Over at CNet , Matt Assay found out about SimpleTicket.
SimpleTicket was developed by Architel in 2005 for internal use. We looked at Heat, Remedy and hosted solutions like Parature, but most of them were too complicated and expensive for our needs. Next we looked at lowend solutions like Intuit?s TrackIt and found it lacking in several ways. We needed a simple to use system that was flexible enough for us to add features on the fly. We decided to build it ourselves. SimpleTicket was the result....
So I don't know the guys over at Architel and I can't comment on their background or their real experience, so I`m a bit abusing this case as a worst case scenario.
But when I read something like that I wonder. Why didn't those people look at the existing Open Source alternatives in the first place ? I think we have been using OTRS since before 2003 (don't know the exact year) and there are other alternatives out there such as RT. And even if you don't like the features or you need some more.. that's wha open source is all about .. you should improve the product , add the functionality you need and contribute it back to the community.
When I read a n article like the one above to me it translates as Back in 2005 we were idiots not knowing about the whole other software world that was called Open Source, we were shopping
for a (proprietary) ticketing system and we couldn't find one that had a correct price tag. We decided to build ourselves, SimpleTicket was the restult.
Now 2 years later we realise that a ticketing system is not our core business and we decided to Open Source it. Doing so will not only free our time as we don't need to develop it ourselve anymore but it will also give us visibility on the market
I exaggerate a bit .. and while SimpleTicket might not be like this others are.. and it's just not the way opensource works.
I see too much people reinventing the wheel these days... maybe if we could all have a look at what's out there first, improve on that so we can use the time we have available to build something that really needs to be build ?
Like a good multilayer calendaring solution. Or a working Timesheet application ?
