We have been on the scene since 1989 we have accomplished what seemed in 1989 as impossible.
Once again I will ask for you to reflect on this issue and provide your suggestions and or comments. It is your community.Alright here it comes:
If I have a busy week or just a bad day nobody will miss me here.
If we argue for our limitations sure enough they will be ours to keep.One is always concerned about being or feeling obligated especially when the future of that obligation is ambiguous. Whether this venture turns out to be a boom or bust is yet to be seen but the opportunity brings potential that is probably well worth the risk...not that I'm much help with reducing that risk. OTOH I don't plan on going anywhere so I will help when I can...for free as always.
I am ging to take a huge leap on this I am familair with DHTML and Dreamweaver. With that I am hoping to get a handel on PHP. Please do not leave me to wither on the vine. If you are already familiar enough with PHP to get waht we need for the immediate application ( passwording into tech help) please come forward with your needed knowledge. If not ,I am into it starting now.what exactly is it that you need in the PHP setup?
Thanks to All
Regards
Darrell
I am ging to take a huge leap on this I am familair with DHTML and Dreamweaver. With that I am hoping to get a handel on PHP. Please do not leave me to wither on the vine. If you are already familiar enough with PHP to get waht we need for the immediate application ( passwording into tech help) please come forward with your needed knowledge. If not ,I am into it starting now.what exactly is it that you need in the PHP setup?
Thanks to All
Regards
Darrell
This is an interesting project, with lots of twists.
The fear that I see is, that we can not provide the support you suggest.
Maybe provide information that there is a forum.
IMHO setting up groups of people in the following areas:
1. Applications
2. Hardware
3. Networking
4. Packaging
5. Probably missing something :)
Which allow those that feel comfortable in one area and not another to
contribute resolving the pressure of having all the answers.
Bigpaws
Thank-you Niklas..I am so very grateful."So say we all..."
Hello All:
we have gotten a long way on this in the last few days. We plan to post our progress on the board next week, the main developer right now is a user of VL from Sweden.Niklas, I did the front end in what I would call mediocre html. He will also clean that up. Sent an organizational chart to him to see a vision of what we will need. From there we can all have a look at it all. I feel very confident of his abilities and want to afford him all the assistance we can give.
Hello All;
Well seems that Niklas has had a change of heart on this project. We thank him for trying. So we are on our own again. No worries been here before. First and foremost. Does anyone have any info on the “register” function on our usr forum? That has to be disabled so we can send psswds and usr names only once pre-paid. Or at least lock that link and come in through a front end. Have the front end done now. Any info would be appreciated. The automated pre-paid help page will get done on the fly.
Regards
Darrell
Those of us already included will stay included. Would it not work better if we hide the existing forum and showed the new pre-paid forum???? That is if this is what we end up doing for now.That's just not right man >:(, you can't do that! The VL community is one of the great pro's of this little distro. You can't (shouldn't) hide that, it's one of our great advantages over other distro's.
Hello masta:
Yes, that is it pretty much it looked up a thread on simplemachines support site and was waiting for a response for just that function and how tp impliment it. Seems you read my mind on that one, lol (not much to read).
I do not have admin. rights to our forum is this a major deal or?
Are you able to impliment that function. If so i can manually administer psswds and expiry dates here, until we find something more functional.
Please let me know what work will be involved from your side.
Thanks much going live at Madtux this weekend with the VL machine.
Best regards
Darrell
Hello All:
Just thought of this. The board we currently have for the Community will always exist as it is. Those of us already included will stay included. Would it not work better if we hide the existing forum and showed the new pre-paid forum?Huh That is if this is what we end up doing for now.
Just a thought.... any comments or suggestions
The board we currently have for the Community will always exist as it is. Those of us already included will stay included. Would it not work better if we hide the existing forum and showed the new pre-paid forum????
The board we currently have for the Community will always exist as it is. Those of us already included will stay included. Would it not work better if we hide the existing forum and showed the new pre-paid forum? ???
And remember: "A soft answer turns away wrath, but grievous words stir up anger."Indeed, there is wisdom on that words.
If I was to pay for support, I'd expect someone a bit more one on one. I don't think a secret place on a free for everyone else message board would cut it.
Would this server handle an additional php solution? How about something like this?
http://www.osticket.com/index.php (http://www.osticket.com/index.php) Something like that would make paying customers happy. And it's open source as well.
And remember: "A soft answer turns away wrath, but grievous words stir up anger."Interesting quote from Pro. 15:1...and to add to it...Pro. 15:22 (also 11:14 and 24:6) - Without consultation, plans are frustrated, But with many counselors they succeed.
