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TUTOS: http://www.tutos.org/homepage/about.html

# a calendar for users and groups
# Groups / Teams
# address manager for people, companies and departments
# bug tracking system
# product/project repository

        * with task management
        * with document management
        * with installation management
        * support of different roles
        * support of relations to other projects
# mailboxes (imap/pop)
# timetracking on projects, installations and bugs
# Watchlists. Stay informed on changes on projects/bugs etc via email.

I've been looking for an open-source, LAMP-based, non-abandoned, production-ready solution which could also do time tracking. Best I've found so far is TUTOS. The demo off their homepage is in german, but there is an english online demo hosted (somewhere). It's worth considering. (And no, I have no bias or connection with this project). Good luck!

You really need just three things, and in my experience, nobody bothers to even go this far.

What might help is a project management infrastructure to assist in doing these things.

For design documentation and documentation in general you need a rudimentary content management system. It can be as simple as document repository under version control.

For e-mails to track changes and record on-going discussions and debate, use a change management system like Request Tracker or a threaded discussion group program with email notification.

Gforge, Tudos and trac are complete systems for managing development.

Having project management infrastructure in place at all times means that you can turn anything that requires more then, say, one person working two days, into a formal project with minimal overhead.

These systems reduce the number of face-to-face meetings that eat into development time and at the same time improve communication. The result is that there can be a measurable improvement in even the smallest project. Perhaps, especially in the smallest projects.

searching around sourceforge.... might try tutos?
http://www.tutos.org/

A company I consult with has a policy like that in place, but instead of enforcing it by separating the work like you suggested they have a flexible Tutos based system which provides time tracking capabilities, so developers are free to divide that time as they please. They modified Tutos to display the ratio between the time spent on company-based and volunteer work in a graphical way on every page. The work done for the company is shown as a green bar and volunteer work is shown as a blue bar which turns red if the ratio goes beyond what is expected. It works well, the managers do not even have to keep a close eye on things because most people are disciplined enough if they are made aware of how they are spending their time like that. Of course they could always lie and pretend to be working on a company-based project, but without any significant results to show they can't do it for long. It's a cool system if you have moderately disciplined and self-motivated people who enjoy that kind of freedom and know to appreciate it.

Tutos.

Its one of the most versatile project tools I've used for development projects. Full time management and accounting, tasks, there were even gantt charts addons, although I cannot remember where to find them.

Beyond project management, this also starts to grow into things like resource management. Its a very comprehensive package that I find extremely useful.

PHP+SQL and released under the GPL2. Will run on pretty much any platform (I have it on OSX, Apache+postgre) and easy to use once you get used to it. ;)

hmm have to check that out.
my uni uses tutos.

and the software engineering documentation subject has "Document the building of your very own team management software" as their semester project

actually, in order to manage all the docs our team used a combination of roundup, mailman and B2 blog to make our own rapidly developed team work space...
it was kinda ironic - using a collaborative online project management system to design a collaborative online project management system

in the end, though, the strain of having 7 people work on 1 document through a webbased interface got too much so we ended up using CVS on the school unix servers

For CRM, we use TUTOS.

For accounting, it's SQL-Ledger. Both the CRM and accounting apps are backed by PostgreSQL.

For office suites, OpenOffice.

Web browsing is Mozilla; e-mail is whatever our employees prefer (Mozilla, Kmail, Evolution, Pine, Mutt, whatever...)

We are completely MSFT-free and intend to stay that way.

we had the same problem about 2yrs ago. we ended up rolling our own, i strongly suggest you dont do that. its pretty much dead now and only used for generating time sheets. TUTOS is one that we've looked at several times, unfortunatly it too isnt complete yet, but it is progressing. Another one we are looking at is the project management modules being built into the latest CVS version of Horde. While the CVS versions of the framework, email client, filtering system and to a lesser extent the calendar are pretty stable the other stuff is a quite quickly moving target.

http://www.tutos.org:
"Closed because of 'Software-Patents'"

Bummer.

This software is nowhere near polished enough to succeed in a corporate environment. I don't know why it's been called 1.0, but I'd say it was more at the stage of an early beta. You realise this as soon as it loads up. There are graphical elements that don't fit their boxes, so get cut off, that sort of thing.

The other thing I don't understand is that the menus look more like Tk than Qt. This means that it doesn't fit with other KDE applications, at the same time as looking rather worse.

