The SDM was quickly hacked up as a system to manage
software in a more distributed manner than the ticket tracker
allows. It's very clear that I should have worked more to integrate
it into the ticket tracker, but I had this feeling that somehow the
design needs would be very different, and that the SDM would
supercede the ticket tracker.
I think I was wrong. I think the ticket tracker should be more
generalized and usable by multiple other modules (like intranet,
SDM, etc...) in a more modular way.
However, at this point, as Don has mentioned, it would be best
to keep updates to the SDM very well-contained, and focus on a
new design for OpenACS 4.x that builds a more modular ticket
tracker that can more easily be linked into other packages.
One last note: the aD SDM is based off the OpenACS SDM, but
improved by a couple of developers over at aD. Since it was built
on Oracle and we have limited resources, we haven't integrated
their features back into OpenACS. If you want to take that on,
please do! It shouldn't be too hard. Cross-polination to the max.