Ubantu is close to VL, but in a lot of ways inferior. They are on top of the heap. Maybe look at their site, look at the pre-paid help, and think why?
What will the funds be used for
* Bandwidth costs
* Hard drive to store backups from wikimasterv2 to squiddy
o Backups are curently starting to exceed 20GB
* RAM upgrade for squiddy to 2GB
* A new development machine
Linux is changing rapidly, faster than most of us can keep up with. These changes are bringing Linux into the Enterprise arena. Why should we not be in that arena??? Again I am all ears.
just some support to become self-sufficient, is that to much to ask?
If financial support is needed, I would like to see us go transparent - 'open,' if you will - with our finances as an organization. Then, I would like to see a fundraising campaign based on the presented need.
Right now we beg for donations on the home page suggesting a need, but as an end-user that is removed from those costs, it just sounds like every other project saying "we need your support." If I were able to see "Cost XYZ + Cost ABC = Total Cost" I would be much more likely to contribute.
Replacing this forum with a paid-for option (my understanding...?) does not sit well for me, and I believe it would drive users away.
This is going to happen in one form or another; we do not have a choice!! I do not have a choice.
I also agree with LLL about the costs transparency: user will be much more likely to contribute if they know exactly where the money will be spent. Once again, the Gentoo Wiki fundraiser had a line up of what the money would be used for:
http://gentoo-wiki.com/Gentoo_Linux_Wiki:Fundraiser_Sept_2006Quote from: Gentoo WikiWhat will the funds be used for
* Bandwidth costs
* Hard drive to store backups from wikimasterv2 to squiddy
o Backups are curently starting to exceed 20GB
* RAM upgrade for squiddy to 2GB
* A new development machine
Doesn't "choice matter"?! Sorry for getting tongue-in-cheek, but it is our current tagline!
I think choice is key in terms of VL-delivery of product and support:
- We could make the 'Deluxe' versions more evident/advantageous, but still offer the free downloadable ISO = choice.
- Current forum or pre-paid support (where fast, thorough responses are guaranteed) = choice.
Again, if fundraising is necessary (which I trust it is), let's re-think and maximize on what we've got.
EDIT: Exeterdad beat me, that is the tool we need.
Quote from: exeterdad on May 12, 2007, 10:45:44 PM
If I was to pay for support, I'd expect someone a bit more one on one. I don't think a secret place on a free for everyone else message board would cut it.
Would this server handle an additional php solution? How about something like this?
http://www.osticket.com/index.php Something like that would make paying customers happy. And it's open source as well.
That is the kind of tool I had in mind!
The tool would be nice if it was still being developed. After taking the time
to research that tool it is not a good choice. There is a version 2 that has turned
into vaporware according to the forum. It is important that research take place
when making a suggestion.
If VL offers both free and paid support, the two support modes should be sufficiently different that the client doesnt come to the conclusion he is being conned, when he realizes that he could just as easily obtain free support. I suggest keeping the forum free, and setting up an email list for paid support.
It looks to me as though people are getting the wrong idea here. NOBODY is taking away the free forums. Nobody is charging for what is the free forum. The suggestion of a special part of the forum for buyers is what's be talked about. This is exactly what I was trying to say in a much nicer way in my long winded post above. Get the hint now? ;)
It amazes me that the responses are that someone is getting taken
advantage of. Comments that answers on the forum will take longer in
order to force someone for pay for support. That refusing
to give good or accurate answers or such types of comments are
rubbish. This is the type of FUD that should not even be posted.
Please read the entire post without reading what is not posted.
There are free live chat support web sites out there. Does this mean
that Vector should not try it. Does it mean that because someone
else offers it for free mean Vector is trying to take advantage? The
answer is no. Please remember this started from an offer from MadTux
that they or we would start offering paid support.
There is thick plot to destroy or cripple this community or forum.
Bigpaws
The service of the VL forum is so good that responding more efficiently to a paying customer may be difficult.
Come on people, if you think you're such an evil community that you would plot to rip off a paying user, then such it is that you are. But are you really? Or are you the same friendly people that would offer your top notch support as normal?
I want VL to pursue this option and in the excellence of the current forum making it better will be difficult but NOT impossible. Thus I refer back to my suggestion of per incident support through and email response. A paying user logs in to submit their problem and then the email is sent to the individual(s) who cover that support area and within a set time frame a response is given.
