Gero Kohnert
Age 36
Occupation: Software Developer/Project Leader at one of Germanys largest Companies
Education: CS from the University of Erlangen, Germany.
Location: Germany
Key developer(s):
There are a lot of people who have contributed their time and talents in creating all the translations and skins for TUTOS. Some of the major contributors are:
Jeroen Baten
Occupation: Linux Consultant
Contribution: TUTOS documentation
Location: Netherlands
Markus Leist
Occupation: Software consultant
Contribution: Worked on various modules and added x509 authentication
Location: Germany
Dimitri Fontaine
Contribution: LDAP authentication system
Why did you place the project on SF.NET?
SourceForge.net gives a good environment for handling such a project.
The number one benefit of SF.NET for your project is:
The network infrastructure. In the beginning the demo system for TUTOS was my own PC connected via DSL to the internet. It always broke down a few minutes after announcing a TUTOS release on either freshmeat.net and/or SourceForge.net. The systems on SourceForge.net do this job very well. So the main benefit is a fast IP connection.
Keeping a team of people on task and well organized is a difficult chore. There are timelines to meet, information to organize, and the need to be more efficient. SourceForge.net’s March 2003 Project of the Month helps with all of these difficult issues. TUTOS, ‘The ultimate team organization Software’, is a broad focused Open Source Application targeted at making groups of individuals more successful when collaborating. It’s a very similar mission to what we have on SourceForge.net. TUTOS is a PHP-based application which includes CRM (Customer Relationship Management), calendaring, invoicing, task management and other advanced features plus it has been localized into many different languages. The project has been one of SourceForge.net’s top 20 projects for many months and has recently surpassed the milestone of 150,000 downloads.
Project Name: TUTOS
Founded / Started: Founded in the spring of 2000, started on Sourceforge.net in July 2000
URL: TUTOS Project Page
http://www.tutos.org
Description of project
TUTOS is a tool to manage the organizational needs of small groups, teams, or departments.
Trove info:
All operating systems that are able to run Apache/PHP combined with a database like Postgres, Orcale, interbase or MySQL.
How did you get started?
Switched on my computer and started programming. 😉 The main motivation came when my employer started with ISO9000 quality control and there was a need for a system like TUTOS. After that it took about two more years before I really started with TUTOS.
What is the intended audience?
Small to medium companies involved in project oriented business
What does TUTOS do?
TUTOS addresses all of the requirements of a typical project-centric business. With TUTOS, the entire project team – everyone with something at stake – now has a platform where they can collaborate and find the up-to-date information they need. TUTOS is a combination of groupware and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, just to name two of the day’s buzzwords.
How many people do you believe are using your software?
Hard to count. Each version has about 8000 downloads, so to get an accurate number we would need to know the actual amount of production installations and the number of users per installation. I really don’t know, but the volume of feedback is huge!!
What gave you an indication that your project was becoming successful?
When TUTOS first appeared in the “most active” list on Sourceforge.net and the download counters began to rise.
What has been your biggest surprise?
Being number one.
What has been your biggest challenge?
It’s still a challenge to motivate people to take on TUTOS development. It’s difficult to find developers that are willing to help and have enough time to contribute to the project. But the biggest challenge is to officially introduce TUTOS at my own job.
What are you most proud of?
Keeping this thing running 🙂
Why do you think your project has been so well received?
It’s free and there is a demand for a system like this.
Where do you see your project going?
I will keep on listening to the users and whenever I see something good, I will try to add it to TUTOS.
How can others contribute?
Most contributions I receive are translations and localization patches, but other kinds of contributions can be easily added to TUTOS. The software has a modular structure that allows new features to plug in to the existing infrastructure — all developers have to do is comply with some simple rules.
Do you work on the Open Source project full-time, or do you have another job?
I have another 40 hour full time job, so all development happens in my spare time.
If you work on the Open Source code part-time, how much time would you say you spend, per week, on the project?
That differs, before and shortly after the releases it is a lot more. I would say on average maybe 2 hours a day.
How do you coordinate the project? Make assignments? Assign bugs? Perform regression testing?
I do that more or less alone, with some help on modules and in documentation. It is hard to find someone with enough time who is willing to help.
What is your development environment like?
It is a 1 Gigahertz Athlon, with 512 MB RAM, running SuSE Linux 8.0. For testing I need a bunch of different Apache/PHP combinations plus all kinds of databases (MySQL, Postgres Interbase and Oracle) so I also have all this installed on the machine.
If you could change one thing about the project, what would it be?
Nothing
What’s on your project wish list?
More supported Databases, more Help pages and better Documentation
Milestones:
I hope to have a 1.1 release early 2003