Ruth, Thanks for your response. See my comments inline.
Thanks and Regards Anil Patel HotWax Media Inc Find us on the web at www.hotwaxmedia.com or Google Keyword "ofbiz" On Feb 24, 2010, at 2:31 PM, Ruth Hoffman wrote: > Hi Anil: > I'm sure this will start an avalanche of responses all directing vitriol > towards me. Rest assured I don't take any attacks personally: I know this by now :) > > First off, IMHO, encouraging community contributions IS a problem for OFBiz. > The "community" as you so correctly point out is one of software developers. > There is much more to bringing a product to market, or more importantly, > surviving to play another day, than software development and copious amounts > of code contributed to a source code repository. Ofbiz community is community of software developers. And I am proud to be one of them. You will be happy to know that we (HotWax Media) have enjoyed (not just survived) working on Ofbiz. I will not predict future, but I don't see any issues coming up in near future. Bringing product to market is commercial activity that is carried out by group of people in order to achieve some monitory (and few other) goals. With respect to Ofbiz, responsibility like bringing product to market is something that service providers do. > > Secondly, OFBiz will never survive, let alone grow, if there are no new > adopters (end-users, service providers or whatever you want to call them). I > further argue that the project won't get any new adopters by sticking its > collective head in the sand and ignoring real world issues like release > management, quality control and my favorite, documentation and training. I have been long enough in Ofbiz community to clearly understand that, release management, quality control, documentation and training can be much better achieved if service providers take the responsibility and make some kind of business on top of it. Like you are working on writing the book (Thanks for that). Its value add service that you are selling, you may be having some other business plan around it. Bottom line is, It has to make money for you. Release management and providing documentation takes lots of resources. I don't think any provider will be able to provide them unless there was something else that made money for them. e.g Lets say your book is based on 9.04 release branch. In order for you to make money on your effort its important that people use 9.04, so naturally you will support 9.04 and when you release next edition of your book that support 10.04, you may decide to provide upgrade service, may be for free or some fee. > > And to your point about selling "services". I'm curious. Since you brought it > up, what services does HotWax sell that help promote the health and well > being of the OFBiz project? Or is that not what you do? Maybe I don't > understand. HotWax media sells services for implementing Ofbiz to various kind of businesses. In the process we add new features, test some, add Unit tests for few, etc. Part of what we do is contributed to community and part does not make into community for various reasons. All these things that we do helps others in community in someway. Similarly other providers contribute tons of things. All these activities have helped Ofbiz community to not only survive but grow overtime. > > Well I for one feel really comfortable saying that I sell a "product" that > helps promote the health and well being of OFBiz. Probably the only one out > there? Thanks for providing services and helping users. But please know that "I don't appreciate you saying that you are the only one". > Not only that, my product is reasonably priced to encourage new OFBiz > adopters. If you can afford to buy a week's worth of Starbuck lattes, you can > afford to purchase my product. Does that make me a "Company" backing OFBiz? > LOL! I don't know what you want to communicate, but I do see your services are something that helps grow Ofbiz ecosystem. > > > Regards, > Ruth > > ---------------------------------------------------- > Find me on the web at http://www.myofbiz.com or Google keyword "myofbiz" > [email protected] > > > Regards, > Ruth > > Anil Patel wrote: >> Here is another blog http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10458449-16.html >> >> One interesting issue these Company driven projects are struggling (evedent >> from reading these blogs) with is, encourage community to contribute. In >> Ofbiz we don't have this issue, Ofbiz is build on the concept of "Community >> driven software development" >> I feel confident that OfBiz will live longer and grow much more quickly then >> usual software open source software dragged by corporations. Ofbiz service >> providers can focus on their core activity "Sell services", and not really >> wonder around to get funding to keep project alive and moving. >> >> Thanks and Regards >> Anil Patel >> HotWax Media Inc >> Find us on the web at www.hotwaxmedia.com or Google Keyword "ofbiz" >> >> On Feb 24, 2010, at 11:14 AM, Anil Patel wrote: >> >> >>> Jacques, >>> Why do you think so? >>> >>> It does not take too long to use 3M euros. And they are trying to make >>> community contribution thing work for them, We got it working for years. >>> >>> In case of OpenERP, One provider is dominating the community. In case of >>> Apache Ofbiz we don't encourage that. Its up to providers to decide how >>> they want to use OfBiz for building their business. >>> >>> Thanks and Regards >>> Anil Patel >>> HotWax Media Inc >>> Find us on the web at www.hotwaxmedia.com or Google Keyword "ofbiz" >>> >>> On Feb 24, 2010, at 10:15 AM, Jacques Le Roux wrote: >>> >>> >>>> Maybe the future of OFBiz in Europe (and even in USA it seems) will be >>>> harder... >>>> >>>> http://fptiny.blogspot.com/2010/02/openerp-raises-3-million-euros.html >>>> >>>> Or maybe this ERP will not be Open-Source longer in the future... >>>> >>>> Actually it was the last of the Open-Source ERPs to not follow this way >>>> (though I"m not sure for ERP5) >>>> >>>> The strategy : >>>> http://robertogaloppini.net/2009/06/01/open-source-business-strategy-openerp-and-long-term-sustainability/ >>>> >>>> Jacques >>>> >>>> >> >> >>
