Walter Vaughan wrote: "As a strategy, that's an excellent idea. Curing world hunger is another, but executing is another thing."
Well, you can choose to make facetious remarks if you must, but I consider this very important. If you look back over the user mailing list you will find it littered with requests for help just getting ofbiz up and running. I would bet that a lot of them loose interest fairly quickly and we loose a potential user/contributor. Since no one can evaluate the framework without getting it working, that makes it very important that new users get a really painless and easy automated installation process. About 2 years ago I was evaluating ofbiz and used the Windows install that was available then. It wasn't completely automated or that easy, but I got through it. I tried the same thing in Linux, because the final production system must run on Linux, and got totally bogged down. I know that the history of Open Source has tended not to provide easy installation procedures or documentation, but the trend is changing. You will find that many of the projects that support multiple operating systems have excellent automated installation procedures. OK it needs a bit of effort to set up, but once done it should be easy to maintain and keep working. I deliberately specified ONLY one Linux distribution, Ubuntu 6.06 LTS, to simplify the job and chose a distribution with a 5 year support plan. I have to confess that I have looked at other ERP Open Source projects to see if I could find one that was easier to use than ofbiz. I am sorry if this hurts, but it is true. However I keep coming back to ofbiz because of its excellent architecture and true open source community. I think it essential that the new user be at least accorded a decent automated install process to avoid loosing them at the first hurdle. I primarily want to USE the framework to drive my client's business processes and then contribute any patches that I feel are needed to improve the framework. I do not want to spend hours or days fiddling about with all sorts of things just to get the thing working without producing error messages all over the place. We also should remember that newcomers to Open Source are also new to Linux which only adds to the learning curve. Faced with a huge learning curve there is a strong tendency to give up and stick with the trash we have grown to hate e.g. Microsoft. Is it really so difficult to create two automated install procedure? I would like to see a single executable download file which will then do everything that is needed to install a running ofbiz framework. That includes installing the correct versions of any products needed to support the installation e.g. Java Ant Postgres etc I am interested in helping put together such procedures given some help from your good selves. Kind regards, Andrew Ballantine. -----Original Message----- From: Walter Vaughan [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 02 January 2007 13:30 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Community supported releases WAS [Re: Properly edited OFBiz manuals] Andrew Ballantine wrote: > I second all of that and would like to add a request that each new release > provides an automated installation procedure on MS Windows and one flavour > of Linux, say Ubuntu 6.06. As a strategy, that's an excellent idea. Curing world hunger is another, but executing is another thing. Where we have a failure as a community right now it the document we have at http://incubator.apache.org/ofbiz/docs/GettingAndUsingOFBiz.pdf which probably is an old version, with incorrect links (it points to http://svn.ofbiz.org/ which tosses a 403 error page), (it points to http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/OFBTECH/OFBiz+Technical+Production+Setup+Guide which needs a little more hand holding, and as well points to http://svn.ofbiz.org/ which tosses a 403 error page), (it points to http://www.sequoiaerp.org/ which hasn't been around in 10 months). This page is slightly better http://incubator.apache.org/ofbiz/docs/setup.html but it sill suffers from non-linear thought process As soon as the dust settles on getting us out of the "incubator" I am completely confident we'll have bulletproof installation, startup, and next step guides in place. -- Walter -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.432 / Virus Database: 268.16.2/613 - Release Date: 01/01/2007 14:50 -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.432 / Virus Database: 268.16.2/613 - Release Date: 01/01/2007 14:50 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.432 / Virus Database: 268.16.2/613 - Release Date: 01/01/2007 14:50 ***************************************************************** This email has been checked by the altohiway Mailcontroller Service *****************************************************************
