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BSAG | 10 Jul 2011 13:25
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The future of the Tracks project - a call for volunteers

Dear Tracks Users,

I'm sorry for the rather portentious-sounding subject, but I'd like to
discuss the future of the project. First, let me start at the
beginning...

Back in 2004 (I think), I started reading about the GTD technique, and
realised it would be a great help in getting myself organised. At the
time, there were really no applications for GTD: no native
applications for my own platform of choice (Mac), and really nothing
in the way of web applications either. I was getting interested in
Ruby on Rails at the time, and since I learn programming languages
more easily when I have a practical project to get my teeth into, I
decided to see if I could build a simple GTD web application using
Rails. I did that, and since other people expressed an interest in it,
decided to Open Source it so that anyone could use it and/or improve
it.

I was really happy that Tracks attracted lots of very talented
developers over the years, and they (those of you reading this know
who you are!) have done a terrific job of improving and extending
Tracks. What started as my rather simple and scruffy application has
gained immeasurably from the time, talent, expertise and effort that
many people have kindly put into it. I would like to take this
opportunity to thank all of you for all you have done for the project
- not just the people who have contributed to development, but to
everyone who has helped answer questions in the forum, solved
problems, evangelised or otherwise helped to make Tracks such a great
community.
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Reinier Balt | 13 Jul 2011 08:00
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Re: The future of the Tracks project - a call for volunteers

Hi all,

For the last couple of years I have been maintaining Tracks. This has been a lot of fun. I am using Tracks
daily, so I have a personal stake in this. Unfortunately my family and a full time day job takes priority
over Tracks. Sometimes it makes you feel guilty not investing as much time in Tracks that I like. Since
there are not a lot of developers working on Tracks, I think this is the biggest reason Tracks is behind
feature-wise and technology-wise as it is right now. There are a lot of nice directions we could take
Tracks, but I am afraid I cannot do this with my available time. I also notice that I postpone other projects
to work on bugs in Tracks which takes out the fun. And last but not least, I thing interest in Tracks is less
these days, given the response to the email of BSAG and 
 my pervious email about features for Tracks 2.1.

As BSAG explained, I will not be putting in a lot of my time in Tracks in the future. I'd like to do a 2.1 and
probably 2.2 and then take a step back.  This probably means I'll support Tracks for about a year or so with
diminishing effort.

As for Tracks resources. I'm all for migrating the wikiS and website to github. I do not have an alternative
for the forum. I think they are very valuable to keep around, maybe in read-only state. Perhaps continue
the forums on google code? This mailing list could then also be migrated to google. 

Reinier

> -----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
> Van: BSAG [mailto:butshesagirl@...]
> Verzonden: zondag 10 juli 2011 13:25
> Aan: tracks-discuss@...
> CC: Reinier Balt
> Onderwerp: The future of the Tracks project - a call for volunteers
> 
> Dear Tracks Users,
(Continue reading)

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Alexandr Krylovskiy | 13 Jul 2011 09:17
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Re: The future of the Tracks project - a call for volunteers

Hi guys,
It's unfortunate to hear that Tracks project doesn't get so much
attention from developers.

I'm not a developer, but just a user. I'm using Tracks because it's the
best GTD tool I found. It gives me full control over my stuff and
provides access from any place and device. It implements GTD in the way
I like and it is Free Software.

I want to thank you guys for all the time and efforts you put into
making this great piece of software.

Unfortunately, as Reiner said, Tracks is getting behind technology and
if there will be no changes made (which means more developers involved)
in a year or two from now Tracks would be dead. At least, it won't
attract new users, who by that time will get used to shiny GTD
applications on their smartphones. Yes, I think Tracks really needs
good, fully functional mobile apps for major platforms to survive.

The problem of finding new developers is that we are looking for GTD
enthusiasts with programming skills. Time shows though, that most people
who try to follow GTD, don't have time for hobbies like this one :)

I don't know if someone have already mentioned anything like that, but I
believe it will make sense if we find someone who would like to build a
*paid* service around Tracks. Something like gtdify.com (who's behind
it, btw?), but with extra features available for premium users (mobile
apps, improved statistics, notifications, backups, etc). The company
behind that service will help with the development of Tracks (we won't
loose it since it's GPL). I think you got my idea.
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BSAG | 16 Jul 2011 11:54
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Re: The future of the Tracks project - a call for volunteers

On 13 July 2011 08:17, Alexandr Krylovskiy <wing@...> wrote:
> Hi guys,
> It's unfortunate to hear that Tracks project doesn't get so much
> attention from developers.
>
> I'm not a developer, but just a user. I'm using Tracks because it's the
> best GTD tool I found. It gives me full control over my stuff and
> provides access from any place and device. It implements GTD in the way
> I like and it is Free Software.
>
> I want to thank you guys for all the time and efforts you put into
> making this great piece of software.

