I just finished my latest review of what's going on in open source help desk software and thought I'd post up some links to the better looking ones. I don't really see them as competitors to my companies

help desk software but rather as an opportunity.

First off many folks using these packages will never be customers. They may not be able to afford it, may prefer open source software, or may simply be comfortable using what they have. Second is that I believe people looking to purchase a help desk solution require a certain look to the software which most of these lack (as does most open source software applications). This is NOTHING to do with how good the software is, but is a fact of life. Someone looking to buy a Lexus isn't going to buy an Accord even though it's just as safe, gets better gas mileage, and is 30K cheaper. This actually goes back alot to the pricing stuff I posted about before. Third is that alot of great innovation occurs in open source help desk software and I want to make sure I'm on the cutting edge. The other commercial players in this space are slow and barely innovate at all so the best place to look for "what's hot" is in open source. Number four is support. What many organizations want when they buy software is simply someone to help them when it goes wrong(which is usually does at some point). I have more, but I'll save them for another day :-)

Ok enough business. Here's the ones I've most recently checked out in no particular order but with total duds removed. I reviewed about 20 but most had not been updated in a long time,etc:

• http://www.stackworks.net/view.php/irm/index.html

• http://www.bestpractical.com/rt/

• http://www.liberum.org/

  You can find a complete listing here:

open source help desk software list.