Business and enterprise software, and other applications that help a business run

In one of its occasional fits of pique, Microsoft saw fit not to provide updates for my perfectly legal copy of Project, which was my lifeblood for all the years I planned and managed software development projects. The reason was obscure and had to do with having once removed a disk drive where I had kept some archived Project files. Then, it also became impossible to get support without laying out money because of Microsoft’s obtuse and user-hostile support system.

Suffice it to say that I was mightily annoyed, leading me to a resolution to never use that product again, and an ongoing campaign to rid myself of all things Microsoft. After a lot of searching didn’t yield much in the way of a replacement, I said briefly in another blog that I was having trouble with my project software search. A reader saw that column and immediately pointed me to an Open Source replacement that I had never heard of before, despite numerous searches on that issue. I promptly downloaded it.

It is called OpenProj and is produced by the well-known open-source developers Projity. They also have an online solution called  Project On Demand, which carries a fee. OpenProj is free, as in beer. The download was through SourceForge and went smoothly and quickly via their mirror in Phoenix, AZ. The download is about six megabytes in the Windows 386 flavor. They also have versions for Unix, Linux, and Mac. The version available at that time was a beta launched just a few weeks earlier, which would explain why my other searches had not found it.

It installed in approximately 20 seconds, with no fuss or bother. Opening the program the first time asks you to accept the license agreement. On subsequent opens, it displays a tip, unless you ask it not to. Professor Einstein is missing.  ;o)  The interface looks, at first glance, cleaner than the MS Project interface. Looking through the menus, it seems to have all the bases covered. It does pretty much what every project management system does, except that it cost much less. Donate if you can.

It loaded perfectly and on the first try the file that Project would not load without an update, and from which my other problems stemmed. It went on to open files from several previous versions of MS project, some of which were very complex multi-year projects that I had planned and run. That said, it did have a problem with the newest file version.

OpenProj would not put the Gantt bars back on the screen once you left the original opening Gantt view for another view or program section and then tried to return to the Gantt view. Eventually, the program hung up and would not respond at all with this latest-version file. I had to kill it with the Task Manager. I was running the beta at that time. Version 1.0 behaves properly in that situation. Make sure that is the version that you get.

I am greatly encouraged by this product, especially now that it is out of Beta. It is faster that MS Project and not nearly as quirky. I was able to look at and manipulate the plan that I was unable to open with MS Project. I found the problem that my friend (who sent me the file) had been having with it and he is now back on track.

And I have a shiny new toy to play with.  ;o)