SimpleTicket: Still Open Source (still great taste!)
I noticed a few comments from Ward and Vince regarding the status of SimpleTicket as an open source project. To Ward’s question, “…does this mean that SimpleTicket is no longer open source?” Absolutely not, we are committed to keeping SimpleTicket open source using the GPL.
To Vince’s answer, “…he took it back in house to develop.” The hard part about building software is deciding what to build. In the end we need SimpleTicket for our business and we must have certain features. One day I looked at the demo version and it looked nothing like the software we had intended, instead it was circa 1999 radio buttons. I proposed to the two most active non-Architel developers that they continue the project with their vision and we would continue a different project using our vision. They decided they would rather complain than to continue their own version of the project.
To meet our deadlines (we had missed our May deadline working with the community) we hired coders to complete the second version of SimpleTicket. Once it is released we would love to start building a community around the project. Ward, we would love to have you on board. But just as I said to the other developers, I don’t want you to waste your time on code that will never find its way into SimpleTicket. By working together we can make sure that we all get what we want. Go ahead and wait for the new code and if you like it and want to get involved please give me a call or send me an email.
July 7th, 2006 at 5:04 am
As one of those non-architel developers. I don’t think it’s fair to say decided to complain instead of continue our own version. We decided the exact same thing that you did: that the code underlying the current version wasn’t worth continuing and that it was better to rewrite it from scratch. It’s also unfair to say we decided to complain instead of continue because both of us were quite willing to continue with it had you not killed it. We both made it quite clear that was the case.
You also didn’t miss your May deadline “Working with the community” because you never actually WORKED WITH THE COMMUNITY. The non-architel developers were the only ones doing any work.
July 8th, 2006 at 8:35 pm
Masukomi - you contend that “non-architel developers were the only ones doing any work?” The truth is Architel wrote all of the original code and worked to resolve the bugs, to say we were not doing any work is sort of crazy (not fair to Alex and Rodrigo who added thousands of lines of code after the release).
On a positive note, your code was actually very helpful and it has been incorporated into the new release - some of the code contributed by others (i.e. I won’t name names) was simply a mess and we were tired of arguing about whether or not we should commit it. Check out the new release and lets revisit then. We have lots of folks ready to work on the project, we would love to have you back in the game.
July 27th, 2006 at 10:24 am
As the other of the two non-Architel developers, I have to say I agree with Masukomi. However, I would love to see the new version when released. Also the statement, “Alex and Rodrigo who added thousands of lines of code after the release” is patently false. Architel’s contributions to the branch called masukomi, which we all agreed would be the basis for hte next version, were very minimal. And about the May deadline, once Kate stopped workin gon the code I was the only one doing any serious work on the code. It was frustrating to be the “one man volunteer army” trying to complete a May deadline. Kate actually did a lot of research into “what was done by whom, when” as the project was being ‘reorganized’, and her findings were pretty shocking (ie Architel came very close to not committing a single line of code to the masukomi branch). I hope the next time around things are smoother (whether or not I am involved - as I am now busy with many other ‘paying’ projects).
To turn around now and say you had developers working on it after Kevin Marvin left, and after the initial release is just not true. They were modding the internal version that Architel uses to fix major bugs so your IT shop could keep running, but were not a part of the community effort, as there code was never seen by anyone outside Architel.
July 29th, 2006 at 6:33 pm
That must be the confusion. Our code was added to the main codebase - i.e. for use by Architel (and anyone else interested in taking a look - it was and is still open). Our team did not add code to the Masukomi branch because your branch did not conform to our vision of the project. We are very happy for you to take your branch and go with it, but it just isn’t SimpleTicket, and at the end of the day we do not have the time to contribute to two different open source ticketing projects. We did take several modules from the Masukomi branch and included them in the main codebase (the pagination work Kate did was very good). But in general, we didn’t find any of your code useful to the project. I understand that it was useful to a project you were working on for a client, but you might stop bashing us for not wanting to use it.
Zed Shaw had a great post about what you were doing. He calls it “Code Fisting” - i.e. shoving large amounts of code at people where it isn’t wanted. I wrote about it here: http://simpleticketblog.weblogswork.com/2006/07/24/community-contribution-ideas/
You needed more “Code Lube” and I suspect that your ideas/code might have been welcomed, you never attended a single conference call or participated in any of our open discussions on what we needed. Kate did… Much of Kate’s contributions were useful. Yours were not…