working on Adium if it didn't interest us. We're not being paid, and all of us either have jobs or are in school, or both.

Yes, I understand that all of you are unpaid and work on Adium in your spare time. I appreciate all the work you guys do. However, that doesn't change the fact that Adium is a program released to the public, a public that has some expectations and hopes and wants. If Adium was a project that you did in your spare time for yourselves only, yeah, I could see where you could get away with saying "we work on what we like, when we like, and heck with what anyone else thinks," because it's your personal project for yourselves. However, you don't think that releasing the program to the public gives you at least a small responsibility towards your users?

This isn't even relegated to file transfer issues—I've seen this attitude pop up numerous times on any number of other changes which have divided the user community. Some people like the new way, some prefer the old and would like it as an option. Every time I've seen requests like these, the response from the development team has been, in so many words, "the changes are permanent, we won't be putting the old way back in, even as a non-default option, so get used to it."

Again, I'm not trying to bash the Adium development team—you guys do great work (on the things you work on) and Adium is great at what it does (even if that isn't everything yet, it does a whole lot of stuff). I just think the attitude of "take what we give you and stop requesting stuff we don't care about" is a little irresponsible given the public nature of Adium's deployment.

[Adam Iser]

I don't think you understand.

Your request for "AIM File Transfer Improvements" is one of many requests we receive daily, and each of these requests is a big deal to some subset of our users.

You are no different than any other user, and your request is no different from any other.

You can fight the developers all you want, but no amount of fighting is going to raise the priority of your request. Criticizing the developers and flaming on this forum will also do nothing to further your request. Non-constructive posts and comments will do nothing to further your request.

I understand that this means a lot to you, but you need to understand that you are approaching this the wrong way.

[haruki]

I don't think you understand.

Your request for "AIM File Transfer Improvements" is one of many requests we receive daily, and each of these requests is a big deal to some subset of our users.

You are no different than any other user, and your request is no different from any other.

You can fight the developers all you want, but no amount of fighting is going to raise the priority of your request. Criticizing the developers and flaming on this forum will also do nothing to further your request. Non-constructive posts and comments will do nothing to further your request.

I understand that this means a lot to you, but you need to understand that you are approaching this the wrong way.

Don't patronize. I have not flamed any developers at all. I have kept my tone level and even, and have not cursed or otherwise made personal attacks against the developers of Adium. I've stated repeatedly that I appreciate the efforts and product that the Adium team has produced. You seem to be ignoring that and focusing only on my concern regarding development attitude, and you refuse to address the concern itself and move straight to dismissing me. You refuse to even acknowledge that what I'm pointing out might be a problem, not with one specific person or another, but with the team attitude as a whole, and how that attitude may be affecting the direction of Adium negatively. On the whole, I am very satisfied with Adium. It's certainly the best of any third-party IM clients on OS X that I'm aware of. That doesn't mean it's without problems.

If you and the rest of the team believe that the current pattern of development—to primarily do what the team wants, not what the users are asking for—best serves Adium, then please say so, make it public, and I'll be more than happy to drop the issue. I'll disagree with you, certainly, but at least it will be clear that we simply see the issue differently, and there's very little chance that either of us will convince the other otherwise. However, PLEASE at least entertain the possibility that a change in procedure for development effort (perhaps some formal method of gauging public interest in one issue or another) might be beneficial to both your team and your users and result in everyone being happier.

[instant eggrolls]

Look, I'm in total agreement about the file transfers. I really wish that they'd work exactly like the rest of the app...perfectly. But the truth is, these guys work with what they have, when they can. And what they've given us for the time they put in is incredible, there's no denying that. We've all tried the official clients, the other 3rd party clients and nothing compares. So, unless you're a brilliant coder or have some other magnificent idea to solve this issue, let's try not to complain about it so much.

- Also, it'd be sweet if FTs were working. :-P

- .80 looks/works great.

[Adam Iser]

Haruki,

The fact that 0.8 does not fulfill YOUR request is not justification for these attacks.

