If you don’t like it, change it.

Lask week, I was asked to setup a system. There’re two requirements. First is to let anybody upload file and make description. Second is to let the user send e-mail and keep log of sent mail. The former is easy. There’re plenty solutions available. The latter seemed to be easy at first. But after making some research, I was very surprise that there’s no open source solutions for this. There’re systems that allow user to send e-mail and keep log but they’re only capable of handling text only. There’re systems that capable of full e-mail service: it’s web mail system. However, they can’t satisfy the first requirement.

At this point, I’ve two options. First is to deploy two separate systems. This’ll surely work, but not so convenient. Second is to make some hack to the web mail system. This way, if I can make it work, will ease user’s tasks. Still, I won’t choose this way as it’d take me a lot of energy without any returns. I won’t benefit from its convenience as I’m not the system’s user. I’m not paid for doing this. Moreover, the requirements seem to be very uncommon. I can’t see any good reasons to put my effort into it.

How this relates to the topic? Well, it’s a little example of how to change something. This is an easy change though. There’re many other things that I don’t like. Some of those things are bigger than a man can handle. So I’d like you to make the change too.

Start to make the change today!