[H-GEN] Challange for you

[Andrae Muys]

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Harry Phillips wrote:
>>Seriously, the best way to get something closer to what you want, is
>>to start it yourself, and contribute the changes back. Open Source
> is very
>>much a "Build it and they will come" mentality.
> 
> I *knew* someone would post this type of reply.
> 

I suspect you "knew" that from past experience, however I'm not sure if you 
are aware of the deeper reason *why* you will always get this response.  An 
important thing to understand about OpenSource/FreeSoftware economics is 
altruism dosn't scale.

Successful projects are written either by the person who needs it (ie. the 
classic 'scratching an itch'), or by someone paid by a company that wants 
the software to exist.  The only exception I can think of off hand, is the 
GNU Project started by Richard Stallman for ideological reasons, and 
sustained at substantial personal cost.

The idea that there are these hordes of programmers out there eager and 
willing to write your program for you, if only you can find them, is 
laughably far from the truth.  Although there are journalists and various 
commentators who, at a loss to explain this foreign culture, jump to this 
conclusion.

> I love linux and the flexability of it. The problem I have is that if
> programming in any language were scaled from 1 to 100, I would score
> about a 0.1 in my best catergory. I just don't have the time or effort
> to learn it from the ground up.

That's a bit of a pity, as a large part of unix is designed around the 
proven fact that any reasonably intelligent person is able to develop and 
use simple programming skills.  Now I'm not suggesting that you aren't 
intelligent, on the contary I'm suggesting that you are underestimating 
your own capacity to develop small applications.

Now granted the development of a 100,000 line, all singing, all dancing, 
request tracker is probably beyond your available time commitment, but
I suggest you take a look at the url you posted recently,

http://www.linuxnewbie.org/nhf/Programming/Text_Processing_Pipelines.html

Which discusses one form of programming everyone can learn with only 
incremental effort.

In the case of the request tracker, I downloaded RT, and took a look at the 
db schema.  I've included the definition of the Users table[1].  You'll 
notice that the rt application supports alot more than a simple email 
address.  So there is no need to attempt to write an entire request tracker 
on your own, just find a way to expose the full capabilities of the Users 
table through whatever interface interests you (I suspect web).  This is a 
simpler problem, and one you may be able to handle.  If not, then that you 
are offering to cover some of the costs is signifigant, hopefully you'll be 
able to find someone to assist.

Andrae Muys

[1] The Postgresql data definition for the Users table.

CREATE TABLE Users (
   id serial NOT NULL  ,
   Name varchar(120) NOT NULL  ,
   Password varchar(40)   ,
   Comments TEXT   ,
   Signature TEXT   ,
   EmailAddress varchar(120)   ,
   FreeformContactInfo TEXT   ,
   Organization varchar(200)   ,
   Privileged integer   ,
   RealName varchar(120)   ,
   Nickname varchar(16)   ,
   Lang varchar(16)   ,
   EmailEncoding varchar(16)   ,
   WebEncoding varchar(16)   ,
   ExternalContactInfoId varchar(100)   ,
   ContactInfoSystem varchar(30)   ,
   ExternalAuthId varchar(100)   ,
   AuthSystem varchar(30)   ,
   Gecos varchar(16)   ,
   HomePhone varchar(30)   ,
   WorkPhone varchar(30)   ,
   MobilePhone varchar(30)   ,
   PagerPhone varchar(30)   ,
   Address1 varchar(200)   ,
   Address2 varchar(200)   ,
   City varchar(100)   ,
   State varchar(100)   ,
   Zip varchar(16)   ,
   Country varchar(50)   ,
   Creator integer   ,
   Created timestamp   ,
   LastUpdatedBy integer   ,
   LastUpdated timestamp   ,
   Disabled int2 NOT NULL DEFAULT 0 ,
   PRIMARY KEY (id)
);
CREATE UNIQUE INDEX Users1 ON Users (Name);
CREATE INDEX Users3 ON Users (id, EmailAddress);
CREATE INDEX Users4 ON Users (EmailAddress);


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