Mike
Holly Shamuzzel:
Do I see progess? Maybe I should stay away more often. Uhh..
that's a joke, don't even start on that one.
Regards
Darrell
hate to be the one stoking the "FUD", but what advantage will the second board present over the current one?
Who will be manning the second board?
Quotehate to be the one stoking the "FUD", but what advantage will the second board present over the current one?
Who will be manning the second board?
There is no FUD in your question. In fact this maybe a better answer.
The current state is another forum. The things that will be different
is that everyone will get answers. Not just the questions that are easy one line answers.
Expect more hand holding than on this forum. Which is very possible.
Vision a better one on one experience. Where a customer makes a contact for support,
a Vector Visionary (Just a pun) answers. Easy until the answer is not that easy ... hmmm.
Well the Visionary will go to every step with the customer until everything that can be done
is. If that means research or setting up a real time conversation then that is what will happen.
In customer service not everyone will be satisfied. Not all questions have a fix.
As long as everyone realizes it then things will be great.
The next question who will be manning the board. This is where those that are interested
come in to play.
Thoughts?
Bigpaws
For those of you looking for VL on Madtux.org:
http://store.madtux.org/index.php?cPath=98
Well done!
LLL
I start: with our gambas gurues leading us, we could develope a gui to send requests just from the desktop. The customer will receive an answer by email. Always the IRC and voice chating can be arranged between the customer and the support guy. We can set up the gambas gui to send the form via internet to a PHP script. The PHP script will process the info and make it avaible for the supporters via a website.
Just an idea.
An article on fundraising for open-source projects:
http://www.madpenguin.org/cms/?m=show&id=7876
| 1. (http://img524.imageshack.us/img524/8306/42771612sj6.th.png) (http://img524.imageshack.us/my.php?image=42771612sj6.png) | 2. (http://img524.imageshack.us/img524/943/13148728db8.th.png) (http://img524.imageshack.us/my.php?image=13148728db8.png) | 3. (http://img524.imageshack.us/img524/6044/28080836ly9.th.png) (http://img524.imageshack.us/my.php?image=28080836ly9.png) | 4. (http://img518.imageshack.us/img518/9315/15037179lz5.th.png) (http://img518.imageshack.us/my.php?image=15037179lz5.png) |
| 5. (http://img181.imageshack.us/img181/1552/65186229gq7.th.png) (http://img181.imageshack.us/my.php?image=65186229gq7.png) | 6. (http://img181.imageshack.us/img181/5324/73592354hb4.th.png) (http://img181.imageshack.us/my.php?image=73592354hb4.png) | 7. (http://img181.imageshack.us/img181/4515/87558293wz2.th.png) (http://img181.imageshack.us/my.php?image=87558293wz2.png) |
I still feel pretty strong VL should use a "help desk" type tool rather than a forum. It has a more confident and professional feel to it.I agree. A dedicated tool will go a long way towards organizing things and help maintain the appropriate response time.
Exeter, I think the tools you are proposing are great, I am working on an authentication system and I think we could use it to protect the VL eticket page. I can send you my work by email and you can tell my what you think, if you agree, of course. Feel free to contact me via email.
found that anyone registered or not could open up a help ticket.
What, We can't read it an maybe improvise to fit the situation? ;)
Hey you guys are going so fast I can't keep up. WOW...if we impliment this system and enter and expire customers manually until we can find a solution to automate this function I am game on that. i have a little tool that allows me to enter a memo for up to a year it pops up with a re,inder on every boot, I would take that on. Have we looked at MadTux server to see if compable?If we were to use the Trellis tool it could be running in a few minutes from now. The admin would just need to set up the "staff", swap out the logo for a VL support (hint, hint Blurrymind) logo and change the texts to something appropriate for VL.
Any idea of how much storage space we will need? Excellent find Exeter. Want to Thank you very much, Thanks to all of you!!
Would we be in a position to put this on MadTux server in a day or two?
Bigpaws is setting up a server of his own we could play with it there if needed.
Waiting on a call from MadTux in a few minutes, timming is WOW..
Thanks Guys...Really Thanks
regards
Darrell
I do not want to delay or confuse this thread about what sotware to use. But I looked at this with bigpaws a week or so ago. Things were all over the map then. Maybe this is a bit more developed have a peek anyway.Thoughts
http://www.bestpractical.com/rt/
Regards
darrell
VectorLinux is a business that needs and wants to be profitable. So incorporating as a nonprofit is out. What exactly is the "project" we're talking about? It's not developing a program or a driver. It's finding ways to enable VL to make money, some of which would be used for server space, setting up paid tech support, and paying the many expenses connected with the business.