Use Evolution if you want an Outlookalike, otherwise use Mozilla for mail and Tutos for tracking contacts and arranging meetings.

• a calendar for users and groups
• Groups / Teams
• address manager for people, companies and departments
• bug tracking system
• product/project repository
  • with task management
  • with document management
  • with installation management
  • support of different roles (manager, developer, customer etc.)
  • support of relations to other projects (base product, subproject etc.)
• mailboxes (imap/pop)
• timetracking on projects, installations and bugs
• Invoices
• Watchlists. Stay informed on changes on projects/bugs etc via email.
• support for teams that are distributed over different timezones
• color themes / layout
• fine grained permission handling
• change history

Since my only knowledge of "Volunteer Management Systems" is what I just read on your eBase link, I won't make any guarantees, but it's possible that TUTOS will be reasonable match. It's a fairly generic CRM system, and while its terminology may not be an exact match for what your people use, it can do most of the stuff that eBase claims. The only thing that I noticed specific about eBase was it's Evaluate the cost-effectiveness of campaigns as you move donors and volunteers up the "ladder of engagement"; if that's simply marketing speak for "match donations to the mailout that provoked them", I suspect a little wrangling with the TUTOS projects, installations, and invoices could provide a similar report. Try asking more specifically about your needs on the TUTOS mailling list.

Of course, TUTOS is just one of the many OS CRM systems, maybe another would be better starting point. Trying googling for "Linux CRM" rather than "Volunteer Management".

A couple of weeks ago I needed a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) server to test Tutos and a co-worker talked me into trying Debian because I was having problems with the Apache/PHP in RH 8.0. The first install was a bit of a hassle and then I found this article" The Very Verbose Debian 3.0 Installation Walkthrough and all is right with the world.

The box was easily 30% faster than RedHat 8, Tutos actually worked and the install was less than a gig. I have been slowly adding the additional toys I need (you know, traceroute - stuff like that...) and I have yet to reboot.

The Debian team could certainly use some help with the installer (Tasksel is evil!) but I like the "purity" of the installation I got. No, I'm not running the latest kernel but damn is the box fast...

I would love to see a distro with the stability and discipline of Debian with the graphical installer, hardware config, and desktops in Mandrake and RedHat. I will never go back to RedHat so I will just settle for the stability and discipline of Debian no matter what happens.

yes, tutos looks good. i haven't tried it in production but it boasts a lot of features.

one important thing i see overlooked often is the need for -more- than a web/gui interface. if you can't write scripts to automate generating reports, filing new bugs due to results from automated testing, etc. it will only get you so far. of course this is where open source shines if you don't need that now but can afford to add it yourself later.

TUTOS might be a good contact manager for your sales team, and project planner for the programmers. It is a web-app (PHP-MySQL) so it will immediatly solve any cross platform issues. (Do you all use mac's) Plus when your sales guys are on the road they can access info over the web, and if you have progammers who work from home then they can use it to update a projects status and submit billable hours.

I understand that JBuilder can be expensive for a small company but it is worth the money. I use a mac here at work, but have a linux, and windows machine at home. JBuilder works on all three platforms.

There are a couple of web-based solutions available - try phpGroupWare or TUTOS.

You basically get contact management, scheduling, task and time management, and bug tracking. The server runs with Apache and PHP, and clients use it through a web interface. This means that the clients can run on (almost) any operating system.

No, I'm nothing to do with the project, I'm just a satisfied customer. :-)

MS Project is beautiful, but seriously flawed in the monitoring business.

Also seriously flawed in that you need IE on Windoze to use its web access features.

You might want to check out Tutos. Dunno if it has all the features you want, but it's free and open source. Add what you need! :-)

One reason: Lotus Notes. Granted, there are also open source alternatives out there (such as for instance Tutos), but that doesn't help you much if you are an employee at a company which uses Notes. Wine allows you to run Linux on your workstation while still being able to access the corporate document and discussion databases.

Of course, it is in IBM's power to show their true commitment to Linux by making this point moot with a native Linux Notes client, but for some weird reason they don't want to, despite their Linux commitment in many other areas...

a good project management application is important for any development team. usually, these are hard to come by unless you plunk down $10,000 or more, although these come with a gazillion features that you probably won't end up using.

i discovered a new tool on sourceforge which is an open project written in php.

i'm impressed with it. the code is also well documented.
the homepage can be found here.
i recommend checking out the screenshots as well.