I Built an Open-Source JIRA → OpenProject Migration Tool (Now Thinking of Turning It Into a Business)

A few weeks ago, I decided to move away from JIRA to cut costs and self-host my project management tool. After researching alternatives, I landed on Plane, but its free edition was too limited, and the paid version was just as expensive as JIRA.

I then switched to OpenProject—not the prettiest UI, but highly functional and the free edition met most of our needs. We deployed it on our Kubernetes cluster and started using it.

The Problem: Migrating Data

Migrating thousands of tasks, projects, comments, and attachments from JIRA to OpenProject was a headache. The only official migration tool was an outdated Excel Macro written in Visual Basic, which I couldn’t get to work.

So, as a dev, I did what devs do—I wrote my own migration script. Within a few hours, I had fully migrated everything over.

Open-Sourcing & Unexpected Benefits

Since I figured others might face the same problem, I open-sourced my migration script (GitHub) and let OpenProject know about it. They actually replied, thanked me profusely, and even gave me a free professional license.

Is There a Business Here?

A few days later, someone using my script reported a bug. We went back and forth fixing it, and during our chat, he suggested turning this into a service—because plenty of companies would pay for a simple, done-for-you JIRA → OpenProject migration.

That got me thinking. Could this be monetized? I put together a quick MVP/landing page to gauge interest: OpenProject Setup, Hosting & Migration.

Would you pay for something like this? Have you ever turned an open-source project into a business? I'd love to hear your thoughts!