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Open Project is getting less Open and more selfish (profit-oriented)

Added by Frederick Feld over 2 years ago

So as a long OP user I would know your opinion about the discrepancy between the vision from Open Projektcs and what they really do, because I get the feeling they start to leave the old narrative, to deliver the best in its class Projectmanagement software available for everybody, since the maintenance costs for private server getting less, and no need for "Enterprise service" (never got this in Germany yet) 

Whats bothers me most is, that they hide some features like agile boards which are today common to everybody and normally a standard to every modern management software, and leave the community user with the old BOOMER work method they called "traditional".


Replies (4)

RE: Open Project is getting less Open and more selfish (profit-oriented) - Added by Niels Lindenthal over 2 years ago

Hi Frederick,

Niels here - Founder of OpenProject.

Open source developers need to pay their rent, too. Are you an open source developer?

Best
Niels

RE: Open Project is getting less Open and more selfish (profit-oriented) - Added by Frederick Feld over 2 years ago

Good morning Niels,

of course, they have to. For me, it is more dependent on the business model.  For example, you may take a look at Blender.  There I´m a part of the developer Community. The Main team finances themself over donations from the end-user up to companies like Nvidia.  Today they dominate the 3D Market. So yes I guess it is absolutely possible to manage it that way. And of course, there is a difference in the size of popularity, OP is flying under the radar, but Blender went although through this situation, starting as unknown geek software with 4 to 7 paid developers to the leading position. I have no doubt OP couldn't be the same, project management getting more and more important. But Blender succeeds inasmuch as they could bind a massive amount of users to their software and get popular. My argument is, do not hold back key features rather of bumping up as much as possible so people get fascinated while using and share their experiences.

Best greetings. Frederick ✌🏿

RE: Open Project is getting less Open and more selfish (profit-oriented) - Added by Niels Lindenthal over 2 years ago

Hi Frederick,

Thanks that you acknowledge that open source developers need to get paid.

So since you advocate to donate to open source projects. Let's make a quick reality check: How much did you personal donate to open source projects last year?

Best

Niels

RE: RE: Open Project is getting less Open and more selfish (profit-oriented) - Added by Bernard Gray over 2 years ago

Hi Niels, 

Every year I make donations to a variety of opensource projects (both personally and on behalf of my employer). 

I/we understand the need for all open source developers to be paid (free software != free developer services), however I/we prefer to use fully open source tools where possible to avoid the risk of lockin/dependence on non-free features, and restrict our access to help develop/extend/internally bug fix ie there is very little incentive or interest in moving to the non-community version of openproject.

This is a high value project to our company though, and I do want to make a donation - I searched google for "openproject donation" and this thread ranked highest on my results, I see some problems:

  1. I can't seem to find a way to make a donation to openproject
  2. This is not a good example of an exchange between you and the community (admittedly, the OP could have asked their question in a less combative way but I suspect there may be some non-native language influencing the tone), and most importantly
  3. it is not representative (at least in my experience) of how you (Niels, and OpenProject in general) traditionally interract with the community. It has always been extremely polite and considerate

I'd still like to make a donation, and if that avenue is not available maybe you would be open to the idea of making it an option for those users who want to explicitly support the community version?

...and extending the wishlist somewhat, perhaps if that revenue channel got to an adequate level you could release more of the enterprise features to the community edition? :D

Thanks for a great product, and I hope to be able to help it remain viable into the future (and perhaps turn this thread into a good news story while I'm at it)

Regards,

Bernard Gray

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