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. Now we come to the present. For several years, my job has got more and more demanding and stressful, and I have had less time to devote to Tracks. Also in the years since I first developed it, lots of excellent GTD applications have been developed. It's a difficult admission to make, but I no longer use Tracks day-to-day, because these other applications happen to fit my particular style of working better. Since I no longer 'eat my own dog food', I feel hypocritical about being involved with Tracks, and it is difficult for me to even provide support for Tracks users, since I'm not involved with the nitty gritty day to day any more. Even though I am only involved in maintaining the site and fielding email enquiries now, the guilt about not doing more is getting to me. I'm the kind of person who has to avoid even *looking* at the unread count in my work mail account while on holiday, because otherwise I would instantly feel guilty about not responding. So continuing at this level of involvement isn't really an option for me. I had hoped that as I stepped back, a team of volunteers would naturally develop who could take over the project. For the past several years, Reinier Balt has done an absolutely brilliant job of taking on the vast majority of the development and supporting users on the forum, but one person does not make a team! I have talked to Reinier about this, and as his free time is also diminishing, he is understandably not willing to take over the project on his own. So this email/forum post is really to canvas opinion to see if there is a group of users out there who might be willing to curate the project, and if not, how we can best set things up to ensure that Tracks and the related resources continue to be available to users. One option would be to create an 'Organisation' for Tracks on GitHub and move over the web pages and wiki. One reason for doing this is that the biggest sink for my time at the moment is having to remove spammy users from the forum and wiki. GitHub seems to fare better in that respect, so it would mean less work for anyone taking over. The biggest stumbling block to this plan is the forum: there is a lot of very valuable information in the forum, so it would be good to preserve what we already have as some kind of static site if possible. However, GitHub doesn't really have a drop-in replacement for the forum (unless we used 'Issues' for that purpose), so it is not clear how we would replace it. I am happy to transfer ownership of the getontracks.org domain to a team taking over, and also the balance of the money donated to the project (after subtracting what I have spent on domain registration/renewal for the project, ExpressionEngine licences etc.). So, it's down to you now: how do you see the future of Tracks? Many thanks, bsag -- but she's a girl - the weblog of a female geek http://www.rousette.org.uk [email protected] _______________________________________________ Tracks-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.rousette.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/tracks-discuss
