It’s no surprise that we’re big fans of open source software here at Industrial Brand. After all, we use software like Wordpress and Drupal a lot. I have also been a strong believer in ActiveCollab, an open source project management software, and so it came as a big surprise when they decided to close their open source model and go to a pay-per-use model.
The open source community that was supporting ActiveCollab was furious. After dedicating time and money to develop mods, themes and plugins for the software many left mad. The people behind ActiveCollab did another 180 and completely changed their pricing model to a much more affordable $399 with added features. Most of the community built around the software is still pissed and will probably turn to other solutions. Here’s what huge hosting service Dreamhost has to say
“WELL IT’S TOO LATE FOR SORRY!!!
We’ve ALREADY dropped activeCollab as one of our one-clicks we offer.”
There are plans to move into Basecamp’s market with the software. With only the slight advantage of running ActiveCollab on your own server rather than Basecamp’s hosting model will only win hardcore programmer types. Basecamp is the leader in the online project management market and will barely feel the pressure. This definitely illustrates the adage of “great programmers don’t make great business people”
Now that ActiveCollab is leaving the world of open source the playing field is pretty much wide open for a comprehensive open source project management framework. There’s an early Rails clone out there called RailsCollab that doesn’t seem to be moving very quickly. There’s also Dot project which I don’t feel is very usable software as of yet. Possible a good user interface overhaul would help bring it up to see. Hey, a new project idea!
Tags: Technology
James Urquhart (October 6th, 2007)
Hey there,
RailsCollab isn’t moving very quickly as i’m the only guy working on it. There doesn’t seem to be enough community interest to develop it any further. And i can’t justify myself putting too much time and effort into something which isn’t going to go anywhere. :(
Still, it works – although it has a lot of issues with it. But if you know the innards of Ruby and Ruby on Rails, i guess you could fix it all up.
Another ActiveCollab fork i bumped across a month or two ago was ProjectPier (http://www.projectpier.org/). IMO, that is currently the most active open source fork out there.
In any case, good luck with your Project Management! :)
~ James
Haig Armen (October 6th, 2007)
James,
I know where you’re coming from. Sometimes being an army of one can wear you down.
Thanks for the update on RailsCollab. It looks promising. We’re getting pretty handy with Rails over here and might be able to carry the torch for a while.
Is the latest version in rubyForge?
James Urquhart (October 7th, 2007)
Yes indeed – it is all located in the SVN repository.
Thanks for your interest.
~ James
JIm Kellys (October 12th, 2007)
We use Wrike for project management. It’s not another Basecamp clone. It’s different and has got more useful features. I’m sure, you’ve heard about it. If not do check it out.
Good luck, guys!
Marcos (March 21st, 2008)
Opengoo is an always-free project and document mangement solution. We are planning to add lots more features within this year. You can find it at http://www.opengoo.org .