As part of dog-assisted therapy day in Poland, we wish to repay our four-legged friends for their beneficial impact on our lives. As with every other month, we also show our support for an open source project chosen by our staff. This time around the project was selected by our colleague – Sebastian Stasiak. Sebastian works at our office in Rawa Mazowiecka, and we jokingly refer to him as our “memeager” due to his undying love for memes.
Redmine
Redmine is a flexible, open source project management system. Its list of users includes US and Japanese government agencies, as well as the developers of the Ruby programming language (which actually is the language used to write the Redmine application in the first place). We have been using Redmine for internal and customer projects for 9 years.
Some of Redmine’s notable features include:
- creating a hierarchy of projects and tasks,
- assigning roles and privileges in a flexible manner,
- integration with source code repositories,
- monitoring of working time,
- ability to add new, specific functions.
“Redmine itself already has an impressive array of functions. However, its greatest asset is undoubtedly the possibility of further expansion. At Sidnet, our team uses features like additional plugins that allow us to run projects in accordance with the Agile philosophy. We have built some of these extensions by ourselves from scratch”, said Sebastian.
Korabiewice Animal Shelter
This is a shelter for animals of all species, and has been operating as part of the Viva! Foundation since 2012. Currently, the shelter is home to several hundred different animals – not only dogs and cats but also cows, goats and even foxes. Apart from donations, the shelter is financed solely by the Foundation. Volunteers working at the shelter help in feeding and healing the animals. They also build safe and comfortable boxes, houses, kennels and paddocks for them. In addition, the volunteers also assist in physical and virtual adoptions.
“I am well-acquainted with this shelter and I know that they require constant support. I used to work there as a volunteer and walk the dogs. One of them was particularly memorable. He weighed around 40 kilograms and would always act up on the way from his enclosure to the paddock, but immediately turned into a mild and playful puppy the moment he passed through the shelter’s gate. Later on, he found a new home at the seaside”, Sebastian recalled.