28 Dec
At eLocomotive we’ve been using a web based project management tool called Active Collab. It was free, open source software in its alpha phase but they decided to start charging. I’m all for making money but I think they took a wrong turn. There are already half a dozen good project management web apps that charge and to be honest, Active Collab didn’t have anything revolutionary. It is a solid product but that’s it. The exciting thing about AC was that it was open and was trying to build a community.
I’m not gushing about open source and free products. Many fail to improve and fail to innovate. It takes real work to keep the product on a road map and some strategic community features to keep it growing. If we’re lucky, 10% of users will contribute to the project and 10% of those mods will be useful but there can be a lot of value in that 1%.
Well, we’ve decided to resurrect this project under the name SpoonOS. It will launch 1st quarter with the basic pages and community opening in February. You can keep up with progress at the blog (spoonos.org/blog).
2 Responses for "Open Source Project Management Returns"
Michael,
Do you still think (at this time and age), that charging for such a service is wrong? Almost everyone is doing it right now, even the new, emerging PM tools out there stating they will never charge for their services eventually will (IMO).
I don’t think charging for any service is “wrong”. There are definite benefits to paying for services and software.
At the end of the day, we all have to support ourselves. No matter how interested I am in a project, if work calls, my donated time takes a back seat. That happened with our own plans for Active Collab which we won’t launch until the 4th quarter.
I think Active Collab made a mistake in their approach. They didn’t really innovate and they didn’t really address the community they had already built when making the change. They could have left it open and offered hosted or enterprise versions. I’ve got a number of ideas on how they could innovate but I’ll hold that until we announce our roadmap (or decide to give up).
There are a lot of project management services on the web. I thought the main benefit of Active Collab was it’s free, open, community approach. They took that away without offering much in it’s place. I don’t blame them. I just think it was a mistake.
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