The current plan of development is NOT what you state, but to prioritize requests based on the difficulty of implementation and the relative benefit that implementation of said request will provide.

We will NOT tailor development of this application around YOUR specific needs. YOUR requests are no more important than the requests of the tens of thousands of other users of this application!

I don't know how to state it any clearer...

[cbarrett]

Look, to put it completely frankly to you, there isn't anything we can do. It's outside our realm of expertise. It's also not our codebase. if you want it fixed that badly, take it up with the Gaim people. http://gaim.sf.net

[cometbus]

Just curious. I can live without file transfer, there are ways to work around it, I just have a folder that when I drop stuff in, it ftp's that to a webserver, I then paste a simple url into adium that a little applescript generates based on the current dropped file. Works :-)

Since the FT issue is not controlled by Adium, and previous comments have suggested to contribute back to the code where FT takes place is not fun since it is a mess, what if Adium took it and went on it's own. I for one could live with FT from Adium users to Adium users, that would be fine. Everyone I know uses adium, those who do not, I dont need to talk to :-)

Just an idea.

Here is another one, bit of a hack, but alas, another idea. Somewhere in adium we get a pref to enter in a ftp server, when we initiate a file transfer send, the file is really just ftp uploaded, and an appropriate http url is injected into the status window.

[fluffyx]

There's a third factor not mentioned in the discussion above. AIM runs a proxy server which serves as a middle man for file transfers. The official clients fall back on this proxy server when necessary to navigate firewalls and routers. We don't currently have that option.

So... even with iChat and the official AIM client, file transfers are faster (because of the lack of a proxy) if neither party is behind a router without NAT or port forwarding enabled?

And, this proxy server is closed to other clients besides the official one and iChat? Or is it just not yet implemented in the GAIM code?

- Oliver

[jstamos]

Holy crap guys, this is completely ridiculous.

It would even be one thing if this were about Adium's code exclusively, but it's about gaim's code for the most part - which is code the Adium developers aren't even close to or familiar with!

Lets at least focus your requests to the more appropriate party. And really, nothing is stopping you from learning the code yourself and contributing. That's the spirit of adium, after all. I've seen developers come and go throughout the project's history, adding what they felt was the most important part. Typically they stay on and contribute to more, because they realize there are more important things than the one feature they wanted in the first place

Lay off the developers. They do this in their spare time, which is infinitely more than you are currently doing for Adium. If they owed something to the public beyond what they release, you would be paying for Adium.

[DavidTO]

Haruki,

The fact that 0.8 does not fulfill YOUR request is not justification for these attacks.

The current plan of development is NOT what you state, but to prioritize requests based on the difficulty of implementation and the relative benefit that implementation of said request will provide.

We will NOT tailor development of this application around YOUR specific needs. YOUR requests are no more important than the requests of the tens of thousands of other users of this application!

I don't know how to state it any clearer...

Adam, I find it incredible that you are the site administrator. You are irascible and difficult to stomach.

I want file transfers, I have friends who refuse to use Adium because of the lack of it. I came here to see what's going on with it, and I found the ugly underbelly of Adium. All cute and cuddly on the outside, and confrontational on the inside. Haruki has been pleasant, and persistent. Your treatment of Haruki has been wrong.

[Adam Iser]

I want file transfers, I have friends who refuse to use Adium because of the lack of it. I came here to see what's going on with it, and I found the ugly underbelly of Adium. All cute and cuddly on the outside, and confrontational on the inside. Haruki has been pleasant, and persistent. Your treatment of Haruki has been wrong.

Haruki has not been pleasant. He has been rude, persistent, and out of line. The forum moderation had to delete numerous posts made before Haruki hijacked this thread because they were non-constructive and basically attacking the developers for not implementing his requests first.

