Project management / groupware tools

Project management / groupware tools

web-based groupware tools

• CPS - Great collaboration platform made by one of the consortium members
• Tutos - requires apache
• Tutos2 - should work with apache or apache2 but the Debian package is buggy, it does not seem to work with apache2. Mandriva package works fine. Easy to install from source. A library is needed for Gantt charts but it is installed automatically with the Mandriva package (installing it from source is relatively easy).
• phpgroupware - Not shiny, not stable, doesn't work (Debian package).
• eGroupware - A nice and shiny fork of phpgroupware. It does have Gantt diagrams that do not work very well (or I didn't manage to get them working) and when you try to display charts for a project spanning 20 years, it makes Firefox crash.
• phpcollab Nice Gantt diagrams. No debian package, but seems quite nice overall. Development version is buggy.
• moregroupware This one does not seem to include project management.
• dotproject Seems very nice, projects with tasks, task dependencies with automatic date computation, Gantt charts that work and show dependencies. Installing dotproject However, it appears that its dependency calculation routines are bugged, and the maintainers do not plan on fixing the current release. Very messy source code.
• phpprojekt Too complicated, no nice Gantt diagrams, very slow.
• ganntproject Has a good review in the following report, but requires Java. The demo is way too slow using Sun JDK.
• gforge - Nice, but I think it is too developer-oriented.
• purely groupware but solid Opengroupware (OGo) does not offer a lot of development-centric features
• http://www.openpsa.org/ (See also this article on DBE)
• basecamp (not OSS but free for one project and with no file sharing feature-which we don't need thanks to our svn). http://www.basecamphq.com/signup.php : it is free, online, and there is nothing to setup.
• Kolab2 (integration with KDE Kontact)
• OpenGroupware.org a complete suite
• OpenOffice.org Project Management under development
• General catalogs:
  • http://www.web-based-software.com/project/
  • http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Apps/project-management.html
  • http://proj.chbs.dk/
  • See also: Étude sur les solutions de gestion de projets by TC2L (in French)

Conclusion (temporary)

The choice is essentially between dotproject and phpcollab. Both have nice, polished interfaces with lots of features. phpcollab is easy to install, but it has some bugs, such as task dates resetting to the Unix epoch. However phpcollab does not seem to have a user base as large as dotproject. dotproject is nice, too, and seems to have more features. It has some small installation issues (see instructions).

Hence, we are installing dotproject at INRIA and giving it a try.