> Let's suppose someone have developed a module (suppose that the module > is fairly complicated, not just a redesign of some forms or addition > of couple of fields to an existing modules) for OpenERP, which is > licensed under GPL(2), is he an OpenERP's (as I understand that this > trademark is also licensed under GPL2) partner or no?
No. The partner program is a service contract between a partner and a company. This contract provides services like: support, visibility on website, communication, ... If you just publish a module, this does not provides you all our services for free. > The next confusing thing, in the Partner's program description files > is mentioned that "partner" who writes an article or publishes a module > is more valuable than who buys a Gold package. There is also mentioned > that for publishing a module there is "reward" in activity units > (300/SLOC ??!!), are they awarded to the partners that have been paid > at least the 1950EUR or any other one? Of course, the partner contract only applies to those that took the partner contract. The 1950 EUR are a fixed fee, with limited services (in limited hours). If you need more services (trainings, support, ...) you can purchase or contribute. So publishing modules allows partners (and not everyone in the world) to get services without having to pay more. > If we look at the above, it would be normal that a company that > develops modules or get involved in a project, gets listed as a partner > in "OpenERP.com". Of course not. The partner program is a service contract. We will not offer you our services for free only because you published a module :) Do you work for free ? Not me. But we offer all we do for free, it's already very good, you can not ask more :) > If not, it means that Tiny sprl is selling trademark that is licensed > under GPL2, or am I getting something wrong. So it means that one can > write that he is a partner of OpenERP because he is developing a GPL'd > modules consequently improving GPL'd software? The Tiny own the Open ERP trademark (which is different from the copyright). It means, we can protect the product to bad usage or communication. Like any authors of Open Source software, we also have the copyright on the code. But we don't sell this ! We just sell our services. All code we do is always (and will always remain) open source and free to use, distribute, and sell. But you can not announce you are a partner if you are not. (we can protect the mark). It's important to keep working with and announcing quality partners. > What is being bought and sold under this program? Visibility on > community's website, training, leads? Is amount of visibility > somewhere defined? Yes. Details on the partner program on this website, see the partner section. > As to visibility, as I understand that only partners get opportunity > to announce their activity on Planet (to be more specific it's > being gathered from their websites), or anybody else can "post". The planet is our own communication channel. You can post everything you want on the forum. We relay interesting information on the planet. So if you publish interesting modules, we can relay the information, no matter if you are a partner or not. We have 2 communication channels: the forum and the planet. The forum is for the community and the planet is for our own communication. It's good to keep these 2 channels. If we allow everyone to post on the planet, it will be a second forum. People don't need a second forum. > If only "paid partners" can post and get mentioned to the website > why then improve the whole software and provide modules for free? Lots of reason: * The author of the module is always promoted if he publishes it. No matter if he is a partner or not. * By publishing a module, we will validate it and integrate it in the official distribution if he is good enough. It means: ** Maintenance for free (we do it) ** Others will contribute and improve your work and build others modules based on it. * On each modules, you see who is the author, with contacts. > One part of process of getting familiar with OpenERP, for me, included > investigation the world for what is happening around the world > regarding OpenERP. There are numerous "paid partners" that gets mentioned > on this site, but only few of them have released at least a single module. That's why we are creating insentives for publishing modules. (like our points system, explained in the website). This could be better, but I can garantee that most partners already contributed a lot. > There are even more "non partners" that are providing services to > clients and selling modules on their own, which are proprietary. > There are more or less complete translations on languages that are > not available to the general public, so are the modules and localizations. > Why publish modules under GPL2 on the OpenERP.com website when most people > does not? Because if you don't: * You have to maintain your module yourself, from version to version * Your module will become deprecated after some months: someone will do another module that will offer the same features but that is integrated. This official module will probably grow much more faster than your own. * You don't have visibility > Why post and contribute to wiki if there is visibility for the paid > partner's, who by the most have done nothing to get this software > more mature and open. Just for information, most of Open ERP partners contributed a lot to the software in different ways. It's false to say they didn't do anything. They made lots of communication, they trained some of their employees, they integrated Open ERP at customers... If Open ERP is so good, it's because we have good developers. We have these developers because we pay them. And we pay them because we have and work for partners. So it's not a good idea to criticise this system, because the maturity of the software proved it works efficiently. It's important to show the customers who are the partners and what are their quality. And our goal is to verify that partners are trained and get support. I really don't imagine a company offering quality services without being a partner. Of course, you can. Everyone can offer services on Open ERP without being a partner. But I am sure that a partner that got trainings, that have access to the support and work with us will offer better services and guarantees to his customer. At least because, if they have problems, they can ask us. -------------------- m2f -------------------- -- http://www.openerp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=26069#26069 -------------------- m2f -------------------- _______________________________________________ Tinyerp-users mailing list http://tiny.be/mailman/listinfo/tinyerp-users
