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Groupware for Small Consulting Organizations?

Posted by Cliff on from the filling-an-apparently-unfilled-niche dept.

vrmlguy asks: "I've worked for several small consulting organizations over the past few years, and have discovered an unmet need. Every place I've worked has developed lots of code (usually scripts) that rarely gets reused except by the person who wrote it. Management always talks about 'knowledge management systems', but nothing ever gets off the ground. Does anyone know of something that works? I've looked at the CMS Info and TECFA Portals Pointers web sites, but haven't found much that seems to meet my needs. What I think that I need is something similar to sourceforge, but without the bells and whistles. BSCW looks like the closest fit, but I've got a few concerns about its licensing. The ideal solution would let me control any code that I upload, and search other peoples' code for stuff I can download and modify for my own use. CVS is overkill, since I expect that people will rarely check things back in that they've downloaded. Ease of use is important, since people always think it's easier to write from scratch than to search for things to reuse. Security is paramount, since there will be a lot of code that, for various contractual reasons, we don't want to share with anyone. Does anyone know of a great project that I may have missed?"

20 comments

  1. Why is CVS overkill? by thelenm · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It sounds like you're interested in having everyone be able to upload their own code, and download and modify others' code for their own use. Why exactly is CVS overkill? It sounds like CVS or another version control system like Subversion might be a great solution for you. No one says you have to use all its features, you can just use it for what you need it for: keeping a central repository of code.

    --
    Use Ctrl-C instead of ESC in Vim!
    1. Re:Why is CVS overkill? by PsndCsrV · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Unfortunately, it seems the poster is looking for a sort of directory/search function built on top of that. I know core CVS doesn't do that. It's great for version control and code repositories, but has no functionality at all for displaying what projects are on a server and what those projects do.

      With a little coding, it would be pretty simple to create a perl or php web page that allows you to upload a file, along with a description of the program. Then that info can get stored somewhere (flat file, mysql db) that a search program can then use to search. If you really wanted to get into it, you could add categories and keywords to the description. The access could be limited using Apache's ip or password based controls.

      Then again... that kind of goes against the whole theme of code re-use. :-)

      --
      Experiments must be reproducible; they should all fail in the same way.
    2. Re:Why is CVS overkill? by rkz · · Score: 3, Informative

      I can't believe that noone has suggested using sourceforge.
      This is a great way to manage differnet programs on your OWN server, and it also adds things like a central place to keep docs, bugs and CVS.

      If you are working in a Windows shop maybe you should give Source Safe a try, while its not as feature full as CVS its easier to use and provides better intergration to Visual Studio.

      --
      There is no god
    3. Re:Why is CVS overkill? by Jellybob · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The submitter of the article suggested Sourceforge themselves, but thought that it was too much for what they needed.

  2. CVS by chipster · · Score: 1

    Use CVS. It's proven, easy to learn/use, and it's open.

    1. Re:CVS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      proven to suck. There are a handful of next-generation versioning systems, which are ready for primetime. subversion, for example, was written by former CVS developers that redesigned based on their experience and fustrations at CVS's shortcomings.

      Savannah.gnu.org (the gnu fork of sourceforge) now recommends using subversion, since it requires less maintenence on the backend.

  3. Why Not SourceForge? by johnraphone · · Score: 2, Informative

    Source Forge is a great tool, I've used it and its really helpful on collaborating projects. The source code is avalible on thier site (http://sourceforge.net/projects/alexandria-dev) and perhaps you could strip it down to meet your needs.

    --
    Free Instant Site Inclusion
    1. Re:Why Not SourceForge? by Christopher+Cashell · · Score: 5, Informative

      SourceForge is a Very Bad Idea (tm) at this point.

      The only source code that is available is almost two years old, and the SourceForge.net people have intentionally killed further outside development of the official SourceForge project.

      The current version of SourceForge is *not* available as source, at least, not without paying big bucks. In other words, it's no longer open source. Of course, SourceForge.net will squirm and twist things like there's no tomorrow to get away with not admitting that they closed SourceForge.

      Additionally, the version of SourceForge that is available is unbelievably difficult to set up, doesn't run very well, and is very SourceForge.net specific. It's set up to run on PostgreSQL, and yet all the documentation (what (very) little there is) talks about MySQL.

      If you want something like SourceForge, only more oriented towards a smaller, more private, organization, you should investigate GForge. GForge is a much reworked fork of SourceForge. The fork was started by Tim Purdue, one of the original, and primary, authors of SourceForge, and is now being actively developed by the community.

      GForge has also had it's goals and orientation changed slightly from SourceForge's. SourceForge was designed to work as a huge farm, managing hundreds of thousands of users and programs. A huge portion of it's functionality is superfluous and overly complicated. GForge is a simplified and better organized application designed specifically for use by smaller groups and companies for their own projects.

