]Project Open[ for Enterprise Project Management [LWN.net]

By Forrest Cook
November 10, 2009

]Project Open[, or ]po[ is a cross-platform project management tool that is integrated within an enterprise resource planning system. It can be used for project planning, tracking, controlling and invoicing. ]po[ is designed in a modular fashion, individual packages can be installed and removed at runtime. The ]Project Open[ Company is located in Spain and is under German management. From the in a Nutshell document:

]po[ is a Web-based "Enterprise Project Management" software for project-based organizations with 2-200 users. ]po[ integrates areas such as CRM, sales, project planning, project tracking, collaboration, timesheet, invoicing and payments. ]project-open[ is one of the largest open-source based web applications in the world with more than 1,000,000 lines of code. More than 1000 companies in 25 countries use ]po[ to run their businesses.

The depth of functionality provided by ]Project Open[ is shown by the extensive list of modules that can be used for performing the many operations. Key module categories include Projects, Finance, Customers, Collaboration, Human Resources, Providers, Knowledge Management, Reporting and Translation. [Project Open] The ]po[ Architecture FAQ explains the project's organization relative to the required open-source project dependencies. ]po[ requires the AOLServer web server with the OpenACS libraries. It does not work with Apache and there are no plans for Apache support in the future. PostgreSQL is used as the underlying DBMS. The Architecture Intro document explains the relationships of the various subcomponents within ]po[.

]po[ is released under a mixed-source model of licensing including GPL, the ]project-open[ Free License (FL) and the ]project-open[ Commercial License (CL). The model is explained this way:

The basic idea behind ]project-open[ is to create an open-source ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system. So why don't we release all of our code under an open-source license such as the GPL ? It's a difficult one. We are believers in open-source who are convinced that open-source economics will, on the long term change and finally dominate the entire software industry. However, there is a certain misfit between the open-source concept and ERP software, because ERPs are considered by most open-source developers to be very boring; resulting that few of them are willing to spend their free time developing them. We have tried a lot of different options in the past in order to tackle this issue and to make open-source ERPs work. However, due to the lackluster success of the completely "open-source" method, some auxiliary parts of ]project-open[ are licensed commercially in order to generate revenue for ourselves.

The "boring" nature of ERP software hasn't prevented the community from producing a variety of offerings, though.

The ]po[ Free License is unusual:

Software under the Free License is free for everybody to use and modify. It is "normal" commercial software, but the license fee is 0.00. However, the redistribution of any software that has been downloaded/modified is restricted in order to avoid the "free loader problem" (companies taking advantage of the efforts of others). Basically, you have to become a "[partner]" and share the development costs in order to receive the rights of redistribution for any software downloaded/modified with the Free License.

The license text is a bit more clear: redistribution of the software requires a separate license which may be had by contacting the project and, presumably, meeting whatever terms they may require. The "Free License" is a "free beer" license which happens to include source code.

Version 3.4 of ]po[ was released on November 5, 2009.

V3.4 is the first release after nearly 18 months of development work. New non-functional features include a completely revamped GUI, localization into 10 languages, and an online context help system. New functionality includes support for ITIL/ITSM processes including Helpdesk (Incident and Change Management), Inventory (Configuration & License Management), Release Management, and integration links with Nagios, CVS, OCS-Inventory, and many more. New enterprise features include an Active Directory integration, the increased use of approval workflows for business objects, generic auditing for regulatory compliancy, performance improvement for companies with >1.000 users, and the support for multiple profit centers (corporate multi-company structures) and profit center controlling.

If your small or medium sized business needs a Linux-compatible business management system and you don't mind working with a mixed-source product, ]Project Open[ appears to be capable of providing a wide range of capabilities.

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]Project Open[ for Enterprise Project Management

Posted Nov 12, 2009 21:11 UTC (Thu) by jimparis (subscriber, #38647) [Link]

Yeah, that was quite painful to skim.

]Project Open[ for Enterprise Project Management

Posted Nov 15, 2009 3:54 UTC (Sun) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link]

Not as painful as dealing with AOLServer....

Last I looked, the recommended way to set this up was "just use our VMWare
image" (which doesn't work with VMWare ESX). Good luck if you actually want
to set the thing up on your own OS installation. (In fact that's pretty much
what they say too.)

]Project Open[ for Enterprise Project Management

Posted Nov 16, 2009 15:50 UTC (Mon) by cdamian (subscriber, #1271) [Link]

disclaimer: I used to work for project-open

project-open is based on OpenACS as is mentioned in the article. OpenACS more ore less requires that you use the AOLServer, which is usually not provided by distributions. It also makes some assumptions on the AOLServer and TCL, so you sometimes need special version of these.

While working for project-open I helped to create RPMs for Red Hat and Suse to make the set-up easier. If everything works as you should be able to install a handful of RPMs, which provide the necessary AOLServer and TCL versions and also create the database and environment for project-open itself.

Just for giving it a try it is probably easier to use the VMWare image. If you want to use it in production you should give the guys from project-open a call and let them help you. The software in itself is also very powerful and complex enough that it makes sense to pay for the support they can provide.