On Wed, Feb 20, 2013 at 11:25 PM, MZMcBride <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hi. > > OTRS (<https://ticket.wikimedia.org/>) is a critical piece of Wikimedia's > infrastructure. It currently handles nearly all customer service inquiries > directed at Wikimedia. Trusted volunteers triage and respond to this > e-mail. > > Wikimedia is currently running OTRS version 2.4. The most recently > released OTRS version is 3.2. There's been an outstanding request to update > Wikimedia's OTRS installation for just shy of three years now: > <https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/22622>. OTRS' inventor kindly offered to > donate his time to help with an upgrade, but due to a number of factors, > this has become an untenable solution. > > Given the bug's fast-approaching birthday, the security concerns of > running outdated software, the Wikimedia Foundation apparently being > overburdened and uninterested in maintaining this piece of software, and > mounting volunteer frustration, I'm wondering whether this is an area > where the Wikimedia chapters or some other group might be able to lend a > hand in supporting the maintenance of this piece of important > infrastructure. Broadly, the Wikimedia Foundation isn't acting on this > issue and it seems to have little interest in maintaining or supporting > this software any longer. > > Given recent discussion about various Wikimedia movement roles, I'm > wondering whether a Wikimedia chapter or a grant or some other movement > player could either take on supporting the existing OTRS installation (by > hiring a contractor), evaluating and implementing better/different > response software, and/or moving the response system elsewhere. > > MZMcBride > > > > > I've been working on OTRS since 2008 and have been an OTRS administrator for much of that time. As somebody who devotes a lot of his time to OTRS-related work, I'm extremely disappointed in the lack of support the OTRS team has been dealing with. As MZMcBride points out, there are a number of reasons why the software needs to be updated. Last year, we handled roughly 40,000 general inquiries in over 35 languages.[1] This alone should be a convincing reason as to why we should have at least somewhat up-to-date software, clean of security issues and other problems.[2] While I realize that there have been other priorities, I would have thought that with 3 years of waiting, eventually OTRS would be important enough for somebody to give some much needed attention to. [1] - https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/01/24/the-incredible-work-of-the-wikimedia-volunteer-response-team/ [2] - https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&component=OTRS&product=Wikimedia -- Ryan User:Rjd0060 _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