      Personally, for what it sounds like the original poster is looking for, I'd recommend GForge coupled with a good Wiki. That should cover almost everything he needs.

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      Topher
    2. Re:Why Not SourceForge? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      Just one nitpick: your "The only source code that is available is almost two years old" assertion is wrong. The Debian-SF project (of which I am a member) has maintained and evolved that old code into a set of Debian packages (that means it's unbelievably *easy* to set up) that work rather well and is not sourceforge.net specific.

      I'm not advocating Debian-SF, though. All the work that had gone into it has been merged into Gforge when Gforge was started, and the developers are now proud members of the Gforge project, which we do advocate more than SF these days: it's more maintained, it's cleaner, it's better internationalised, etc.

      I think someone mentioned the idea of a Wiki plugin for Gforge, so things are not necessarily incompatible.

      Roland,
      Debian-SF *and* Gforge developer (and user).

    3. Re:Why Not SourceForge? by Christopher+Cashell · · Score: 1

      My apologies. You are correct, and I should have been more clear.

      When I said that the "only source code available" was two years old, I meant to say the "only official SourceForge source code available" was two years old.

      The reason I didn't mention the Debian-SF fork (which I have used in the past, and consider a huge improvement over the stock SourceForge code available) is because I knew that most of it's excellent work had been folded into GForge, as you mention, and that the Debian-SF team's hard work is a chief reason for why GForge is improving as rapidly as it is.

      As a very happy user of Debian-SF and GForge, thank you for your work there, and for pointing out my error here.

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      Topher
  4. TWiki? by styrotech · · Score: 4, Informative

    I've set up a TWiki for our small company, and it's really starting to take off and become the defacto intranet once the users got their heads around the concepts (it can be a little strange to less techie users at first).

    It might not be exactly what you need, but you can upload file attachments, use (simple) revision control, and there are plenty of plugins available for trickier stuff.

    Most CMS systems seem more about publishing and templates, and the open source portals all seem to want to be slashdot. But Wikis seem to be all about collaboration and participation - although they can still do the publishing/discussing stuff too.

    1. Re:TWiki? by PeekabooCaribou · · Score: 1

      I set up TWiki a few days ago, and I'm still trying to grasp all the concepts. I'm getting there, slowly. (I haven't had much time to read through the docs yet.) It has some weird features, like saying "SET variable = value" inside a page and suddenly having that variable available to the whole site. Very different from what I've seen and worked with in the past.

      --
      "I'll say it again for the logic-impaired." -- Larry Wall.
    2. Re:TWiki? by JohnFluxx · · Score: 2, Informative

      I don't know anything about TWiki, but Zwiki is cool as well. That is zope+wiki. This is cool since zope is a heirachal database - it is designed for storing documents etc.

    3. Re:TWiki? by styrotech · · Score: 2, Informative

      I chose TWiki because of it's large userbase and it seemed to have a lot of very powerful features.

      But I have to admit I was very tempted by ZWiki (Zope based) and MoiMoi (name?) (Python based). I was a little nervous (probably baseless) about using Zope purely from a backup and disaster recovery P.O.V. - flat files just seemed easier (hey I'm lazy). And the leading Python/flat file one didn't quite have some of TWiki's features.

      Those two tempted me because I prefer Python to Perl, and Zope seems cool although I'm not sure I have the time to fully grok Zope.

  5. GForge by MountainLogic · · Score: 4, Informative

    Check out GForge. Wiki's are also a cool tool.

  6. PHProjekt by fuzzybunny · · Score: 3, Informative


    Try PHProjekt. It's actively being developed and supported.

    I installed it at a client's site, after looking at alternatives, such as PHPGroupWare (which also looks quite good, albeit a tiny bit immature and others, and PHProjekt was the most robust of the bunch.

    I don't know how well it will scale if you ever expand REAL BIG, but as it just relies on a standard SQL backend, you should be able to import/export data anywhere.

    --
    Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
  7. phpBB2 and zope by tetrode · · Score: 2, Informative

    I use a combination of phpBB2 and zope. phpBB2 for client information, technical information, discussions, etc. and zope to glue different other parts together.

  8. Nitpicking ... by Etyenne · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Security is paramount, since there will be a lot of code that, for various contractual reasons, we don't want to share with anyone.



    Sorry for nitpicking, but if can't share some part of your code with anyone, how would "reusing" it be any more acceptable ?

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    :wq
  9. Savannah? by tyen · · Score: 1

    I was looking into the Savannah GNU project, but the GForge project seems much further along, from a superficial glance I took after reading the threads here. Has anyone done an in-depth comparison of both projects?

  10. I use PhpCollab by borgdows · · Score: 2, Informative

    PhpCollab is a very good tool to manage web/software projects within a team. It has all the necessary features (tasks, bugtracker, files approval, and more...) and the interface is neat. And yes, it is GPL!

    Official website : http://www.phpcollab.com

    you can test it here