On Jan 4, 2007, at 10:13 AM, Ian McNulty wrote:
If, on the other hand, you have your own vision, perhaps OfBiz is
for you.
Well now, this is kindof like the whole of where I'm coming from
here really.
I think that's the kind of proposition that radical, talented
artistes and engineers love to rise to. But, to the average,
increasingly insecure, corporate play-safer, this is more likely to
come over as an invitation to be branded as a loose-canon,
irresponsible, risk-taking, left-of-field, swivel-eyed loon, who
most probably believes in pink elephants and crop circles too. To
most this is not a sales proposition, it's a curse that could bring
an end to their career. Remember. Nobody ever got sacked for buying
IBM.
Which is what leads me to the conclusion that large corporations
could be amongst the most hostile environment you could find for
incubating a market. The only point in favour being the New York
interpretation: if you make it there you'll make it anywhere.
But offer an affordable, entry-level system to start-ups, small
businesses and the average kid in their bedrooms - something
equivalent to entry-level Sage or Intuit as Firefox is equivalent
to IE - and you might find you're pushing against an open door!
Your granny should know, as the sainted Mr Mills-McCartney never
said :)
This is an interesting analogy, but perhaps not as close to OFBiz
versus the world as you might think (in my opinion, of course).
I should clear the air here and make it clear that large businesses
are NOT and have not been the target for OFBiz. Some large businesses
are using parts of OFBiz, even rather large parts, in places where
they need significant customization and such, but not to run or track
the core of their business. Being more specific, some big companies
are using it for ecommerce, but not for ERP and CRM types of activities.
The real sweet spot of the world that has funded the development of
OFBiz is medium sized companies, usually ecommerce or another variety
of retail organization that has an income or 10-100 million USD per
year. That means a new system to them is at least a few hundred
thousand dollars, which is about the minimum range of budget to be
able to develop lots of cool stuff and make it free.
There are certainly much smaller users using OFBiz, but they really
can't contribute to it's development. The resources are just too
scattered and small to effectively participate in any non-financial
way, and their ability to contribute in a financial way is a bit like
the grandmother you mentioned... very warm hearted and appreciative
and who has a severe need for help, but really can't offer more than
a gift of a few dollars here and there, adding up to no more than a
couple/few hundred per month.
On that scale you just can't build something like OFBiz, and so we
haven't been able to target companies of that scale in OOTB
functionality.
Of course, as OFBiz matures the OOTB stuff is getting better and
better and small companies can conceivably do more and more.
-David
