@ralead
> Putting time in developing a great idea is fine. When you try to sell it, not > paying attention to your customers is wrong. OpenERP guys have more added value at developing their product. Offering services to customers is achieved by independent service providers that eventually partnered with OpenERP. Tiny.be doesn't really 'try' to sell their stuff (yet), see my previous remark about resource allocation. They build it, have a few direct customers and offer you the 'opportunity' to work with them eventually. They don't owe anybody anything if they didn't pay for it, just like any company. Actually, they are just doing a bit more than that, now if you don't know how open source works, that not their problem, it's yours. > OpenERP seems to lack a strong community and it is the duty of Tiny company > to grow it. Plain wrong. Look at the direct source code contributors here (not including plenty of other kinds of contributions): https://launchpad.net/~openerp-community/+members (and you can install some Bazaar browser like Olive to check how many branches get merged into the trunk by their quality team). If you were investigating you would find that plenty of them aren't even part of Tiny.be, some even aren't even partners. There are lot's of smart guys all over the world putting effort into the product. let's go for a few examples: http://www.chricar.at/ChriCar/index.html http://acysos-openerp.blogspot.com/ (they just even won a logistics price with OpenERP in spain: http://www.programaempresa.com/empresa/empresa.nsf/paginas/485B5EFA36D32F69C1257416003FC8EE?OpenDocument ) The point is that inside Tiny.be, indeed, they mainly have Fabien Pinckears, and else they still are a bit short (it's changing fortunately and they do have a few other smart guys for sure). It doesn't mean there isn't a huge community outside, it doesn't mean they are enough now to cope with their world wide quick success. Of course you'll never have so many people involved in an open source ERP as you have in say Apache or Ubuntu, just because it requires more polyvalent skills and less people find themselves in the exact niche were the product fits for them (may be just like it doesn't fit for you specifically, it does happen). Now, compare apples to apples, take a look at Compiere, Openbravo or ERP5 open source communities and tell me if you can count so many third party contributions. As I said, nothing even approaching in the open source ERP world. > Features alone do not sale a product. You need customer service too. As I said, their business model is to have qualified partners for this. Partners on their side provide Tiny.be some money, especially when receiving training. It works fine and it's common among the open source. I believe proprietary ERP's even work a bit like this. Of course those one can suck so much money from their poor captive customers over the years that they can afford sending a smiling salesman at every street corner. > > 1) JobBoss have it and the scheduling module was included in the offer that > we received. Again, compare apples to apples. Proprietary ERP's can afford investments open source ERP's can't make yet. And don't tell me they should raise funds, because then I tell you to take a deep look into Compiere and Openbravo and see if they are better for real (past their nice shiny sites and smiling salesmen). You should have known open source ERP's don't deal with MRP2. You were just plain wrong otherwise. Open source is not the silver bullet, the first thing you should do is to look closely if you are in such a case were it fits. It's very common we say to customers, "you would rather go with a proprietary solution instead, they have a mature industrial solution for your specific requirements, we don't have yet". Meanwhile, we have a LOT of customers were OpenERP fits perfectly and save them a lot of money. > 3) Our needs for scheduling are not very complicated. We just a need "date > calculator", which can be done with 100-200 lines of code. Then be my guest, CODE IT or pay a partner to do it. If you can substantially improve OpenERP in scheduling with 200 lines of codes, then YOU SHOULD ABSOLUTELY DO IT. If you are unable to code, Contact us, I do it for you. If your scheduling is so simple, you are lucky man, because most of schedulers are phD issues (deal with math optimization linear/non linear algebra+advanced code modeling), that's why open source doesn't even try to target that market, no matter the product you look at. > Keep in mind that we are a typical small to medium manufacturing shop. If > OpenERP cannot satisfy our needs at a comparable price with other commercial > products means that it cannot compete in this market niche Then what? Fine, it does happen, sorry for you, you should have looked more closely BEFORE. We distribute a free 120 pages whitepaper in France were we clearly state oss ERP's in general are NOT for MRP2. But come back later on, because it will probably broader its scope in the next months/years. What is nice with great open source is that it never stops. SAP or Jobboss might collapse because of the kratch or because they get bought, OpenERP can't collapse, it might take its time, but it will go there, just like Linux, Apache or Firefox are making it. > but about 4 times more expensive than one of the best products for small and > medium manufacturing shop is too much You said it, sorry to tell you you probably selected the wrong product for your need. If a partner told you to select that ERP for MRP2 while you could buy some cheap alternative, you should absolutely blast that incompetent partner so nobody else get abused too. But I guess you just made the move yourself, that's why it's always better to ask to the best partners if it fits before you go. Good luck anyway, but keep in mind, only people you pay owe you something. Raphaël Valyi. ------------------------ http://www.smile.fr -------------------- m2f -------------------- -- http://www.openerp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=26411#26411 -------------------- m2f --------------------
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