From: "Matt Warnock" <[email protected]>
On Thu, 2010-02-25 at 13:34 +0100, Jacques Le Roux wrote:
Thanks Matt,
This is mostly true, but how to achieve that is another thing... Also
it seems that it's not specific to OFBiz among ASF projects, though of
course OFBiz is atypical as an Apache TLP project. As Anil outlined we
need our Canonical (or Red Hat if you prefer ;). Though we could also
wonder why this has not appeared so far.
I think the analogy to Canonical or Redhat is misplaced. Linux is a
kernel which cannot exist without other software, hence the need for a
distribution. All the distributions did initially (I used some of the
earliest) was package a linux kernel and stdlib with other software that
people EXPECTED to see in any Unix workalike. Other than Java, OFBiz
doesn't NEED other packages, though it can interoperate with many. And
there IS no "expected contents" of an ERP system, as they are all
different. What IS expected is that you should be able to plug it in
and evaluate whether it meets you needs for a specific function (or set
of functions), and that is pretty hard to do right now.
I can agree on this
Could there be specialized OFBiz distributions? Sure. Are they really
needed? Only because OFBiz isn't very user-friendly right now. Will
OFBiz get real traction without being made more user-friendly? I doubt
it. Certainly not quickly.
I had the same feeling when I 1st crossed OFBiz. I took me some time to
understand that OFBiz OOTB is mostly a very large POC.
It shows all its possibilities, and it's difficult to do that and remain
user-friendly. I don't say it's impossible, but it's now
deeply rooted and will be long to change. For instance take the Order Manager,
how to do it better? Small improvements may help but
they will never please everyone.
What we HAVE seen with OFBiz is breakoffs, by people who get frustrated
with what OFBiz doesn't do OOTB. OpenTAPS, Neogia, and others. But if
their improvements don't get back into into the upstream code base
(unlike redhat, suse, or ubuntu), then you have merely diluted the
customer base and muddied the water.
This is partly true. For the moment I only consider Opentaps and Neogia
(others?). Actually I see them as different from their
origins and strategies.
I guess Opentatps was mostly created because at that time OFBiz lacked an
usable/consistent/simple CRM, Si identified the need.
But IMO the main reason was because Si wanted to follow
http://www.builderau.com.au/strategy/businessmanagement/soa/How-to-make-money-from-Open-source/0,339028271,339191343,00.htm.
The CRM is a reproach some persons evaluating OFBiz are (still) often doing
(even if now there is already something in OFBiz, which
could be improved of course). Because they compare OFBiz to SugarCRM.
Opentaps simplifies some business processes but this is also at the cost of
removing some functionnalities (It adds also some, for
instance Opentaps handle well marketing packages: it's able to unpack them
which AFAIF is not in OFBiz). They actually more and
more use OFBiz as a central piece and add other GPL components around (OFBiz
can't do that). I wonder if at some stage they will not
get technical issues with that. BTW there is currently a discussion about
future strategy and OFBiz
http://sourceforge.net/projects/opentaps/forums/forum/487771/topic/3562735
I believe Neogia was created for other reasons. They wanted to use generators
based on UML. They had also some specific needs for
the
French Marcket coming from legals aspects, mostly accounting and stocktaking.
So they build their own component to replace OFBiz's,
namely NAccounting an NFacility. But they did not follow best practices for
that (hot-deploy components) and they now are trying to
do it another way, they call them Addons. If they succeed on that, it will be
beneficial for us also. Because they will be able to
contribure more. Note that Opentaps is hardly contributing anything. They do
not use a commercial licence (infamous dual licensing)
but choose to use GPL to be protected from bigger competitors. I think it's one
of the reasons why openERP has grown so much in
France: Neogia is hidding OFBiz. For instance Smile (the bigger French IT
company specialized in Open Source http://www.smile.fr/)
made a paper where they did not even considered OFBiz, but Opentaps and Neogia.
For them OFBiz is only a framework :/. In Neogia
defence I know at least a French IT company (not a small one) which is solding
OFBiz as its own product.
I guess the ASF licence is one clue. Also is there an Apache TLP
project which is doing better than us on this aspect?
