As a true geeky software developer (non mort) I am always chasing shiny things; and passionately devouring new technology as quickly as I can. However, every now and then something really reaches out and grabs you; and sometimes it is not something that you truly expect.
For example, a sampling of my favorite open source projects:
- iBatis - A lightweight ORM for various languages
- Paint.NET - Think early PaintShopPro before it became bloated
- Notepad++ - A swiss army knife of a text editor
Unlike many open source zealots I didn't select these because I wanted to support a particular license or programming language. I selected them because they solved a problem I had in the lightest way possible. During my stint(s) at Trans-soft I encountered and adopted a new framework in a language that I detested but it solved my problems and I fell in love with it:
HealthMonitor. HealthMonitor solved a need that man people ignore or build themselves, the monitoring of applications and services with altering based on rules and severity. Unfortunately the application simply 'worked' and once installed didn't really need tinkering with and thus becomes forgotten until something fails. Recently i went to pull a new version to experiment with for my new employer and was dismayed to see that the company has abandoned its opensource line in favor of a closed source solution for pay. As a developer that lives in both worlds I can understand their reasoning to make a buck; but I can also be dismayed to lose a product that 'worked'. After googling for awhile, I can not find a replacement for this truly great function. Has anybody else found one? I have considered porting the application to a language I write in (C#, F#, or Boo) but don't want to go through this effort if somebody else is actively pursuing the same goal.
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