--GrannyGeek
There is a distro oriented to small enterprises already, powered by the Extremadura goverment (they do great things with linux!) called Linex.
I think the emphasis on "free as in beer" has made many individual Linux users unwilling to pay for anything.
grisby, kmymoney and gnucash (a dependency hog IMHO) are not an option, because accountants
want Quickbooks and that is all.
You may:
* Modify and customize the software to your personal liking except to the extent detailed in this agreement.
You may not:
(...)
* Reverse engineer, disassemble, or create derivative works based on the software for distribution or usage outside your website.
OneOrZero:
http://www.oneorzero.com/
The OneOrZero Task Management and Help Desk System is a powerful, enterprise grade task management and help desk application.
It is fast, customizable and runs on virtually any platform and is released under the General Public Licence (GPL) Open Source license, allowing you to customize freely.
Our experienced and highly skilled team also offer support and customization services, to ensure your OneOrZero installation is professionally supported.
Main Features:
http://www.oneorzero.com/?controller=main_general&option=main_features
I think the Trellis license allow modifications, but not allow the re-ditribution of the modificated version.
Quote
You may:
* Modify and customize the software to your personal liking except to the extent detailed in this agreement.
I read the license and I didnt found anything but:
"Modify and/or remove any copyright notices or labels on the software on each page (unless copyright output removal license is purchased) and in the header of each script source file. This includes, but is not restricted to, deleting, moving, changing the size, removing the links, or deleting any words from the copyright noticies
* Distribute any of the files or any part of the files contained in the software package (except skin and language files)."
Hello,
My name is Lee. I am a member of the VectorLinux community. VectorLinux is based upon Slackware Linux if you aren't familiar.
The reason I am contacting you is we are now looking for a Help Desk solution to offer premium support to our users. Normally we have outstanding support free to all within in our own forums, but recently MadTux has started selling new computers with VectorLinux preloaded on them. They are also selling these customers subscription based support. They (MadTux) gave us the opportunity to staff that support, or they would handle it themselves. As VectorLinux is our design, we feel the customers would be better served by the creators rather than a third party. This also means that VectorLinux will have the chance to earn a trivial amount of money, helping to pay for server costs or promotion.
Though your help desk solution is beautiful and functional we would have to alter it to suite our needs. Though we see no need to remove the small copyright text, we would like to change the Trellis Desk logo on the upper right to our own logo. We believe you and your team deserve credit for what appears to be a promising product.
Code modification's would definitely be source code modifications. We would have to implement some sort of PayPal gateway, a gateway for what MadTux has sold and something to track the status of subscriptions.
We have no intentions of redistributing the code we modify. We are simply asking permission to alter Trellis Desk for our own use.
Also... honestly. Do you think Trellis Desk is suited for a production yet.
Your reply is anxiously awaited.
Regards,
Lee
Hello Lee,
Thanks for your kind words regarding Trellis Desk. You can modify Trellis Desk in any way you want; source code, images, css, templates, language, etc. However, the copyright at the bottom must remain intact. If you wish to remove the copyright, I would be more than happy to allow you to do so for a one-time fee.
As for your last question, honestly, I think Trellis Desk is currently stable enough for small to medium sized organizations / companies. However, Beta 5 has some email notification bugs and statistics features are still being added. So if email notification and/or statistics is important to you, I would wait until Beta 6 which should be released in about a week or two. Statistics will actually take a little longer. Probably the following release or two.
Otherwise, Beta 5 is pretty stable. If I were you, I would wait until Beta 6 is released, and just do a fresh install from that. Of course, you could always download Beta 5 and play around with it. Also, if you were to upgrade from Beta 5 to Beta 6, you would have to redo some of your modifications as files will need to be overwritten. As always, please remember this software is in beta. It is not guaranteed to be stable. Based on user feedback, most of our builds have been pretty stable. We haven't had any major disasters yet. :P
If you have any more questions, please don't hesitate to ask. Again, Beta 6 will be out soon. It's going through private testing right now. :)
Thank you for your informative and speedy response. Also your brutal
honestly about the status of your project. I will post our
correspondence on our message board and leave it to the community to
decide. There has been debate whether or not your license would allow
modifications to the code. You have cleared that up.
I will personally let you know if your system is used on our site.
