SimpleTicket goes old school: #spur IRC Channel
Our goal is to make the IRC channel our main forum for real-time communication. You will need an IRC client to get on. For OSX users try Colloquy.
Pick a nickname, select IRC as the server protocol and select irc.freenode.net as the chat server (no proxy, port 6667). Now you are ready to join the Spur chatroom just type: #spur and you are in.
SimpleTicket Update
Several of you have emailed asking for updates on the new code and instead of replying individually we decided to post our progress here.
We have built a secondary code repository and a new deployment server to demonstrate advances. Our current estimates are that we will have our next release ready for internal review within 17 and 22 days. Here is the breakdown:
- ticket search engine, creation, update and ajax calls (6-7 days)
- customers, users and engineer implementation (2-3 days)
- client side interface recoding (4-5 days)
- statistics (1-2 days)
- bug fixes, performance optimization and rss (4-5 days)
The latest code was delivered today and included ticket lists and customers list with all views detailed in the version 2.0 wireframes. The code is 100% new (rails/xhtml/css) with database access. We are generating some very nice code!
SimpleTicket Update Since Open Letter
Thank you for all of your emails of support for the project. We certainly appreciate it! Building software is harder than it looks. Last night we engaged a new rails coder in France to begin refactoring the code and implementing our vision for the UI.
Last night we met via IM and decided to rebuild SimpleTicket from scratch. Once we have built the new base we will begin plugging in each module previously created by Architel’s coders as well as those created by the community. Next we will work to integrated the UI contemplated by the wireframes Alex created (with various modifications).
What is new? Well, as of last night our coders have started work! Finally! We will keep you posted on our progress… (no more red tape)
Open Letter to the SimpleTicket Community
Dear SimpleTicket Community,
This morning I received an email from a member of our community and I wrote a long response to him, but I felt it would be better to respond here instead.
My name is Alexander Muse and I run Spur, the company behind SimpleTicket, Architel, Weblogs Work and Big in Japan. Currently, I am the owner of the ‘SimpleTicket Vision‘ as it is. You may have seen my latest SimpleTicket wireframes on Flickr or here on this blog.
Last year an Architel employee, a rails and programming novice, began coding what was to become SimpleTicket. From the front it looked cool and many of my associates who saw early versions of the software suggested that we sell it. I decided, instead, to release it as an open source project. I HAD NO EXPERIENCE WITH OPEN SOURCE PROJECTS.
We released the code early this year and implemented it for use at Architel in February. It was a huge improvement over our Lotus Notes ticketing system, but it was riddled with bugs. Soon it became apparent that the code behind the cool ajax and javascript effects was horrible. Downloads on Sourceforge surged to over 2000 in the first two weeks and coders began uploading code fixes almost immediately. They were doing crazy stuff (relative to my vision) and some of them started getting angry that we did not adopt their code immediately.
I sat our team down and explained how excited I was that a community was forming around SimpleTicket, but I felt that we needed to get them onboard with our vision. We launched this blog/website. We started holding weekly conference calls (open to anyone) available via podcast. Our goal was to help explain where we needed help and what we didn’t need help on. I wanted to get our vision out there and see if anyone else wanted to join in.
Many of the original coders interested in the project became frustrated with the state of the code (ouch it was ugly). Others were frustrated with our vision (it was a little blurry at the start we must admit). A few kept working, some on issues we agreed needed to be resolved and some on issues we had no intention of ever adopting. We tried to explain our position. We offered a roadmap for an API that would allow for non-vision code to be incorporated. But still we don’t have agreement from the community on our vision. I want to fix that.
The Plan:
Many open source communities are made up of just a few programmers who work on the primary code base. Most members of these communities actually work on plugins that extend the features of the primary code base. Wordpress, a wildly successful project, is one such example. For now, we plan to follow the ‘WordPress’ model and limit the number of people who are working on the primary code base.
Alex Leverington will continue to be the project manager of the SimpleTicket project, but the day-to-day coding will be done by a new full-time programmer (we are in the process of selecting one of several candidates). His (no women applied) primary objective will be to clean up the code and recreate the workflow to mirror the workflow detailed in my wireframes. His second objective will be to build an API to allow a community to form around extensions related to SimpleTicket.
The first plugins for SimpleTicket (we are building it) will be for Basecamp utilizing their API to allow for project management within SimpleTicket. The second will be for Blinksale utilizing their API to allow for time tracking and billing within Simpleticket. There is also an LDAP integration plugin scheduled. These don’t fit within my vision, but for Architel the Basecamp plugin is very important. For other companies the Blinksale plugin is equally important. There are a million other ways to extend SimpleTicket.
Programmers who want to be part of the primary code base team should agree to attend our weekly conference calls and work on open tickets in the system. We are comfortable hiring programmers to work on the primary code base, but we would LOVE outside, community help. We don’t want anyone to get angry that we are not including their work into the primary code base so unless you are part of the primary code base team please don’t waste your time coding anything but plugins. If you have a great idea and want to join the primary team, just get on the conference call present your idea and if we share your vision (or you share ours) we will welcome you in. You can then be comfortable your code (assuming it is good) will be incorporated into SimpleTicket.
Finally, you are free to take our code (I would wait until we release the next version) and start your own ticket project. You can call it HappyTicket, ComplexTicket, or MyTicket. You can do anything you want as long as you release the code publically using the same General Public License we used. I would recommend if you are that pumped on our ticketing system you figure out how to get on the primary code team or atleast help develop plugins. I hope this diatribe helped… Feel free to call me if you want to discuss.
Regards,
Alexander Muse
214.550.2003