

Fulcrum - Open Source Agile Project Management Tool - NoSunlight
http://wholemeal.co.nz/projects/fulcrum.html

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malclocke
Thanks everybody for your comments. I should probably point out a couple of
things.

\- The project is most definitely not ready for prime time yet, and I hadn't
intended to publicly launch until I have two more major features ready. Thank
you NoSunlight for letting the cat out of the bag! \- Those features are
comments and iterations, which are both nearing completion. \- In its present
state, the project is probably only suitable for competent Rails / Backbone.js
hackers. It will probably be usable in the near future, but not yet. If you
need a working alternative, sign up to Pivotal Tracker, it is well worth it.

My motivation for creating this project was twofold. One, I love Pivotal
Tracker, to a degree that is probably not healthy. I use it extensively and,
crucially, I use it for estimating projects. I completely understand the move
to a paid model for PT, but it would impact my way of working considerably and
become one of my main expenses. Secondly, I was kind of intrigued by how hard
it would be to implement an alternative to what is, in my opinion, one of the
most impressive web applications I've ever used. It turns out it's very hard!

For those of you who find this project offensive or unsatisfactory in any way,
I genuinely and sincerely implore you to continue using PT. It rocks!

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jacobian
I don't think I'd feel comfortable using such a direct clone of someone else's
software. From a cursory glance it doesn't seem that Fulcrum brings anything
new to the table, so using it would make me feel like I was stealing from
Pivotal.

Hopefully over time Fulcrum can differentiate itself and compete on features,
not on price.

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drdaeman
Stealing what?

Fulcrum developers had decided to implement FOSS self-hosted solution,
comparable to Pivotal Tracker. They even wrote this clearly in project's
README file. How that could be "stealing"?

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jacobian
Please read what I wrote more carefully. I didn't say that the the Fulcrum
developers were stealing. I said that _I_ would _feel like I was stealing_
from the Pivotal developers by using a free clone instead of paying for the
original. Since Fulcrum os (or appears to be) so similar to Pivotal I'd feel
as if I was choosing it simply to avoid paying, and that isn't a feeling I'd
like to have.

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Egregore
I think the most important think you must implement to have more adoption is
to have an on-line (no registration required) demo of your software.

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jarin
There's a good demo at <http://pivotaltracker.com> (registration required,
though)

All joking aside, this project probably will appeal most to people already
familiar with Pivotal Tracker, much like the Basecamp clones out there will
appeal to people familiar with Basecamp, who either can't afford or don't want
to pay for Basecamp. I don't think these kinds of projects really hurt Pivotal
Labs or 37signals in any significant way, and can even help them in two ways:
1) having some competition to light a fire under their butts, and 2) often
times when you use these FOSS clones you realize how much better and smoother
the real versions are and go back.

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wccrawford
It looks very similar to a certain other online agile tool. How is it better,
other than being open source?

The name 'fulcrum' is a word that brings to mind physical force... I think you
meant it to bring to mind that you put a little effort in, and a lot of work
gets done... But for me, the idea that force is needed at all seems like a
negative.

~~~
fredoliveira
_It looks very similar to a certain other online agile tool. How is it better,
other than being open source?_

It does indeed, but the author isn't hiding that in any way. Here's what's on
the page at Github:

 _Fulcrum is a clone of Pivotal Tracker. It will almost certainly never
surpass the functionality, usability and sheer awesomeness of Pivotal Tracker,
but aims to provide a usable alternative for users who require a Free and Open
Source solution._

I think this looks pretty good - particularly because it's hosted and a lot of
companies still need that today (a day doesn't go by when I don't get requests
for hosted versions of the service I run).

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ellypirelly
Very interesting discussion here. I was just developing a free PT clone too.
We are and were using PT already as paying members.

But I started developing a clone in my sparetime just for fun. I didn't really
like the look&feel of PT and I tried to improve that. Also we were missing a
good timetracking part in PT too. And what came out is Planthat (Planth.at).

I would love to see some screenshots of Fulcrum. Is there any resource out
there?

If you feel interested in our tool you may want to take a look at some
screenshots here: <http://www.facebook.com/pages/Planthat/187262291341546>

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malclocke
There are screenshots at the originally posted link,
<http://wholemeal.co.nz/projects/fulcrum.html>

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minhajuddin
There definitely hasn't been an Open Source project similar to Pivotal Tracker
and I am happy that somebody has finally taken the time to write one. I am
sure, this will help many small companies like ours.

I've tried a couple of times to build a usable bug tracker (we actually use an
inhouse bug tracker at our company), but this is a hard problem. It'd be great
if the ruby community rallied around this and make it into the "goto bug
tracker"

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shotgun
In case anyone wants to get fulcrum up and running under ruby 1.9 I've patched
a couple issues in my pending pull request:
<https://github.com/malclocke/fulcrum/pull/5>

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dkhenry
So is there any instruction on how to install or try out this software
project. I know Ruby on Rails is popular but at least some instruction on
configuration would be helpful.

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msutherl
I'm not familiar with Ruby projects and there are no install instructions. How
do I get this running on OS X?

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protez
Try any Ruby project with installation instructions. I was also clueless at
first, but found it very easy to deploy a Ruby project.

