I know Maidsafe is allergic to timelines, but…
Is there a ballpark guess to when alpha 3 will be launched?
If not a ballpark maybe a year 2018, 2019, 2020?
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Well lets stay conservative and say 2020 eh 
. I doubt maidsafe dev’s internally would disagree there and probably will be done sooner 
. If they don’t have confidence in A3 by 2020 then I be 
. Nick had a post once about how much funding they had and it sounded like based on that that A3 needs to be done relatively soonish.
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Alpha 1 launched Aug 2016
Alpha 2 launched Sep 2017
Alpha 3 Oct 2018?
Is Alpha 3 close to completion or does it have a long way to go?
I’m not asking for specifics but a general idea of where the project is at this point.
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“close to completion” doesn’t mean anything to Maidsafe. A few months ago they were “practically at the finish line”, which could mean anything. 7 weeks ago they did a stocktake and were going to share with the community " in a few weeks time" which probably got all too hard
If you’re genuinely interested in knowing when Alpha3 is going to happen, keep an eye on this page (note: if on a mobile, force desktop page)
Done and green are your friends 
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It would seem it has passed the half way mark since alpha 2 release and could be further along than that. But with all new development there can be a few potholes needing filling along the “roadmap”
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Alpha 3 is implementing a critical part of the security of the network, so it is important (and more efficient) to take time and try to get this right.
So while I understand that when having cracked concensus, and thought (genuinely) they were near the finish line, actually going that final mile takes longer (rightly) than it feels at the time.
It’s the same with all software tbh. I think engineers have to be optimists or we’d never start these damn undertakings.
Yesterday I started a nice neat little design for part of SAFE Drive file handling… I thought, yes, code up by lunchtime, test I haven’t broken anything by the afternoon, and be starting to integrate by evening. It was absolutely realistic and feasible, and as soon as I started testing nothing worked, even after I took out my changes. That took most of the day to sort, and then I started to think my design needed revisiting to handle multiple applications messing with files at the same time.
It took me three to four hours to go through various stages of damn this is hard, depression, investigation, and finally managing to convince myself it is somebody else’s problem (the FUSE implementation on one side, and the Maidsafe client libs on the other) and that my original design is all I need. Phew, and I hope I’m right.
So today I’m back to about where I thought I’d be by lunch time yesterday, and it’s only taken me three to four times as long as I thought to do a simple design with three classes, code up and document the main areas… though I now have a few notes to write on why I don’t think I need worry about multiple apps accessing it. So I’m not as far ahead as I just thought!
Software is hard, but that’s what makes it such fun when you crack a problem, come up with an elegant design, or get people saying, wow this is cool! when they use it.
Imagine if every project you started was like trying to build the first steam railway (engine, tracks, carriages, signaling, supply chains etc). If you’d asked Stephenson how long it would be until his railway was running, what do you think he’d have said? He had to be an optimist.
Software is mostly like building the first steam railway, just at different scales. It’s not like putting up a garden fence.
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“practically at the finish line”
… since 2014.
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That was a misquote on @Cryptoskeptic’s part. They announced being at the finish line of the new web.
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It depends on which school of English you subscribe to
Not really. A section with a title usually means that you are talking about the details of that. Unless specifically stated otherwise.
Also the real large hint that it could not be talking of the SAFE network coding is that it is obvious to anyone following the updates that we are not anywhere near the finish line because we don’t even have alpha 3 yet.
At least that was the case in my primary/secondary/uni-report writing. And we would lose marks if we did otherwise.
Although I do agree that there have been times that over optimistic statements have been made. That is a common mistake of programmers.
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Well, a couple of fellas scan-read the finish line part, cut it out of the context and were about to throw a party, which led to some members of the team clarifying that particular sentence was indeed pointing towards the website, so it got clarified in the comments.
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I love how some people moan when maidsafe don’t set deadlines, then read them into every small comment as if they were accurate. Maidsafe have said they don’t know how long it will take. They have been honest about this since realising how far they were originally out.
We all want alpha 3, including maidsafe. Berating the team for not delivering sooner isn’t going to help it to arrive any quicker. It will just piss off and demoralize the team, perhaps pushing the deadline further away. They will already be acutely aware of the pressure to deliver, without smart ass comments on this forum.
If you think you can do a better job, fork the repo and demonstrate it. Funnily enough, no other team are close to what maidsafe is in the process of achieving, so perhaps it isn’t as easy as those arm chair critics make out.
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I have nothing but respect for the team. I’m just curious of the state of progress. If it takes until 2030 or 2040 that’s ok. The original question was, what was they’re ballpark guess of where they are at with alpha 3 and how far do they think they have to go to launch alpha 3?
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Isn’t it clear that they don’t know?
I am sure they could guess, but then you would get more threads like this, quoting their inaccuracy in the future.
If you read the updates, you should get a sense of what is or isn’t blocking progress.
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Everyone here has respect for the team. There is no relationship between asking about or providing commentary on the progress (or the seeming lack thereof) and the level if respect for the team. Maidsafe has made overtures to completion dates on many aspects of this project and failed. That’s not abnormal, that’s just business. Maidsafe has firm hold on the levers to this project and doesn’t really care about deadlines. They can afford that attitude for as long as the money lasts. If you want an idea when this project may launch, look at the burn rate. Because if they need more money, you can bet timescales will be included in the funding prospectus.
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By November 30th the maidsafe company will need to file its accounts, which will be available on companies house. Which means it might be possible to calculate the burn-rate of cash? which could give us an approximate maximum release date?
Though I guess this might be difficult if they are profit making, have an income stream or the burn-rate has changed significantly. Maybe the latter could be offset with the weekly updates of hires/leavers.
Let’s hope they don’t need to raise more funds, because that’s a definite sign that the project is far from completion.
As @betterthantrav noted earlier, Alpha 1 came in Aug 2016 and Alpha 2 in September 2017. Alpha 3 must be at least a month or two away. That makes an average of over an year to deliver each iteration, and we still need Alpha 4 before reaching Beta.
At the same time, back in April @nicklambert posted that “based on current run rates and assets/prices we require no additional funding for at least 24 months by which time I would anticipate we will be revenue earning and sustainable/approach sustainability”.
If the above stands true, then there are two possible outcomes - either the team beats the odds and somehow delivers Alpha 3, and 4 and Beta in the next 19 months or somehow becomes sustainable without a complete product. Both seem unlikely to me, but I’d love to be proven wrong.
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I would agree with you but with PARSEC getting closer to completion, disjoint sections already complete, and data chains complete, there are only smaller hurdles from this point on besides maybe the farming algorithm. What’s even better is that we have competent community members jumping into the RFC processes and making proposals here in their own topics about Safecoin, proof of storage for vaults, and a couple others. Having some of these ideas roughly fleshed out should help speed up progress to an extent and gets some general consensus on how we feel about the possible implementations. They are a very conscientious company and their options for raising more capital are becoming more limited and into realms they aren’t as aligned with so I think they will really focus on the bare essentials for a proper network ASAP and then have split teams focus on revenue building and increasing core functionalities and upgrades before it’s too late.
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This!
20 characters.