The users in this thread were requesting additional details on why file transfer over AIM when behind a NAT has yet to be improved. Haruki choose to ignore the majority of my post in an attempt to argue that my logic is incorrect. AIM file transfer has not been improved because it affects only a small subset of our userbase, is a non-primary feature, and would require a good deal of work to implement. Haruki choose to ignore this and instead accuse me of saying that users should control their own routers or that users don't need file transfer. He did not reply to my post, but a reworded, opinionated, rude rewording of my post, and that is non-constructive and infuriating.

Haruki then falsely accused me of having a personal lack of interest in improving file transfer, and of reducing the priority of file transfer improvements because of this. Again, this is not true. AIM file transfer has not been improved because it affects only a small subset of our userbase, is a non-primary feature, and would require a good deal of work to implement. Haruki continues to make assumptions, accusatory, rude, offensive assumptions, about myself and the development process.

Haruki then falsely accuses the developers of not having a personal responsibility towards our userbase. He falsely accuses the developers of having an 'attitude' and makes it seem as if we intentionally ignore user's requests. This is not the case. A good development team implements the features that benefit the majority of the user base. We have been more than lenient in catering to special interests, and while it's unfortunate that users occasionally fall on the minority side of an issue, decisions must be made for progress to occur.

Haruki amusingly states that he's not trying to bash the Adium development team, but that is what he is doing here in this thread, and that is what he was doing (albeit more directly) in his other posts which were deleted. He again incorrectly and offensively states that the development team's attitude is something it is not, and accuses the developers of being irresponsible.

Haruki continues to post incorrectly and offensively about the attitude of the development team, this time accusing the developers of affecting the direction of Adium negatively, and again posting offensively and blatantly incorrect that the development team does what they like and ignores the requests of users. This is not true, as the majority of changes made to Adium are inspired and priorities by user requests. This is why we have these forums and a feedback email address.

--

I understand that you and many other users want file transfers to work over AIM when behind a NAT, and I understand that it is upsetting to see this request unfulfilled in Adium 0.8. However, what Haruki is doing is not providing any positive benefit to this project or this community.

If you guys want file transfers to work over AIM when behind a NAT, send in a request. Get your friends who want to this feature to sending in a request. Create a single, unified forum thread and post requests there as well. Better yet, direct these requests to the maintainers of the code responsible for this lack of functionality.

Do not come to the forums and insult the development team and their practices, accuse them of blatantly incorrect behavior, or otherwise contribute negatively to the project. Such behavior will not be tolerated in the future.

[The_Tick]

Adam, I find it incredible that you are the site administrator. You are irascible and difficult to stomach.

He is one of the site administrators, and very hard to anger. The fact that this person has caused him to say some of these things in public like this should make it clear that we do not condone this kind of behavior. I'll probably have to ban Haruki if he posts in the manner which makes us delete his posts again.

[DavidTO]

K, well, I guess that's the cost of deleting posts. And also the cost of jumping the gun (that would be me).

The posts I read from him were pleasant, and the ones I read in response weren't, but I suppose that's because I didn't know the history.

Anyway, moving on. (I hate this s***, and usually don't get sucked into it).

I hope all the fences are mended, and you guys here loud and clear how much I love your app, aside from the fact that it doesn't do file transfers.

I know, I know, there's all kinds of reasons why not. Or why it doesn't work for me. I just wish it worked like iChat.

Thanks for clarifying all the reasons why it doesn't. Doesn't change the fact that I want it.

[uttaddmb]

Psst...

If you need to do a file transfer, sign on to iChat or AIM for a few seconds and do it. No big deal. I'm sure the Adium devs won't lose too much sleep over it.

[batkinz]

What I find relatively concerning is that your own personal lack of interest in an issue (seemingly, and correct me if I'm wrong about that) immediately reduces any priority that issue might have for other Adium developers

Well, we ARE doing this in our spare time. We work on features that interest us, yeah, that's how it works. We wouldn't be working on Adium if it didn't interest us. We're not being paid, and all of us either have jobs or are in school, or both.

