Rating and comments for OpenProj

Really interesting, but in a non-mature version.

Your MS-Project users will feel right at home using this tool. Excellent tool by almost every measure. Windows users should download the .MSI file to get a familiar install experience. As of this point there is still a problem with the printing. Some of our users can print, some can't. We assume this will get fixed. The only complaint we have is that we haven't figured out how to change the scale for the timeline so the major / minor units can be something other than weeks and days.

very impressive.
you can zoom/unzoom the time scale by using the magnify icons

Software gave me the blue screen of death upon execution.

all main functionality (including advanced usage) similar to MS Project is available and works alike! A serious alternative and when MS is the standard the best so far!

After 5 minutes comparison between GanttProject and OpenProj.
GanttPproject can successfully import MS Project Files and Open Proj not.

It doesn't calculate project costs correctly...(quite important!)
If you create a task heading and then indent a costed sub task, the project summary/cost table will show the 'heading' task and sub-task costs correctly, but then simply adds everything together for the total, so you end up with twice the costs which is wrong. It also only shows the report in $ when £ is entered in the costs....

printing is still doesn't working in my case :| and i update today. beside that it's very good.

Mac version asks for permission to open firewall and receive network connections. I refused. Program then hangs.

UTTER GARBAGE.

It smells funny!

I was using XP version (1.1) and worked fine and printing options too but now I'm in Ubuntu, with 1.2 version and it works worst that its XP version: sometimes windows appear empty (you need to close and open it again), printing option does not work so not nice so far, although I was very happy to use previous version. Why that change?

It seems that the developers focus is moving towards the commercial version since previous supported functions (which I like to use in MS-Project) seem to have been moved towards the commercial version. A shame because this is/was actually for me the first good alternative to project.

Make us all pay just to scale our print offs to size!?!??!

After a few months MS Project works out as a better investment so the point of this program is?!?!?

I just downloaded OpenProj and GanttProject to view an existing MS Project file and they both seem to work well. I found GanttProject to be slightly more intuitive.

OpenProj appears to work well as an alternative to MS Project, with a very similar look and feel. It's not as fully featured as MS Project, but as a freeware alternative, it's quite good.

I'm a full time student at ITT Tech, and my network administration classes require the use of Microsoft Project. I run Linux on my laptop (I prefer Linux over Windows), so I am using OpenProj as an alternative to Project with the blessings of my instructor. All the functionality I need is there to schedule and supervise an entire project for every project management situation I've encountered at school and work so far, so I see no reason to pay my hard earned money for Microsoft Project when this does everything at no charge.

It is not really an "Open" project management tool as described. There are pay features included in the software. As Rob mentioned above, I was unable to print even a simple schedule and since the "Scaling" features are not enabled I could not make it fit the page. It was printing on about 1/3 of the page which is fine except that I don't always carry a magnifying glass with me.

OpenProj is not open source, that is shareware. Some functions are disabled and you have to buy Projects on Demand. Do you wannt a manual? Pay for it!
Moreover I was not able to find how to change start time before 8AM.
I wasted my time trying this shareware.

I found this software through this site when someone at work required Microsoft Project but work refused to pay for it. I have used it without major problems for about 6 months, along with the user in question, and only had a few problems myself (and none reported by the user). These problems are too large for my liking, especially for they way I need to use the program.

1) Will not work if blocked by Firewall. I use my work laptop to test antivirus + Firewall programs, and one Firewall program kept blocking even it's own Antivirus updates (default was to block everything). Once it is added as an exception, it worked without problems. Don't know why this would happen, but I don't like it.

2) For a "free" software, I don't expect to be asked to pay for any features. Not too worried about that, as I am not using the features or I have an alt method of getting past the problem

3) I am unable to transfer my projects from one machine to another. With Microsoft Project, I could work on documents at college/uni, home and work without problems. OpenProj does not appear to like that. I am trying to transfer a project from my work laptop to my home machine and trying to either send through email or port over through USB will not allow it to be opened.

Would also prefer to be able to change the colour of specific tasks like you could do with Project, but have been able to live without it.

@Signy, you can change the work time through Tools > Change Working Calendar > Select the day of the week > Select "Non-default working time" > Change the time to what you want. You can highlight several days to force the change to each. However, the "day" is still considered as 8 hours. Also, you can not change the working times until you have created at least 1 task, while Microsoft Project did not have that problem.

My verdict: Projects managed by a single user on a single machine that are not that important could use this software with little issues [basically, if you are using it at home]. If the projects are mission critical (like most projects are), or you need to share the project with other people (like you do with most projects), find something else.

Openproj is no longer developed the last release was in 2008, it seems to have been roled into Project Libre which has had a release this year (2012).