WHITE PAPER
ProjectStation
The No-License-Fee Project Management Collaboration Software System
by BUGOPOLIS
5/27/03

Why ProjectStation?

ProjectStation is a web-based server appliance that makes GForge Collaborative Software ready to plug in and use instantly. It also provides enhancements that are notavailable by downloading GForge from the web. It comes with enhanced security,administrative features for ease of use, back-up readiness, a complete on-line user guide, and product guarantees as well as available support and customization. Because ProjectStation comes on a server appliance it offers greater security. The system is harder to penetrate than open-platform systems. It has limited entry points and Bugopolis has hardened the software to further reduce the risk of an intruder gaining access to your data The "hardened" server is secure enough to operate outside of the corparate firewall making remote access possible without the worries. ProjectStation is available on two server models; the Small Business Server, for up to 200 users and the Enterprise Server (Rack-Mount 1U Servers) for larger groups of users. Each comes with two hours free upport to help initiate the system, and additional support is available also. The servers come with a full one-year guarantee on hardware and labor.

What’s so good about GForge?

GForge organizes business and software development projects by providing a centralized system for coordinating project news, task items, defect reports, centralized distribution of software, documentation and project specification. GForge features allow users to; utilize “Tracker” for centralized tracking of support requests, bug reports and feature requests; track projects; access discussion forums and utilize the forum and Tracker monitoring system that updates them on the status of a post or an issue. Also, GANTT charts and reports can be produced using project data.

A little history on the development of GForge: From SourceForge.net to GForge A conservative estimate is that over 540,000 people around the world have used SourceForge.net. SourceForge.net is the world’s most popular site for managing and controlling open source software development projects. It currently is hosting over 50,00 different software development projects. Even the software that “powered” the site (the “alexandria” project on SourceForge.net) was itself an active project hosted by SourceForge.net. Unfortunately, the “alexandria” project released its last stable software in November of 2001 and the code base at SourceForge.net is no longer being updated though the developer site itself is still going strong.

Late in 2002 Tim Perdue, one of the founding architects of the software behind SourceForge.net – as well as the popular GeoCrawler and PHPBuilder web sites, “branched” the “alexandria” code base and resumed development on this powerful software development portal code. The new code is called GForge and Tim has collected together a strong group of developers who are actively advancing the project. Consequently, companies and other organizations not wishing to develop their projects at SourceForge.net can now bring a technology with the same roots as the software powering SourceForge.net into their organizations. And because the GForge code does not have as a design goal the supporting of 50,000 concurrent projects and 500,000 users, the sofware design does not have to include the “hacks” necessary to support the performance requirements of the SourceForge code base. GForge’s code should be easier to extend and enhance by both his team and people wanting to customize this open source project.

What sort of tools does GForge provide?

Here is a partial list:
• Source code control (CVS)
• Web-based browsing for a project’s source code
• Centralized project information page which includes:
project description, developer information, activity statistics, softwarerelease management, links to integrated defect tracking, feature requests and support requests, links to internal USENET like forums, link to the DocManager, links to project specific mailing lists, links to the most recent project related news items, link to external “homepage” if one is desired and more.
• Forums and lists - Internal (forums) and external e-mail driven (lists) threaded discussion groups
• Tracker – Issue tracking system that allows the creation of separate lists for defects, support requests, feature requests, etc
• Centralized documentation management system providing categorized, annotated links to project documentation
• Slashdot-like news facility. Most recent news items also appear on the summary page.
• CVS server information and web-based repository browsing with ViewCVS
• Admin pages for the easy setting up and maintenance of the above functionality.

How useful is all that stuff?

Very useful. And over 500,000 people working on 50,000 projects hosted at SourceForge.net apparently agree.

How does your ProjectStation compare with VA Software’s commercial SourceForge offering?

At this point in time VA Software has a more feature-filled offering. But even given that, we believe a cost-benefit analysis will favor the Bugopolis Project Station. Furthermore, we believe the active development on Gforge, the underlying software for Project Station, will in short order reduce if not eliminate the differences in the feature comparison. GForge is an active OSS project which is quickly being adopted by other open source projects that need to build and coordinate a developer community.

Can’t I just download and install Gforge myself?

You can. And many people do. But doing so is not like installing Microsoft Word or other commercial software packages. To install it on a Linux distribution several software components which are not part of GForge proper need to be downloaded and installed or at least correctly confgured to work securely together. Finally, those auxiliary components –
web server, database, electronic mail MTA, etc – have all been updated since many of the current Linux distributions have hit the shelves. A secure GForge installation requires the application of several patches to the software components. Bugopolis provides all the updates needed either out-of-the box or in subsequent software updates should the need arise.

What does Bugopolis do for me that isn’t done by installing GForge myself?

The ProjectStation also provides:

•Improved documentation and extensible online helpTools for the administration of the ProjectStation server through a web interface
• An easy-to-use automatic update mechanism for applying enhancement and security patches
• A flexible collection of backup options for the GForge database
• Integrated source management of the GForge code-base which enables the merging of customizations with the evolving GForge code-base
• Phone and e-mail technical support
• Software upgrades for the life of the product

What is available with respect to customization?