Yes, I understand that all of you are unpaid and work on Adium in your spare time. I appreciate all the work you guys do. However, that doesn't change the fact that Adium is a program released to the public, a public that has some expectations and hopes and wants. If Adium was a project that you did in your spare time for yourselves only, yeah, I could see where you could get away with saying "we work on what we like, when we like, and heck with what anyone else thinks," because it's your personal project for yourselves. However, you don't think that releasing the program to the public gives you at least a small responsibility towards your users?

This isn't even relegated to file transfer issues—I've seen this attitude pop up numerous times on any number of other changes which have divided the user community. Some people like the new way, some prefer the old and would like it as an option. Every time I've seen requests like these, the response from the development team has been, in so many words, "the changes are permanent, we won't be putting the old way back in, even as a non-default option, so get used to it."

Again, I'm not trying to bash the Adium development team—you guys do great work (on the things you work on) and Adium is great at what it does (even if that isn't everything yet, it does a whole lot of stuff). I just think the attitude of "take what we give you and stop requesting stuff we don't care about" is a little irresponsible given the public nature of Adium's deployment.

I am in total agreement with Haruki on this one. this is not a bash on the developers, but it seems to me that they tend to change a lot of things to their liking and not take the users into consideration, even when lots of users are in objection to certain changes, if the developers like it they say "the change is permanent", and dont even allow the old way as an option. Adium is supposed to be as fully customizable in every way, thus in my belief old features should be allowed as an option! Especially when it takes little to no work to preserve the old features as an option (seeing as they were already built that way in the first place...). Why wouldn't you give that option?

And BTW i'm not talking about file-transfers when i refer to these old options being made obselete and unusable... I'm talking about features like changing where the connection buttons are, and certain other features, like whether or not you want the options in the status menu to be on the file menu.

[The_Tick]

Adium is supposed to be as fully customizable in every way, thus in my belief old features should be aloowed as an option!

This is not a goal of the Adium X team

[batkinz]

Either way, it would make the application far more desirable in a lot of people's opinions. I know tons of people (on the forums, as well as friends in real life) who have criticisms about certain features being removed in almost every updated version.

[cbarrett]

If you like the old feature that much, the source code is freely available. Subversion is really easy to use, you can just check out an old copy and merge that feature back in.

They don't call it open source for no reason.

Also, I would like to say that, in the two and a half years I've known Adam, I have only seen him this pissed off a handful of times. You guys need to cool your jets

[Adam Iser]

I am in total agreement with Haruki on this one. this is not a bash on the developers, but it seems to me that they tend to change a lot of things to their liking and not take the users into consideration, even when lots of users are in objection to certain changes, if the developers like it they say "the change is permanent", and dont even allow the old way as an option.

Unfortunately there is no way for me to disprove this false assumption. That is why it pisses me off so bad when people say things like this because they ARE NOT correct, but there is no way for me to convince you of this since I cannot show you the contents of our email or any of the other feedback we receive.

Adium is supposed to be as fully customizable in every way, thus in my belief old features should be allowed as an option!

No it is not. This may be what you want, but that doesn't make it what Adium is supposed to be.

Especially when it takes little to no work to preserve the old features as an option (seeing as they were already built that way in the first place...). Why wouldn't you give that option?

It requires tons of work to maintain, support, and test options and features. This is a common misconception by our users.

I'm talking about features like changing where the connection buttons are, and certain other features, like whether or not you want the options in the status menu to be on the file menu.

I can't believe the things you guys complain about... it's absolutely ridiculous.

[Adam Iser]

Either way, it would make the application far more desirable in a lot of people's opinions. I know tons of people (on the forums, as well as friends in real life) who have criticisms about certain features being removed in almost every updated version.

I disagree.

We need to continue improving and enhancing this application. Spending the majority of our development time implementing and maintaining options that < 3% of our userbase actually uses will not result in a more desirable application.

Our development time is limited. You cannot expect us to trade functionality that will please 40,000 users for something that will make 10 or 15 happy. This is what a lot of you are asking for and it's pretty selfish