Thanks, and glad you find it useful.

> Unfortunately, as Reiner said, Tracks is getting behind technology and
> if there will be no changes made (which means more developers involved)
> in a year or two from now Tracks would be dead. At least, it won't
> attract new users, who by that time will get used to shiny GTD
> applications on their smartphones. Yes, I think Tracks really needs
> good, fully functional mobile apps for major platforms to survive.
>
>
> The problem of finding new developers is that we are looking for GTD
> enthusiasts with programming skills. Time shows though, that most people
> who try to follow GTD, don't have time for hobbies like this one :)

I don't want to say any more just now, but we may possibly have a
developer interested in acting as a curator of the project. I'll let
everyone know more when things are more settled.
(Continue reading)

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BSAG | 16 Jul 2011 13:27
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Tracks is now an Organisation!

I've completed the first part of the move and created an Organisation
for Tracks:

https://github.com/TracksApp

(Unfortunately someone has already got an apparently dormant
organization called 'Tracks', so I couldn't use that name)

Myself and Reinier are owners (I'll remove myself as an owner once we
get settled) with admin, push and pull rights, and the other
contributors to the project (Luke Melia and Eric Allen are
Contributors, with push+pull rights). If anyone else would like to be
a contributor (or an owner), let me know.

The main thing is that anyone who is currently pulling from
bsag/tracks or bsag/tracks_manual needs to start pulling and pushing
to TracksApp/tracks and TracksApp/tracks_manual. I've updated all the
README files with this info.

Once the transition has been made, I will transfer ownership of
bsag/tracks to the TracksApp Organization, and probably delete my repo
to avoid confusion.

cheers,

bsag

--

-- 
but she's a girl - the weblog of a female geek
http://www.rousette.org.uk
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BSAG | 16 Jul 2011 19:58
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Wiki has moved

Dear all,

I've moved the wiki to its new home on GitHub, which has meant *a lot*
of copying and pasting ;-)

https://github.com/TracksApp/tracks/wiki

I've deleted the old wiki to avoid confusion, and linked to the new
wiki from the sidebar on the project site. I did also try to redirect
the old URL, but the ExpressionEngine config is fighting me, so I'll
have to leave that for now.

I think the GitHub wikis are pretty nice. If you have pull rights to
the repo, you can also pull the wiki repository, edit it on your own
machine and then push to push the changes. If you don't have pull
rights, but you do have a GitHub account, you can edit and create
pages through the web interface, which is rather nice anyway.

Let me know if you've got any comments.

cheers,

bsag

--

-- 
but she's a girl - the weblog of a female geek
http://www.rousette.org.uk
butshesagirl@...
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Luke Melia | 17 Jul 2011 06:41
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Re: The future of the Tracks project - a call for volunteers

Big props to bsag, Eric, Reinier and the other folks who have contributed to keeping Tracks going over the years.

On Saturday, July 16, 2011 at 5:54 AM, BSAG wrote:

 I really hope Tracks keeps going too. I only wish the best things for my baby, it's just that it's time for her to leave my home and stand on her own two feet :-)

I feel similarly. While I also have too much going on to contribute code (just started a new business in the consumer mobile space), I'd be happy to offer up my "consulting services" for free to any developer working on Tracks and needing to validate an approach or review an implementation. I learned Rails by contributing to Tracks 4 or 5 years ago, and used that experience get a job leading technology for a Ruby startup. I'd be happy for the opportunity to help any up and coming developers at a similar spot.


Best,
Luke

_______________________________________________
Tracks-discuss mailing list
Tracks-discuss@...
http://lists.rousette.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/tracks-discuss
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BSAG | 17 Jul 2011 12:59
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Re: The future of the Tracks project - a call for volunteers

On 17 July 2011 05:41, Luke Melia <luke <at> lukemelia.com> wrote:
> Big props to bsag, Eric, Reinier and the other folks who have contributed to
> keeping Tracks going over the years.
>
> On Saturday, July 16, 2011 at 5:54 AM, BSAG wrote:
>
>  I really hope Tracks keeps going too. I only wish the best things for my
> baby, it's just that it's time for her to leave my home and stand on her own
> two feet :-)
>
> I feel similarly. While I also have too much going on to contribute code
> (just started a new business in the consumer mobile space), I'd be happy to
> offer up my "consulting services" for free to any developer working on
> Tracks and needing to validate an approach or review an implementation. I
> learned Rails by contributing to Tracks 4 or 5 years ago, and used that
> experience get a job leading technology for a Ruby startup. I'd be happy for
> the opportunity to help any up and coming developers at a similar spot.

