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Please opensource Pivotal Tracker
I know you guys are giving us a lot already with this awesome software, but I think opensourcing it could *really* bring it to the next level. It would probably make it the leading story/issue tracking solution out there and create a rich ecosystem around it, with companies offering services and extensions and stuff.
You might consider following a business model similar to Wordpress, with the code available for self-hosting, but also offering a hosted version with advanced features or extra security, backups, etc., not to mention the extra business you'd get building custom software to integrate it with internal company solutions and workflows.
You might consider following a business model similar to Wordpress, with the code available for self-hosting, but also offering a hosted version with advanced features or extra security, backups, etc., not to mention the extra business you'd get building custom software to integrate it with internal company solutions and workflows.
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The company has not planned to implement this.
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Inappropriate?Dual-licensing it as AGPL/proprietary could be a way of further guaranteeing a business model, as it would stop competitors from hosting it themselves without giving anything back. This way, they either pay you in money or in code.
I’m excited
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Inappropriate?Helder, we are very happy with the ecosystem that is growing around our API. If there are any actions or views that a tool needs that are not currently available via our API, we encourage you to suggest and discuss them here, and we will be happy to consider them.3 Comments Add a comment
This is one of the best points
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Thanks for replying, Mike.
This suggestion isn't about any one particular feature that is missing. It's more about putting my company's trust on a product I have no control over. So if, for some reason, Pivotal discontinues Tracker, I have no hope that the community (along with myself) will be able to continue its development. That would be a great handicap to my development process. Data portability is more than being able to export and backup my stories. It's being sure that I can take it anywhere and still have the software to use it. That I won't have to shoehorn the data into a similar-but-different tracker, adapt my development process around the new tool, retrain my staff and rewrite all custom extensions I'd written for Tracker. So for me it would be a big economical liability.
As for features, even though I can suggest them here and I know you guys pay attention and do your best to implement them, it's another thing I'd have to be dependent on. If I need to change the API myself or do any sort of adaptation, I'd have to suggest it, wait for it to be considered and implemented before I had it, assuming it would in fact be accepted. And, since your resources are limited, I can't have any guarantee on how long that would take. I'd rather implement it myself or have someone do it for me and contribute my changes back.
These are concerns I've heard from many people, and addressing them by opensourcing PT would greatly increase adoption, while keeping many viable and very lucrative business models open to Pivotal. -
Helder, we want to secure your trust and get your company using Tracker, so here's the situation.
First off, Tracker means a lot to us and it's not going anywhere. We use it for essentially all of our Pivotal client work.
Secondly, there are indeed a lot of features that people want to build, and we're wary of that. Products with too many features quickly become unusable, confusing, or even counterproductive. Developers may be able to use Tracker well; but remember that we're aiming to make it also work comfortably for team members with considerably less technical experience.
Take an example like story dependencies. There are several ways we could implement this use case. If we choose one and establish it, then we can go ahead and add a couple convenience features to further enable that pattern. If, on the other hand, three to five alternatives were produced by the open source community, the burden of figuring out which was least likely to hurt you in the long run would be distributed to all our users rather than handled by us.
We appreciate the suggestion and it is in many ways a good and exciting idea, but it's not appropriate for this product right now. -
"First off, Tracker means a lot to us and it's not going anywhere. "
You just don't know that. What if you get bought? Or owned by some patent troll? Or half of you smashed by a meteor? History has shown, time after time, that if you put your data on someone else's system you're asking for trouble. If you take that kind of a risk, you better have a plan B, you better have some way to get it out and get it running again. Your code as free software and regular dumps of my data would guarantee that I'm safe, and I'd be at ease with using your hosted service.
As for keeping feature creep under check and your general vision for the project, you certainly have no problem doing that with software libre. You can choose what patches to take in, if any. And other people are free to fork if they want to try something else. -
Inappropriate?Pivotal Tracker is a product used by developers, and as such open sourcing it should appeal even more to these users than "regular" users.
I’m sure Pivotal will want to be as big as Wordpress
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this is one of the best points
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This reply was removed on 11/27/09.
see the change log -
Inappropriate?Helder, I have the same concerns you have. What happens if Pivotal is bought up or if something catastrophic were to happen to the business (a lawsuit puts it out of business, etc.) or simply arrives at the conclusion that it can no longer offer service publicly and for free. Pivoltal is under no obligation to guarantee any level of service or data security to non-clients.
However, this is their product. They own it. I completely understand them in not open sourcing the product. Perhaps at some point they may feel benevolent and liberate a version of it, but they've put their own resources over time into this and it's unfair to ask them to simply give it away.
What I think Pivotal can do is think of a way to monetize the tool offering a subscription which would provide a minimum level of service. The idea of securing trust with the existing free model is not rational or arguable for anyone trying to run a small or big business. This is not Twitter. This is a true day-to-day business and development tool.
I hope Pivotal will consider some sort of cheap subscription model so they can monetize a minimum level of service for those of us who are on the outside (outside being someone who doesn't work for Pivotal and is not a client of Pivotal).
Aside from all of this, I want to thank Pivotal for putting this tool out there. The mere fact that it's there, accesible to everyone, and so fantastically well designed is a boon to those of us who hope for a better way of implementing projects and developing.
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This is one of the best points
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Hi Miguel,
I totally agree with the business model perspective. I just don't like it that they won't come out and say it, instead giving pseudo-techical explanations. I find it much more honest when people do it like StackOverflow:
http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questio...
Cheers,
Helder
