Need development roadmap
 

As we are no longer able to discuss vb4 in a general sense i feel the need for a roadmap/development feature list and timeline is extremely important to be made public.

Ray stated in this thread that communication and customer-developer interaction will be improved but the locking of the area i think is a step in completely the opposite direction.

The roadmap needs to list all planned features, although doesn't need to be completely detailed, and an estimated release for each of these. It wont worry me if these are pushed out to future versions as i can understand it will be an ever-changing list.

As a customer i don't want to be simply presented with a finalised product with no chance to give input into my needs as a paying customer. I want to see a list of features, suggest my inputs into them, watch it grow in alpha, beta and become a final product.

I don't want to be told "we are considering all 2000 ideas and you will find out which have been chosen at in what form at release".

The timeline helps me in my own personal planning and development. If a feature is due to be released in version x and version x is estimated to be a few months away i can hold off. If a feature isn't going to be implemented or it's 18 months away, i'll investigate plugins or contribute my own reasources into developing something in that area.

I am really disappointed in this change of direction, as i believe everyone here has the product's best interests at heart. This feedback should be seen as a positive that can help create a better product, not negative that you feel you need to silence.