Top 3 Open Source Project Management Tools for 2016

Based on improvements and new features this year the top 3 Open Source Project Management Tools for 2016:

3)  OpenProject -is designed to help your project teams throughout the entire project lifecycle and gives collaborative project planning, timeline reports, task management, time and cost reporting, Scrum, and more. OpenProject stands out with its intuitive user interface, extensive documentation, API, and rich feature set, which makes it a good choice for enterprise needs. OpenProject is currently working on version 5.1, which will bring inline work package creation, design and usability improvements, accessibility improvements, and more. Benefit from powerful project management features, Create and manage tasks, bugs, change requests, requirements, risks, and more. Set up and maintain project plans based on your needs. Organize meetings, documents, and track time and costs. 100% Accessible. 100% Open Source. OpenProject is licensed under GPLv3. Its current version 5.0.16 is available for download.


2)  LibrePlan - is a web-based application, making project management available to the whole project team, and if necessary across organizations. This is another full featured tool supporting resource allocation, Gantt charts, financials. Manage Resources, Track Data, Collaborate and more. LibrePlan provides a modern design and balanced user interface, as well as, good and complete documentation, built in reporting, and professional support. A mobile application is available for Android, Windows phone, and other platforms. LibrePlan is licensed under GPLv3. It requires components a Java runtime environment, PostgreSQL, and Tomcat. Its available for download, and the source code can be found on GitHub.


1)  ProjectLibre - an award winning tool championed as the open source replacement of Microsoft Project which has been downloaded over two million times in 200 countries. It holds features such as support for task management, resource allocation, tracking, Gantt charts, and more. Als0 ProjectLibre Enterprise Cloud will release soon and have a similar disruptive impact that Google Docs had with Microsoft Word! ProjectLibre is licensed under a Common Public Attribution License Version 1.0. It's based on Java, and available for download.

Ubuntu, Dell and Project Sputnik

Did you known Dell started shipping PCs with Ubuntu Linux preinstalled in 2007? Additionally Dell recently unveiled an updated edition of its Ubuntu-powered laptop from Project Sputnik.

Launched in 2012, Project Sputnik is a Dell initiative to build Linux-based laptops tailored for cloud developers. They feature high-end hardware based on Dell's XPS line, combined with Canonical's Ubuntu Linux OS and some custom add-ons designed to help programmers test their code for cloud environments.


Since it is aimed at a relatively small group of customers, Project Sputnik is a far cry from the Ubuntu machines that Dell briefly but remarkably marketed to the masses circa 2007. The company is no longer doing that sort of thing.

The big change is the availability of updated hardware. The newest Ubuntu laptops from Dell feature sixth-generation Intel i7 processors, along with up to 16 gigabytes of memory. (Other Ubuntu laptops from the Precision line support as much as 32 gigabytes.) They also include updated versions of Dell's home-grown open source Project Sputnik software for developers.

The new Project Sputnik laptop will run Ubuntu 14.04. Dell says the machines will also support the newest long-term support (LTS) release of Ubuntu, 16.04, when it debuts later this spring.


The laptops do have significance, in particular, they're important because they are the only developer-centric, open source laptops that have the backing of a major hardware vendor. There are some niche companies that sell laptops with Ubuntu preinstalled, like System76 and Zareason, but they are small outfits and not obvious partners for businesses that want to take advantage of Ubuntu. Against this backdrop, Dell continues to play a unique channel role through its sustained commitment to Linux laptops.


Links:  

Dell and Project Sputnik:
http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/555/campaigns/xps-linux-laptop?c=us&l=en&s=biz

Ubuntu:
http://www.ubuntu.com/

White House Draft Policy - Leveraging American Ingenuity through Reusable and Open Source Software

When people and programmers are given access to aspects of fundamental code, positive things can happen. Bugs are found and fixed and security holes are patched...Software is made better or even adapted to different needs.

The ubiquitous open source model has become so dominant in the private sector that US government is seeing its advantages and its true potential to the extent that the Federal Chief Information Officer of the United States, Tony Scott released a blog post entitled "Leveraging American Ingenuity through Reusable and Open Source Software" which outlines the Obama administration’s plans to bring open source to the government.

In the White House’s draft vision, government agencies will be able to share code and address inefficiencies over time, saving one agency from reinventing the wheel where another has already done the work.

It’s not yet policy but at this point a launching pad for greater things.

As Scott wrote in the blog post:

“We’re releasing for public comment a draft Federal Source Code policy to support improved access to custom software code.” “This policy will require new software developed specifically for or by the Federal Government to be made available for sharing and re-use across Federal agencies. It also includes a pilot program that will result in a portion of that new federally-funded custom code being released to the public,”

But its not just about sharing code but would also instruct agencies to use open source pieces to build the software itself whenever possible.

If government can successfully move this initiative along and it survives the transition of the next elected administration, it could eventually revolutionize the way the public and US government shares code project for the public good echoing better governance and systems.

Open source has come far, no doubt.   Let’s take a look at the three distinct generations:

The Richard Stallman generation:

Founding the free software movement in the 80s, this generation built GNU and the FSF, which made it possible a decade later for Linux-based operating systems to function. As FOSS purists, they also tended to view free software as a “moral crusade”, and they remained relatively marginal within the mainstream technology world.

Linux Kernel generation:

They were the first to have access to free/open source operating systems that actually worked by combining Linus Torvalds's free kernel with GNU utilities. This second generation was less ideological than the first generation. Torvalds et all favoured open source primarily for functional, not moral, reasons. They saw it as a more efficient way to code, and a less expensive means of working with computers. But they were still independent, and wary of becoming corporate minions.  This is where the lines begin to blur or split between what is FOSS and  what is Open-Source.  This generation also brought GNU/Linux  into the mainstream. They wrote the code that made open source operating systems not just functional, but top-tier and competitive with professional closed-source platforms. They also faced bitter battles with Microsoft in the late 90s and early 2000s, which younger coders perhaps do not fully appreciate. People who were not active open source programmers or users before the mid-2000s probably take it for granted that they do not have to worry about potentially being sued for using GNU/Linux.

Today's Generation (Gen 3):

This is the generation that came of age once GNU/Linux was already the defacto operating system for millions of servers, at a time when no one questioned the value of open source code. For this generation, open source is no longer an argument. It's a default. For that reason, the ideological and functionalist debates have largely disappeared from the scene. Most open source programmers today do not give away code because they think it is the morally right thing to do, or because they deem it more efficient. They do it because there is no real alternative in an increasing number of niches.   From the cloud (where OpenStack reigns supreme) to big data (where Hadoop, Spark and a host of NoSQL databases are now conquering the proprietary holdouts) to SDN and NFV, open source dominates. If you want to work in these ecosystems, you have to use open source.  Most open source supporters no doubt see this as a good thing. The trend toward licensing everything under Apache licenses, rather than the GPL, will not please people who think the Apache terms are too liberal. Similarly, the increasing influence of corporations in the open source space -- heralded most recently by controversy over the Linux Foundation's change to its by-laws -- has caused some tensions within the community.  Last but not least, the open source community's cozying-up to Microsoft in recent years, while seemingly normal to members of the third open source generation, may not sit completely comfortably with people who lived through the struggles of yore.  

adapted from write up by: Christopher Tozzi | The VAR Guy