We are an Open Source/Standards Software Development Group. We do a LOT of python development and happen to be the South East Asian press contacts for Postgres so we're fairly well versed in that as well. As part of my background I have handled major deployments or customizations of SAP/Oracle Financials/Peoplesoft/et al so I understand the technology and business end of the ERP/CMS/BI industry.
Took me just under two hours to get a fresh setup of OpenERP 4.3 installed with Postgres 8.3 on an Ubuntu Hardy environment. Not too bad - thanx to some decent sample docs and a good understanding of what those python & build errors were that I first ran into. (need to 'apt-get install libxslt-dev' & 'easy_install lxml' in addition to what your docs say). Now I've got an operational server and kick off the thick client. Boom - I'm asked all kinds of configuration questions that imply all kinds of different things to me and no context in which to do more than guess what I should enter. 1. What are the profiles? What does selection of one do and how do I know if its appropriate for my company? 2. OK so we go minimal on that. Now fill out company info. No problem except why am I creating/opening resources when trying to select my currency. Played around with that and figured out this is evidently how multi-currency is handled but what a confusing naming convention and terrible interface. 3. Report Headers? Well I'd like the company name and address. Will those come automatically or do I need to fill it in again here? I have no idea and nothing tells me. There isn't even a HELP option on the configuration wizard which I would think is the #1 place where you'd be able to actually create useful help content. Leave it blank and hope for the best I guess... 4. Got a summary screen now. Profile and Chart of Accounts both have drop down box controls containing "Minimal Profile" and "None" respectively. Well certainly I want a Chart of Accounts but was never offered an option to set this up. Wonder backwards for a while and discover that selecting a profile (a few pages back) will give me a list of some pre-config Chart of Accounts but not setup my own (yet). Guess would have been nice to know this is a just a pre-config option. Even more useful would have been to activate the drop down box controls rather than have them disabled and silently mocking me. What was the point in all that??? 5. Follow another wizard which basically asks me to create some users and I end up with a blank screen, horizontal menu across the top and a toolbar with only 1 (menu) of 13 icons enabled. OK menu it is... 6. Now I've got a screen with a Partners & Administration options full of implementation specific nomenclature. Fortunately there's an active Help option that offers a User Manual! Click that - no dice, I get the webpage that I found already that does not contain anything resembling a user manual. 7. Don't despair - under the Help Menu was a Contextual Help option! Even better - click that! Even worse than before - sends me to a broken link!! GEEZ! 8. One final hope - dare I even try Help->Tips?? What the heck. OK look at that - tells me to go read a tutorial (sounds promising) at www.tinyerp.com then find an "Online Shop" link. Seems the renaming to OpenERP is quite incomplete when it comes to the software. Navigating through to the OpenERP site I find the "Online Shop" which offers to SELL ME TRAINING! I'm starting to understand the business model here but am only discouraged from buying at this point. 9. Ok what next? Go back and try that broken link - it had openerp in the domain name why didn't it work? Oh!! Looks like a typo - got a 't' in front of it. Fix that in my browser and lo & behold - ONLINE DOCS! NIRVANA! I HAVE DISCOVERED THE GRAIL!!!! 10. I shed a tear as I start to read documentation that I should have discovered hours ago - only to find it's clearly describing things that I did not encounter during my setup. Its out of date (including references to more broken links) and doesn't actually clarify any of the questions I mention earlier. Follow its navigation and you hit 404 dead ends. Clearly there is no CI environment backing up the development of this product. FAIL. Sorry guys but I have no means of evaluating your product. Given the quality of the documentation thus far, how can I justify spending $50+ on a PDF file (not even a printed book) which may or may not tell me what I need to know. I'm clearly willing to make an investment to learn. I've got a serious 'buy' vs. build decision to make here and would much prefer to leverage an existing product with an existing community (especially one using two of my favorite technologies) BUT: 1. I have to have some confidence that my efforts will benefit me - even if only educational. 2. The fact that it's GPL limits my commercial options if I try to extend the product and ship to my customers. While that doesn't eliminate it - it does restrict how I can make money on the product. (I see the OpenERP group has reserved that right for themselves.) 3. Barring my ability to sell my customizations, I need to believe that my participation in the community will be reciprocated but I agree strongly with Adrian Holovaty (of Django fame) that good documentation is what helps build a community so I find this to be an unlikely happening and, judging by the participation on the email lists and forums, my belief seems justified. 4. Even were I too ignore all the prior concerns - there doesn't seem to be any significant external developer activity going on that I can find. There is an OpenERP community page but all the major tabs (code, bugs, blueprints, etc...) are empty. So am I a troll? I don't think so. The reason why I write all this above is because, reading this forum, it seems that those who have already gotten over the initial operational hurdles are too close to it to see just how painful it is for your community to get any new members at all. I'm seriously looking for an excuse to justify my sticking with OpenERP as I don't find anything else out there that passes my initial sniff test platform-wise and I'd prefer not to write our own. We will if we have to but I'm hoping to find some indication that our efforts would be better spent building on top of OpenERP than starting from scratch. Hopefully someone here thinks its worth convincing me (or vicariously others who will read this) that the system is worth using, not overly burdensome to get started with, and going to remain competitive with the rest of the industry going forward. I think that's all anyone is really looking to hear and I'm just not seeing it. Show, don't tell. :) Thanx and best of luck! -- Ben Scherrey -------------------- m2f -------------------- -- http://www.openerp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=25276#25276 -------------------- m2f -------------------- _______________________________________________ Tinyerp-users mailing list http://tiny.be/mailman/listinfo/tinyerp-users