Bugopolis offers reasonable hourly and fixed-bid customization or general service contract options for the GForge code or the Bugopolis ProjectStation server appliance. Contact sales@bugopolis.com for more details.

How will the ProjectStation fit into my IT infrastucture?

As part of the fulfillment process, Bugopolis requests information about the network infrastructure where you intend to deploy the ProjectStation. Using that information, Bugopolis configures your ProjectStation at our factory so it can simply be “plugged in” when you receive it without additional configuration. Should your requirements change Bugopolis will assist you in reconfiguring your server appliance.

How can you sell “free software”?

Pretty much the same way the companies selling Linux distributions and server appliances are selling free software. Redhat, Mandrake and Sun Microsystems® (with its Cobalt® line of server appliances) all sell products which include royalty free software. In the case of the Linux distribution vendors the value proposition is built on the integration of the OSS (Open Source Software) components and ease of installation and maintenance of the distribution.

Sun’s Cobalt line of server appliances provides a tight hardware/software integration which provides small businesses the application services most commonly desired across a fairly generic customer profile (e-mail, web server, VPN, FTP server, etc) in a server appliance package. The Cobalt server appliances also provide the software tools for managing the appliances.

In our case specifically, we eliminate engineering time up front by making GForge ready to plug in and use. Then there is the greater security provided by a server appliance and by “hardening” the software that makes the system secure enough to operate outside of the corporate firewall. We create an even greater value proposition by enhancing GForge with
an admin feature and by making software updates automatic and ready to apply and use instantly. Lastly by providing support, user-friendly manuals and customization services.

Other examples of popular available server appliances from various companies include:

• NAS (Network Attached Storage) server appliances
• Print servers
• Home broadband routers

In all of these cases the devices are tightly integrated hardware/software bundles which focus on providing a limited set of functionality well and they strive to minimize administrative complexity, usually by providing an HTTP based administration console. Or take the example of Dell’s Oracle® Application Server. Dell® has coupled its hardware (and distribution channel!) with Oracle’s J2EE™ application server to provide a high-end solution for its enterprise customers.

While the markets for the server appliances described above are surviving, if not exactly thriving (see, forexample, http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/02/10/31/021031hnappliance.xml?s=IDGNS ) the “niche” market for more tightly focused server appliances such as Google’s search appliance (http://www.google.com/appliance/index.html ) and Mirapoint’s message server will continue to be healthy among small to mid-sized companies that need to focus on growing their product and service offerings rather than their IT departments. Two trends that favor the adoption of more focused “vertical” server appliances are the continuing increase of the price-performance ratios of computer equipment and the improving quality and functionality of open source software projects beyond the categories of operating systems and general web or e-mail servers. The number of MIPS per dollar, GB of storage per dollar and Mb of bandwidth per dollar in today’s hardware platforms changes the equation for mid-range application solutions. It is
literally cheaper to provide a computer with software pre-installed than it is to invest the R&D dollars in end-user installation software and end-user installation support. By narrowing the target hardware to only a couple of configurations not only is the “out-ofbox” experience for the end-user improved but continued software maintenance is paired down to the supporting of those limited configurations. Just as computational responsibility is removed from the CPU (and implicitly its supporting operating system) by more sophisticated peripheral controllers on your desktop PC, application services for an increasing number of groupware programs will be moved to server appliances where the approaching hardware cost of $200.00 will be able to support 100 or more users.

With respect to the improving quality of OSS software its well known that StarOffice and OpenOffice are starting to cause consternation in Redmond. MySQL™ and PostgreSQL are gaining parity with their commercial brethren Oracle and SQL Server – especially in terms of the core functionality which will meet 95% of database user’s needs.

The Security Advantage

The Bugopolis proposition is the same and more true for the specialized applications provided by Bugopolis. And, in particular, for the groupware tools used by software developers. Advantages of hardware-software distributions Having just enough software on a server appliance to run your server application improves the maintainability, security and performance of the appliance. By not running a server application in a desktop environment the software configuration can be paired down to just the components needed and settings appropriate for a general purpose computing device can be reduced. For example, the number of user accounts it is necessary to maintain on the appliance is limited and most likely will not need to be increased even as software upgrades are applied to the server appliance. Reducing the number of "user accounts" on the box enhances its security.

Another significant advantage of the server appliance approach is that clusters of related server appliances can operate together on a subnet dedicated to their interoperability -
effectively isolating the internal Bugopolis network infrastructure from the corporate network. For example, a defect tracking server, a source code management server and a NAS (network attached storage) backup system can automatically configure themselves to access the services provided by the other servers with no administrative interaction. All these services would provide an external face to the corporate LAN through well defined and securely routed interfaces but the plug and play nature of their interoperability will happen transparently. Moreover, this can be accomplished with open and standard protocols. Future Bugopolis products will take advantage of this ability to interact on a
separate "bus" between the individual servers.

What Else Does Bugopolis Do?

BugStation
BugStation is a server appliance that implements Bugzilla, the most used dedicated defect tracking system in the world.

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WHITE PAPER ProjectStation The No-License-Fee Project Management Collaboration Software System by BUGOPOLIS 5/27/03 Why ProjectStation?