ASK-Solutions

What WasteBug is

WasteBug is a minimalistic web-based bug tracker. The original design focused on simplicity and usability: developers could record bugs, feature requests and work items without requiring a large project-management system or heavy process framework. The tool therefore remained supportive of the development work itself.

That approach made WasteBug attractive to ASK-Solutions. The program could be independently hosted, studied and adapted while remaining small enough to be practical for everyday development work. This fitted a preference for software that supports cooperation, responsibility and technical control without unnecessary administrative overhead.

Original authorship

WasteBug was originally written by Pihlaja Voipio in 2004. Older release material and archives may show the original author under earlier historical names or references. The restored project uses the current public credit Pihlaja Voipio / signaldust where possible, while keeping the technical and licence history understandable for people who need to trace the source code.

ASK-Solutions treats the restored project as a continuation and preservation of the original work, not as a replacement of its authorship. The current project history therefore distinguishes between the original WasteBug code, later ASK-Solutions changes, recovered material and parts that are still missing.

Use within ASK-Solutions

WasteBug entered the ASK-Solutions working practice through Laura and Robert (not the same Robert as the founder). Laura and Robert worked together for more than ten years on software development and technical work. In an external development environment in which they worked together, Robert found WasteBug as a practical tool for recording bugs, tasks and development work.

Before this work setting, they had worked within a highly structured, ISO-based development environment. In that earlier environment, work processes, requirement specifications, memos, project plans, document structures, planning, code reviews, operational testing, and vulnerability and penetration testing were organised within established procedures. Team leads could define milestones, project settings and tasks, assign work, review progress and adjust planning, while team members could see their assigned tasks and report starts, interruptions and completion. In the later work setting where WasteBug was found, much of that development infrastructure and process support was absent.

WasteBug provided a practical answer to that gap. It was installed on a Linux server that had come from the earlier environment and gave the team a simple way to record bugs, tasks and development work without rebuilding a large management system around it. Because it proved useful there, WasteBug was later also adopted within ASK-Solutions and became part of its own toolchain.

ASK-Solutions still uses WasteBug internally to track Nocterra development, Bookkeeping development, system administration work and other internal processes. That current use is an important reason why the project is maintained as active software while also being preserved as a recovered free-software project with a documented history.

ASK-Solutions additions

Over time, ASK-Solutions extended WasteBug for its own needs. The added work included support for a MySQL database backend, Task Units for grouping related tasks together, and time-tracking functionality under the name WasteTime.

WasteTime was intended to provide insight into the time between discovering a bug or receiving a feature request, starting the work and completing it. The available data could be used to understand response time and workload, identify patterns, estimate when work could be taken up and examine how priority, team size and available time affected actual progress.

Through these additions, WasteBug became part of a wider working practice within ASK-Solutions around adaptable software, practical planning and tools that can continue to be developed in response to actual use.

Loss and recovery

Part of the later WasteBug and WasteTime work was lost during The Great Server Crash™. With help from Pihlaja and Robert (not the same Robert as the founder), the original WasteBug code was recovered, together with some of the code connected to MySQL support.

The Task Unit code is still missing, as is the graphing functionality that belonged to WasteTime. The restored project is therefore both an active free-software project and a software-preservation project. It keeps a minimalistic, practical bug tracker available while documenting which parts of the original and later ASK-Solutions development survived, which were recovered and which are still missing.

Project stewardship

In 2022, ASK-Solutions contacted Pihlaja about the surviving WasteBug material. That contact was not only technical. The original project had become inactive in a wider human-rights context involving dignity, safety, recognition and control over one’s own life. The recovery of the software therefore had to be handled with care, consent and respect for authorship.

Pihlaja confirmed the project history, the original authorship and the preferred current crediting. She also gave permission for ASK-Solutions to preserve and continue the project. The restored repository should therefore be read as a continuation and preservation of the original WasteBug project, not as a replacement of its authorship.

The current project credits both the original work and the later ASK-Solutions work. Older release material may contain historical names or archive references. The restored project uses current public crediting where possible, while keeping the technical and licence history understandable for people who need to trace the source code.

Relationship with ASK-Solutions

WasteBug fits within the work of ASK-Solutions around free software, practical control and software preservation. The history of the project touches on broader questions about the tools used to organise work: who controls them, can they be studied and adapted, and how does useful software remain available when a website, server, company, platform or original project disappears?

Preserving and continuing WasteBug connects with other ASK-Solutions projects and activities, including Nocterra, repair work, free hardware and technical documentation, and with themes such as Right to Ownership. The shared principle is that technical tools should remain available to study, repair, adapt, reinstall, preserve and share.

WasteBug is a small but concrete example of this. It is a usable free-software tool, a recovered piece of project history and a reminder that source code is also human work. Continuing the project preserves executable code, authorship, context, licence history and the ability for others to use, study and understand it.

Status

WasteBug is currently maintained as an active free-software project of ASK-Solutions with historical roots. The available code can be used, studied and adapted under the licence terms included with the project. The current restored version is usable within ASK-Solutions, but does not yet contain all of the extensions developed over the course of its history.

Known missing parts include the Task Unit code and the WasteTime graphing functionality. Additional old copies, patches, screenshots, documentation or database exports may help complete the archive and reconstruct the project history more accurately.

Where to go next

• WasteBug project site — restored project documentation and project notes.
• WasteBug on GitHub — restored source-code repository.
• Nocterra — free-software CMS in which source-based publishing, long-term control and software independence are also important.
• BackPage and Synergos — historical publishing-system projects that are also relevant to the history of software preservation within ASK-Solutions.
• The Great Server Crash™ — historical turning point in which several codebases, websites and other digital material were damaged or lost.