Regards,
Lee
Then I wrote a very simple php script to delete all the "expired" members. It works like this: If you are a member of the "30 days" groups, and 30 days passed after de subscription, then you are deleted from the database
This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification
Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:
support@iftomatoes.com
Technical details of permanent failure:
PERM_FAILURE: SMTP Error (state 13): 550-"The recipient cannot be verified. Please check all recipients of this
550 message to verify they are valid."
And then the remainder was the headers and the message I had sent. Keep in mind that this was the actual Trellis Desk help system that the author uses. Not the demo they have set up. Though he did warn me that the current release is buggy in the mail functions and they should be resolved in the next release that is under testing. Hopefully that server isn't one of the testing servers!I am curious what bigpaws conclusion may be about the otrs system?
Hello Lee,
Sounds good. I couldn't help but notice you mentioned that you received an error when sending email an email to support@iftomatoes.com. (I found your forums and your the topic in which you are discussing Trellis Desk. It's interesting to see what you guys have to say and great feedback for me.) Anyways, we currently do not have support@iftomatoes.com setup to receive any emails. That's why you received the error. It was actually generated by the server mail program, not Trellis Desk.
What gave to you idea to try support@iftomatoes.com? Did you find that email somewhere on our website? I'm just curious because it might be out there somewhere when it shouldn't be. Anyways, this system is now running Beta 6, which has all known email issues resolved. :P
Sorry for eavesdropping on you guys. But I always like to read stuff about Trellis Desk on other websites. Great feedback tool, and it kinda inspires me. :)
QuoteThen I wrote a very simple php script to delete all the "expired" members. It works like this: If you are a member of the "30 days" groups, and 30 days passed after de subscription, then you are deleted from the database
Are you refering to actually deleting the table entries? If that is the case the you can create a couple problems one is that
reindexing of MySQL db will need to be done after the batch delete. The other problem is that deleting the information
of course will limit the available statistics, so no query.
Bigpaws
I like the idea of messing with the source as little as possible. Would make upgrading to another release of Trellis less painful.You are totally rigth about this. Upgrade a very tweaked code could be a big problem in the future. I think the key to do it ios understanding the source code very well, and try to do things in a similar way, but "from the outside".
Sorry for eavesdropping on you guys. But I always like to read stuff about Trellis Desk on other websites. Great feedback tool, and it kinda inspires me.
The OTRS system is an incredible system that can used via browser or email.A system wich can be operated via email is really nice. I was looking the demo and didnt notice an easy way to manage the members, this could be a problem to us, in order to implement all the features we need. But I didnt look at it in a deep way, just the first impression. I will try an install on my xampp if I can make the time.
PS: I viewed your posts on the trellis forum when I was looking for info on this subject, so you have authority on this field ;)
LoL, I am the developer. :)
I made some modifications to solve the counters issue. It works, but trellis have a bug on the counters (the demo version have it too, so i didnt break it :)) so, even when you update the list of members from one or more groups, the counter is 0. This is a minor bug anyway and surely will be fixed on next release.
Never to late to join. SQI appears to be an interesting solution.
The type of solution that is being looked at something that can be
autonomous, as you noted. Also something that can will be able to
stand the test of time. There are a couple we programs that are being
evaluated. One being Request Tracker and Trellis Desk. Both are actively
developed and customizable.
A comparison would be appreciated. Any other suggestions are more than
welcome.
Bigpaws
Hi. I am the founder of SQI Inc. We are an on-demand solutions provider (SaaS) for the support infrastructure at the Client Interface Environment (CIE). Or core strategy is to establish a new value point by being an open source integrator.
As part of my commitment to the open source community I would like to offer to host your support site at no charge.
btw. The Incident Manager part of CIE is RT with extensions. The Knowledge Hub parts are Moinmoin and the search engine is Apache Lucene. All are integrated with our AppBus technology.
Let me know if you are interested. I can setup an evaluation site if you want to move forward.
I any event, it is great to see such a dedicated and active community pushing open source technology.
Jeff
www.sqi-inc.com
the sqi system looks good to me.
I think we need to give it at least a demo run.
Uelsk8s
Thanks for the updates metvas. Posting this message to let you know at least one of us (likely many more) is following along.Me too...
LLL
Should someone request those parameters you are suggesting, I think I would suggest they move to an alternate distro pay 10 times as much as we are charging and refund their money.
Yes I know, however we are fully compliant with all other aspects of GPL so kind of OK "I think", for now.
You mean this one (http://www.linux.com/articles/55285)?
Because of this I feel we need to setup and enforce a new rule for anyone submitting packages for us to redistribute.