Redmine

Redmine is the least fashionable and most durable project tracker there is. It was released in 2006, is written in Rails, and still holds the institutional memory of a great many engineering organisations.

Why we still choose it

A tracker builds up the record of why things were decided, which is the most valuable and least portable asset a company has. We do not think that record should sit in a database somebody else can reprice. Redmine has no seat licence, so the hundredth user costs the same as the tenth, and the whole archive is stored in PostgreSQL on a disk you own.

It is also flexible. With custom trackers, custom fields and per-role workflow transitions it can follow a regulated process instead of fighting it, which is why it has lasted in industries where the fashionable tools have not.

How we run it

As a NixOS module in your repository, with the Ruby version, gems, plugins, PostgreSQL, nginx, TLS and backup schedule in one file. Migrations from Jira, Trello or Asana keep issue numbers, attachments, authors and relations. Backups run nightly to a second European region and are restore-tested monthly, and we send you the evidence.

Where it falls short

It looks like 2009, because much of it is. A design-led team that judges a company by its tracker will judge this one harshly, and that is a real cost. It is also not a suite. It tracks issues and time, and plugins that try to make it do more are usually a mistake.