Thanks very much for all your contributions over the years - I should
have mentioned more people by name, but there are too many! Thanks
also for the offer of your consulting services - I think that would be
a great help.

cheers,

bsag

--

-- 
but she's a girl - the weblog of a female geek
http://www.rousette.org.uk
butshesagirl <at> rousette.org.uk
_______________________________________________
Tracks-discuss mailing list
Tracks-discuss <at> lists.rousette.org.uk
http://lists.rousette.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/tracks-discuss
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Stefan Richter | 17 Jul 2011 17:53
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Re: Tracks is now an Organisation!

Hi,

Thanks for your awesome work. There is an iPhone-App for Tracks in the store, does anybody whether it is open
source and whether we could also add it to the organisation? Also what are the requirements for getting push/pull-access?

Thanks,
Stefan

-----Original Message-----
From: tracks-discuss-bounces@...
[mailto:tracks-discuss-bounces@...] On Behalf
Of BSAG
Sent: July-16-11 1:28 PM
To: tracks-discuss@...
Subject: [Tracks-discuss] Tracks is now an Organisation!

I've completed the first part of the move and created an Organisation for Tracks:

https://github.com/TracksApp

(Unfortunately someone has already got an apparently dormant organization called 'Tracks', so I
couldn't use that name)

Myself and Reinier are owners (I'll remove myself as an owner once we get settled) with admin, push and pull
rights, and the other contributors to the project (Luke Melia and Eric Allen are Contributors, with
push+pull rights). If anyone else would like to be a contributor (or an owner), let me know.

The main thing is that anyone who is currently pulling from bsag/tracks or bsag/tracks_manual needs to
start pulling and pushing to TracksApp/tracks and TracksApp/tracks_manual. I've updated all the
README files with this info.

Once the transition has been made, I will transfer ownership of bsag/tracks to the TracksApp
Organization, and probably delete my repo to avoid confusion.

cheers,

bsag

--
but she's a girl - the weblog of a female geek http://www.rousette.org.uk
butshesagirl@... _______________________________________________
Tracks-discuss mailing list
Tracks-discuss@...
http://lists.rousette.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/tracks-discuss
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Stefan Richter | 17 Jul 2011 17:57
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Re: The future of the Tracks project - a call for volunteers

Hi,

Thanks to all the good work with Tracks, its and awesome software. I am a developer and user of Tracks and
would also like to increase my contributions as my time allows it. Tracks is a great application and a great
way for me to keep in touch with web developments trends.

Just my 2 cents and interest in Tracks and helping with its development.

-Stefan

-----Original Message-----
From: tracks-discuss-bounces <at> lists.rousette.org.uk
[mailto:tracks-discuss-bounces <at> lists.rousette.org.uk] On Behalf Of BSAG
Sent: July-17-11 12:59 PM
To: Luke Melia
Cc: tracks-discuss <at> lists.rousette.org.uk
Subject: [Tracks-discuss] Re: The future of the Tracks project - a call for volunteers

On 17 July 2011 05:41, Luke Melia <luke <at> lukemelia.com> wrote:
> Big props to bsag, Eric, Reinier and the other folks who have 
> contributed to keeping Tracks going over the years.
>
> On Saturday, July 16, 2011 at 5:54 AM, BSAG wrote:
>
>  I really hope Tracks keeps going too. I only wish the best things for 
> my baby, it's just that it's time for her to leave my home and stand 
> on her own two feet :-)
>
> I feel similarly. While I also have too much going on to contribute 
> code (just started a new business in the consumer mobile space), I'd 
> be happy to offer up my "consulting services" for free to any 
> developer working on Tracks and needing to validate an approach or 
> review an implementation. I learned Rails by contributing to Tracks 4 
> or 5 years ago, and used that experience get a job leading technology 
> for a Ruby startup. I'd be happy for the opportunity to help any up and coming developers at a similar spot.

Thanks very much for all your contributions over the years - I should have mentioned more people by name, but
there are too many! Thanks also for the offer of your consulting services - I think that would be a great help.

cheers,

bsag

--
but she's a girl - the weblog of a female geek http://www.rousette.org.uk butshesagirl <at> rousette.org.uk _______________________________________________
Tracks-discuss mailing list
Tracks-discuss <at> lists.rousette.org.uk
http://lists.rousette.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/tracks-discuss

_______________________________________________
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