ticket tracking (off-topic reply)

Mon Jul 8 09:22:32 UTC 2002

Avleen Wrote:

"It's fairly scalable abd works
well. I'm not keen on sharing the source code because I want to encourage
others to write it for themselves."

Avleen,

    I am just writing to just voice a suggestion, not looking for an
argument or make it sound like a negative critique.  You should re-consider
your choices for not providing the Source-Code, as not one single individual
posseses all of the intuition or capabilities in this world.  This is why
Open-Source is a great thing, individuals begin to take an active step in
the development process.  What might be a good application can be developed
into an awesome application.  I am a true and firm believer in open source,
and although I do not expect everyone in this world to agree with this set
mentality, I always try to at least share my view.
    Ticketing, Inventory, and Monitoring, tasks almost every individual that
subscribes to this list on a daily basis interacts with via applications,
logfiles, etc.  Add to this all the data that these tasks compile for the
administrator's through logs, and finally the archiving of this compiled
data, and you will see that analyzing and tracking become a major task.
    Thus applications (scripts, etc.) that interact with databases come into
play.  Now we can either purchase, build or modify.  The choices for which
one of these is performed lies within a great and wide scope that I do not
even want to detour to (Economical, Corporate Policies, Politics, Technical
Knowledge of Employees, etc.).  The point I want to get at is that  Open
Source benefits greatly those who choose to build or modify (and obviously
you built it yourself, Kudos!).  Individual developers can spend their time
adding, improving, and porting, thus benefitting you and the whole community
as a whole.  It is not bad to attempt to encourage individuals to learn how
to build their own applications, srcipts, programs, etc., and if this is
your goal, then in my opinion you are not helping but hurting those that
choose to develop.
    We do not all share the same level of knowledge, and sometimes it is
more helpfull to show those interested or in learning stages (I am
permanently stuck in this one) how the clock actually works, instead of
telling us about the clock but then deny us the marvelous thing it is.
    If you want to encourage us (us is an everyone else in this world) to
write it ourselves, then you will accomplish this task far easier by
sharing.  In doing so you will; 1. Inspire some to add new things; 2.
Educate others on how you did it;   3. Expose your application to endless
possabilities; 4. Benefit us all!
    Remmember; sharing is teahing, and teaching is learning.

    Well that last line was actually from my fortune cookie (had chinesse
for dinner)...LOL

    Gerardo Gregory