OpenProject – open-source project management software

https://www.openproject.org/

by Brajeshwar • 2 years ago

134 50 2 years ago

openproject.org

otachack• 2 years ago

Enticing, I'm always open to trying new management tooling.

schmidt_fifty• 2 years ago

The source code is here: https://github.com/opf

Seems to be a rails app on top of Postgres.

dotancohen2• 2 years ago

It's a Redmine fork, which is a well-known Rails application. It's also my preferred bug tracker, far better than Jira or Bugzilla.

ImHereToVote2• 2 years ago

I'm curious what the BIM addon entails?

wielinde5• 2 years ago

The BIM addon entails quite some features: - It allows you to share your construction 3D models as IFC models (a standard of openBIM) with the rest of your team. Everyone on a project suddenly has access without having to pay crazy license fees to Autodesk etc. You simply view the models right in the browser. - Everyone can create and comment on issues within the 3D models. Issues can be imported and exported via the BCF format, another openBIM standard. - There is add-in for Autodesk Revit, so that you can fix issues reported in OpenProject browser based IFC viewer straight away in the 3D model authoring tool.

ImHereToVote2• 2 years ago

Thank you.

candiddevmike• 2 years ago

Interesting lineage, RedMine -> ChiliProject -> OpenProject.

Here is a (biased) overview on how the product compares to RedMine: https://www.openproject.org/blog/openproject-an-alternative-...

Narretz• 2 years ago

It's interesting that when they forked in 2011 they switched from a RoR app to an SPA (angularjs then angular) + REST api to be able to get better UI interactivity. Now it's 2024 and after we've had SSR and hydration, JS frameworks are moving to even tighter integration between client and server (for example React Server components).

wielinde5• 2 years ago

Yes, we are moving away from the SPA approach. If you follow our latest feature developments you will see that we now try to adopt the HOTwire approach in combination with GitHub's Primer ViewComponents. And it is fun!

TkTech3• 2 years ago

Reading this, I had a little laugh after reading the entire spiel about increasing intuitivness and the first point is renaming issues (universally understood) to "work packages" (what?).

Maybe it's just me :) overall it looks like quite the overhaul from its redmine roots. A lot of what I had to hunt for in paid redmine plug-ins years ago is just a core feature in OpenProject.

joshvm• 2 years ago

"Work package" is a pretty universal term in non-software project management, though a single WP could contain multiple todo items. I'm not sure whether it was coined by one of the frameworks like PRINCE2, but a lot of large/governmental systems use it (certainly the UK/Innovate, NASA and ESA, etc).

I would interpret "issue" as more of a general "thing that needs doing" whereas work package has a fairly specific meaning. I wouldn't want to use the phrase work packages as items in a bug tracker, for example.

See:

- https://prince2.wiki/management-products/work-package/ - https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/nasa-work-br... (pdf)

dotancohen2• 2 years ago

  > A lot of what I had to hunt for in paid redmine plug-ins years ago is just a core feature in OpenProject.

As a Redmine admin, I would love to know which plugins that you use, which are core OpenProject features. Thanks.

wielinde5• 2 years ago

I agree that the term "work packages" does not always fit. "Issues" doesn't neither. An "Epic" is not a an issue, in my opinion. I am curious which term you had on your mind.

dan-allen• 2 years ago

Project management actually seems like a good candidate for open-source. It seems like companies often need customizations. I could imagine forks for different industries.

j454• 2 years ago

OpenProject is generally open source. Some key features exist outside of the open source license.

Their hosted options though, seem reasonably priced.

input_sh4• 2 years ago

I think every open source projects that has ever aimed to have >10 employees has taken that same route at some point: GitLab, Matomo, WordPress, Redis, MySQL, nginx, HAProxy... all incredibly useful for in most use cases completely free, but if you try to really rely on them (on a large enough scale), you will hit that paywall at some point and feel forced to pay up.

If the goal is to have <10 employees working on an open source project, then I think it's a completely different story, offering just cloud hosting with no extra features is within the realm of possibility. Keep in mind that while one sysadmin is not cheap, a company relying on multiple cloud-hosted open source tools will at some point find that one sysadmin very cheap in comparison. He'll even have time to do some other things as well. That might be a completely viable route for some "simple" open source project (Plausible and SeaTable immediately come to mind), but some open source projects are just aiming to be complex enough to need more than 10 people.

In summary, I personally believe everyone should be pragmatic enough to be fine with the "open core" model. Otherwise, there's no chance in hell we'd have so many cool, open sourced (to an extent), self-hosted tools at our disposal.

PeterZaitsev• 2 years ago

The devil in such case is in details. Is Open Source version actually useful or is it really there just for marketing purpose ? I think this is where how large portion of users are running free vs paid version is a good indication.

nodesocket• 2 years ago

I typically prefer the simplicity of GitHub issues, mixed with Markdown documentation in the source tree. What are some advantages of using a product like OpenProject?

j454• 2 years ago

It's much better suited at project management than Github.

Think of it as a higher level, more encompassing approach to project management that can include both the technical and non-technical work.

You can create hierarchies of tasks, connect them, assign them, and they are not only for software development like GitHub.

It can also tie in with Gitlab/Github

It's worth watching a Youtube video or two to see if anything resonates than asking strangers blindly on the internet to give us the perfect explanation :)

thayne• 2 years ago

Ability to organize issues in various ways, more powerful search and filtering capabilities, easier to track work done and plan work that needs to be done, etc.

For a small project it's probably overkill, but when you need to manage a large number of tasks and/or a large number of workers (including product managers, QA, etc.) you need more than a simple text box with some labels.

input_sh4• 2 years ago

tl;dr: HR is never gonna use GitHub.

