Redmine

I just did the comparison as my organization is moving from git to redmine as a project management system. we choose redmine over openproject.

open project just doesnt have the same integrations, it looks nice, but with some basic themes redmine looks good too.

what makes redmine great is redmineup's agile plugin..that really just puts it on par with openproject.

good4y0u - wrote:

open project just doesnt have the same integrations, it looks nice, but with some basic themes redmine looks good too.

Good4y0u, can you please explain more specifically the integrations you mean?

And my two cents follow. We're long-term Redmine users and OpenProject was just quickly evaluated. So it is biased indeed.

• Redmine is way more friendly for plugin developers. I have the right open-source feeling from it. When i search GitHub:
  • There are much more Redmine plugins. Although most of them are dead, sadly.
  • Most OpenProject's active plugins are from OpenProject's authors.
• OpenProject was forked long time ago and has not adopted some Redmine's development we are used to. Specifically key-value lists in custom fields, which we depend on.
• The philosophy of OpenProject's advanced features confuses me - the option of having multivalue lists custom fields is not really an advanced feature (it's possible to work around it or just to purchase it, but still - it makes their business model hardly readable for me).

• The UX is awesome compared to Redmine. And it's not only about how it looks. In real life, Redmine discourages our users to share the information at the right place. I believe it is because too high barrier for doing it:
  • Any information update looks too formal and binding to the users. I.e. I have an update > locate the Edit option > locate the things I want to update again > do the changes > "commit & push" the changes.
  • And when updating, I have a feeling a mistake must not be done, otherwise I'd be punished by the above bureaucratic cycle again and the other users will be bothered by endless issue change log.
  • As a result, important information often end up in unstructured instant messaging history, while they were supposed to be at an issue.
  • And then the improper information flow costs real money.
• Non-geek Redmine users (such us customers) would be probably much less lost in OpenProject.
• It looks like a healthier project.
  • Redmine development is blocked by people who did a great job in the past, but now they don't have time to touch it for weeks or months. Look at version 4.0 release.
  • It does not reflect up-to-date development practices (code in SVN, patches only as attached files). Which makes it also contributor-unfriendly (compare with the UX above).
  • In my view, insufficient attention is paid to the PR / funding / contributor aspect. For example, we'd be happy to donate to help Redmine to move forward. But I'm not sure if Redmine is about to move forward even when properly funded - just based on what I see. Instead, funds now go to companies whose business is to make Redmine usable.

• It would be great if Redmine got its momentum again. When there are companies who can live on building Redmine extension layers, it can't be impossible.
• OpenProject's dealbreaker for me is that they split up from Redmine completely. If they did it like EasyRedmine, i.e. using plugin and theme-based reworking layer, it would be totally a considerable option.
• Currently it's quite difficult for Redmine users to decide where to move on. The main deciding criterion is whether the vanilla Redmine is still alive-enough.