[abofh]

I think I agree with you for discrete product releases, but for ongoing SaaS and moreso PaaS, it's helpful for integrations to have some visibility on your roadmap. I'm might just write a hack workaround for some issue if I have a belief that in 2024 you'll solve X -- I've got bigger fish to fry. But if I know you've removed it from your roadmap and it was planned by me, I can put it on mine to resolve. Surprising me with features means more often than I care to admit I write something to solve a problem, use it for a few months, and then vendor comes out with a solution to it that's close enough and better supported so I toss out code -- with a roadmap I could have avoided overlapping efforts.

But I'm more on the operational side - so I care more than most about the integrations with lots of vendors, different PoV's may of course differ.

[Brian_K_White]

But that was the whole point. You never had any visibility into their roadmap.

You only evet had visibility into a daydream that changed. What good is, no scratch that, there is no good in knowing something that you only think you know. It's negative value. It's worse than knowing nothing at all. It doesn't matter how much you want to know, and how good it feels to have that want pacified.

Similarly, this is also why even if someone does publish a road map, you should ignore it and only deal with whatever exists as it exists right now. Make all decisions, including looking ahead, based on nothing but the current state.

[MereInterest]

By that same logic, if somebody tells me they will pick me up on the way to a movie, I should go there on my own because they aren’t here already. I should walk to the movies, because my car is not currently running and whether or not it starts is in the future.

There’s such a thing as trust. Tools, people, and groups that have shown themselves to be trustworthy may continue to be trusted. It is also reasonable to point out these shifts, so that others know when announcements should no longer be trusted.

[latexr]

I feel you. You seem to be reasonable and empathetic and understand that sometimes priorities change and that an imperfect roadmap can still bring benefits over a hidden one. On the other hand, there are a lot of people who feel entitled to get anything you ever mentioned, even (especially) if they’re getting it for free, and managing those people when they complain is time consuming and drains your sanity. Both of which take your time and energy away from improving the product to all the reasonable people.