I have opened a community blog for Apache OFBiz at http://blogs.apache.org/. If you are interested to write articles please ask for
a login.
Last month, I read a white paper (livre blanc) from a French IT company http://www.smile.fr/ (250 persons, 1st "open source company
in
France") http://www.smile.fr/publications/livres-blancs/erp-open-source__1 and
I think it's time for me to react.
This white paper is well written but they almost completly forgot OFBiz for
(IMO) obscure reasons. I think one of the most driving
causes is that companies must make money (we all need to make money ;o). And
it's even clear here (from the white paper author:
http://opensourceerpguru.com/2008/02/23/tinyerp-source-published-it-all-started-here/#commentblock)
that this company chose to work
with OpenERP (formerly Tiny ERP) and especially with OpenBravo because of their
business models (OpenBravo raised $12 million in May
last year http://ostatic.com/blog/open-source-venture-funding-in-q2-up-again).
I think also that the leaders of such companies in
France don't want to work with permissive licences like ours. Actually, Olivier
Heintz told me 4 years ago, that it was one of the
reason the Neogia team chose GPL instead of Apache licence (they were afraid
their work would be stolen). I begin to be upset by all
this (they judge us, plublish it and make the trend) and, more than 4 years
after I began to work on OFBiz, I want to speak out of
code. A community blog looks to me like the perfet tool for that (I think also
that I will finally open my own blog also, if I find
enough time for it).
Jacques
