Most of them were excellent, very impressive -- but they were either too complex either in business processes (i.e., we were required to change how we did business to fit their model) or their underlying code was too difficult to extend. (we needed open source so we could connect it do other things like doc management, billing...)

So after about 18 months of trying different products we decided what we wanted was a simple task manager that ran inside of a CMS such as Mambo -- and FLEA was born. (FLEA was the code name our first effort that was a derivative work based on some simple ticket system that wasn't Mambo-based)

blah blah blah.... fast forward...

Along came Joomla and we decided to standardize on that CMS. We were impressed with their coding structure, convention and the people behind it, so tossed out FLEA to begin, from scratch, the thing known now as TaskHopper.

The beta was released to a few hundred Joomla webmasters in early June and we've been feverishly updating based on feedback from that group. Our official release date for version for 1.0 was July 25th. (we were only one day late!)

TaskHopper was designed specifically to manage who-what-when tasks for remote groups. "Out of the box" it's specific to software development however we're finding it can easily be tweaked to fit into other vertical markets. For example, Taskhopper is being used to manage the development of a race site for runners. But what's cool about TaskHopper is that it can be used to build something, but also be the foundation for what you're building. e.g., We are using HalfRun.com as a development forum to build Half2Run. HalfRun uses Taskhopper in it's pure software management mode while Half2Run modifies it to keep track of runners' "tasks" which in this case are half marathons.

So that's our history so far.

We plan to keep Taskhopper open source, but we will be charging for it. The core product will not be expensive because we want as many to use/enjoy it as possible. We will be selling it via an affiliate system so webmasters will want to help us tell others about it. Just like every other open source project, it takes money to make things happen. As long as we have webmasters who want new features, we'll continue to add them. (Well, we'll probably add them regardless, because most of the input for changes comes from us.)

If you should happen to come by a copy of TaskHopper without paying us, that's ok. It happens. All we ask is that if you do use it without paying us, you include the "powered by Taskhopper" so we continue to spread the word.

Thanks for all your support! We really appreciate it.

The TaskHopper Development Team

PS. If you want to purchase now, you can do so here. Once we finish the documentation the price will be going up.