Project management tools are just a necessary skill even for non-devs, which leaves any large enough project with only two options:

1. Have the devs and non-devs use completely different systems.

2. Have both use the exact same tool, even if that absolutely sucks for the devs.

The second one is bad, the first one is worse. It by definition creates an unnecessary complication in the flow of information, requiring serious effort to overcome. That's why most of us have horror stories about Jira, Asana, and the likes. The hatred of that one particular tool we happen to be using right now unites us all. Whichever tool you're currently using is always the worst one, right until the moment you're forced into using a different one.

So, you as an individual might want to put up with one of these horrible options you're already familiar with, or you might use something you actually enjoy. But beware: if you go down the more enjoyable path, you are perpetually gonna be reminded it's not the "real deal". GitHub can't do everything a proper tool can, and you're gonna miss having those "advanced" options at some point, even if you hate to admit that to yourself.

Then again, I might just be projecting.

bongodongobob• 2 years ago

You can use it for the 95% of other types of projects that are not software related, I'm guessing.

onthecanposting• 2 years ago

Some people manage projects that aren't software at all. Git has little utility for construction documents, and big construction design projects may involve interdisciplinary teams of dozens of people of widely varying cost and availability.

not_your_mentat• 2 years ago

I'm still waiting for an open-source self hostable alternative to Basecamp. Simple lists and hill charts. Has anyone run across something like this?

simantel• 2 years ago

Do any of these fit the bill?

Plane: https://plane.so/

Kanboard: https://kanboard.org/

Taiga: https://taiga.io/

Redmine (which OpenProject is a fork of): https://www.redmine.org/

Teambox: https://www.teambox.com/

GitLab (more than just issues): https://about.gitlab.com/

3abiton• 2 years ago

Which one would be best fitting a replacement for Azure DevOps?

bebop• 2 years ago

I have been building this on and off for a number of years. Mostly focused on the document management side of things: https://github.com/bgroff/kala-app

nisten• 2 years ago

Getting the wrong vibes from the dark patterns on this site.

I click on github.. it doesn't open github... had to look in the comments here. I find repo here... the front end is some ancient angular app with 3 year old security vulnerabilities.

I try to find some kind of demo of the product.. and end up in a sales funnel to pay 500$

As a first impression this does not look like a trustworthy opensomething .org product, even though it's probably fine.

Just my opinion

neilv2• 2 years ago

Agreed. In traditional terms, they're using a .org domain as a .com. The old rules aren't enforced, but they still hold some meaning.

It sounds like they want to do a "community edition", so they could just do it from a .com, and set expectations appropriately.

If they instead wanted to have a community-developed open source project, but also sell derived/layered products, they might set up a community governance structure and home it on the .org, at arm's length from their .com where they do sales and other company-specific stuff.

(BTW, sympathy on the challenges of building a sustainable business on open source, especially given some of the poor taste we sometimes see from freeloading commercial competitors.)

eddd-ddde• 2 years ago

I had no idea TLDs had any form of "semantics".

TIL dot com is apparently a "commercial" site.

7bit• 2 years ago

The old rules aren't enforced, but they still hold some meaning.

Only to techies. And I'd say only to those who were techies back in the 90's or earlier.

All the other people very likely have no clue why there are all these different TLDs. And for people outside the USA, UK and AU, .com Just means it's an English (as in language) website.

pixelesque• 2 years ago

I mean, admittedly you have to scroll down to the second half of the (long) page, but the "Code repository on Github" link goes straight to the github project page for me...

Only one of the security issues seems to be unfixed, the others all have patch versions.

wielinde5• 2 years ago

Hey nisten,

- Where did you find a broken link to our GitHub account and repositories on openproject.org? Appreciate your help in case our page is not correct. - What 3 year old security vulnerabilities in our angular code part are you talking about? Would you mind sharing a link? - OpenProject is fully open source (GPL 3), not half. You can host it yourself. And if you prefer it, you can get hosted by us, which for many organizations is cheaper than doing the hosting themselves. - Regarding your doubts about our trustworthiness: Have you checked who is using OpenProject? Siemens, the German railway company Deutsche Bahn, the City of Cologne, Audi, Hyandai, MIT, Greenpeace... On GitHub we have 2.2k forks, and 8.5k stars.

Peace!

preezer• 2 years ago

I think redmine is wayyyy better. Btw: Open project is a fork of redmine.

hammyhavoc• 2 years ago

Can you elaborate?

5e92cb50239222b• 2 years ago

This project was picked up (and forked) by Rosatom for its internal Jira replacement after they got cut off from Jira in spring of 2022. No idea how many changes they introduced, but I guess OpenProject should be powerful enough (or at least provide a powerful enough base to build upon) to handle giant projects at their scale. The fork is not publicly accessible, although they do conform to the GPL and provide the source code to their clients.

https://habr.com/ru/companies/greenatom/articles/814589

wielinde5• 2 years ago

Thank you for the intersting link. If you checkout our GitHub repository you see that there are 2.2k forks. We don't keep track on all of them.

And yes, it is true that OpenProject is used as an alternative to Jira. Mainly for two reasons: OpenProject is made with data sovereignty in mind. And Atlassion pulled Jira's self hosted option off their shelves. And the other reason is pricing, I guess.

Yotsugi• 2 years ago

Start free trial

Into the trash it goes. Even if I was a big corporation, I wouldn't depend on something that was only made to make money off of it to manage anything.

nobrains• 2 years ago

So, we have got the following project management software (including openproject.org) on HN main page in the last 48 hours:

- https://worklenz.com/

- https://plane.so/

- https://www.openproject.org/

OpenProject – open-source project management software

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