OpenProj
| Company type | Open-source software |
|---|---|
| Industry | Software |
| Founded | 2007 |
| Founder | Marc O'Brien, Howard Katz, Laurent Chretienneau |
| Fate | Development ceased; succeeded by ProjectLibre |
| Products | Project management software |
OpenProj was an open-source project management software initially created in 2007 by Marc O'Brien, Howard Katz, and Laurent Chretienneau at Projity. The software officially left its beta phase with the release of Version 1.0 on January 10, 2008.
Towards the end of 2008, Projity was acquired by Silver Lake Partners, a private equity firm, through its subsidiary Serena Software. Shortly after this acquisition, active development and support for OpenProj ceased, with only minimal CVS updates that introduced some regressions. As a result, the software gradually lost compatibility with Microsoft Project.
In addition to OpenProj, Serena/Projity provided a cloud-based project management solution called Projects On Demand, which was discontinued in June 2011.
In 2012, the original creators of OpenProj forked the codebase to develop a new version. Serena recommended transitioning to ProjectLibre, which debuted in August 2012 as a completely rewritten replacement rather than a direct continuation of OpenProj’s code. ProjectLibre remains an open-source contender within the project management software landscape.
Features
The latest release offers:
- Earned value analysis for cost tracking
- Gantt chart visualization
- PERT diagram support
- Resource breakdown structure (RBS) visualization
- Reports on task usage
- Work breakdown structure (WBS) charts
Popularity
OpenProj has been downloaded more than 4 million times worldwide across 142 countries. Within three months following its beta launch, it maintained an average of 60,000 downloads monthly on SourceForge. Its SourceForge activity percentile reached 99.964, ranking it 15th overall—just ahead of the messaging application Pidgin. By May 2008, the total download count on SourceForge had surpassed 500,000.
Bugs
OpenProj has not received official support for over ten years. Serena Software encouraged users to migrate to ProjectLibre. Since version 1.4, most bugs are found in advanced functionalities such as tasks unexpectedly starting early, broken task links, and fixed costs for summary tasks that either fail to aggregate correctly or cannot be modified. Some problems are resolved by restarting the program; others remain persistent.
While closely mimicking Microsoft Project's interface and project planning approach—such as building an indented task list or work breakdown structure (WBS), defining durations, linking tasks via drag-and-drop or manual input, and assigning resources—OpenProj differs slightly in its user interface (version 1.4). For example, it does not permit manual upward linking of tasks; task insertion is less streamlined; and resources must be created beforehand rather than dynamically during task assignment. More notably, OpenProj lacks the comprehensive views and detailed reporting features commonly found in Microsoft Project. Although cost-related fields exist, displaying these requires advanced users to manually add them using specific field names and functions.
Licensing
Certain OpenProj features are accessible only through a paid license; free users experience a somewhat restricted functionality set. For example, version 1.4 does not natively support exporting to PDF within the application itself; however, this can be circumvented using third-party tools. As is typical with commercial software, donations or purchases help fund ongoing development efforts.
ProjectLibre
In 2012, the creators behind OpenProj initiated the development of ProjectLibre, a cloud-compatible alternative designed to rival Microsoft Project Server. Noticing that Serena Software had not upgraded OpenProj for over a decade, they opted to completely redevelop the software to better align with their objectives.