Yes-- Apache web server currently holds a massive market share. In
part, I believe, because you can install a working copy in seconds under
any distribution out there. When you install it, it says "It works",
which is reassuring, and you can immediately go to work modifying the
site do do what you want. Upgrading the code base does NOT in most
cases require upgrading the web site, or the database that might run
behind it. New capabilities are added all the time, but these are
additions to the base, not replacements.
Is it not rather because of the "ASF business model" (if we can think
about a business model for a fundation..) that things stay as they
are: IBM uses HTTPD and Geronimo, ServiceMix/ActiveMQ are backed by
Progress Software/FUSE, Jackrabbit has Magniolia and Day, etc. but I
think there is never a sole company behing an Apache Project, by
design: it would not be accepted. What are really these communities
around our competitors?
They are communities of users that want to advance the tool, and that
support and develop it because it solves problems for them. For that,
you need a critical mass of users, and for that, you need OOTB utility
and a reasonable learning curve.
Yes, I can't argue against that. But we have still then to brain-storm how to
do it ...
BTW, OFBiz is not the only Open Source project with this problem. The
GIMP goes up against Photoshop, which everyone knows and uses. It gets
about ZERO traction in that space, primarily because the interface is so
different, and hard to learn. Several attempts have been made to get it
to look and feel more like Photoshop, and run Photoshop macros, but
without both of these items, I believe the GIMP will continue to be an
also-ran.
Contrast this with OpenOffice, which decided to go with a very familiar
interface design. It continues to succeed, even against Google apps,
which, interestingly, also have a familiar interface and easy learning
curve. M$ posted its first decrease in revenues EVER as a result of
these applications and Linux.
We have made good efforts and progress on this since a year now (thanks
Bruno!). This has also introduced some drawbacks. For
instance, Ruth is often complaining about the regression introduced by themes
regarding logo handling in R9.04. It may seem a detail
as it always possible with themes, but we can't elude that it was easier to do
for an end user before (there are no UIs anymore for
that, actually we still lack an UI to handle themes properly). More important,
and this is what Chris is crossing at the moment, are
dependencies on applications introduced by these changes (online help, themes,
...). In other word OFBiz is a real beast, and should
be handled with care. We can't expect to transform OFBiz quickly without taking an high risk to lose its qualities and values.
Fortunately the core commiters are still scrutinizing commits and I even think that our code get better (see the security effor last
year, Big decimal). New features are still introduced at a steady path, for instance I hope to commit the layered lookup this
weekend, thanks Sascha!
BTW it's from a link Anil gave that I found how the ASF is viewed from
a marketing expert at Canonical
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10159925-16.html?tag=mncol;txt One
thing he does not speak much about though is that there are dozens of
projects at the ASF. So we can't expect the ASF to do the marketing
for us. There has been already a huge marketing effort for a year
(yes, huge for the community). We are now facing new competitors like
Magento on the eCommerce side and openERP on the backend. Let's see
how things will turn on the long term, exciting isn'it?
I'm concerned because competitors can change the landscape rapidly.
When Windows launched it was just a competitor. Now it is the de facto
standard and very difficult to overcome. Beta was better than VHS, but
it lost in the market. The best way to predict the future is to create
it, and marketing that creation is part of the process. Well-marketed
ideas become the future-- better ideas that are not adequately marketed,
become back eddies in the stream of progress.
OK, but how to market OFBiz now then?
BTW as Anil (and you implicitly) said, I'm also persuaded that OFBiz community
has a sustainable model because
1) Nobody (but the ASF) owns OFBiz
2) We don't need to feed share holders
3) We have a very good data model
4) We sit on the J2EE paradigm
5) The community is active
...
Agreed-- but sustainability is not success. I would rather see it
succeed wildly than merely be sustained.
Agreed
Jacques
Jacques
From: "Matt Warnock" <[email protected]>
>I have to agree with Ruth on this one. The question is, what is the
> OFBiz "community", is it users or developers? The question has lots of
> implications, and deserves careful thought.
>
> If venture capitalists (a community I know something about) are willing
> to invest $3MM euro to increase OpenERP market share, then 1) they see a
> product that can increase its revenues (and profits) by at least 10-100X
> in the next 3-5 years, and 2) they see a path to liquidity (public
> offering or sale), whereby they expect to recoup their investment.
>
> I agree with Jacques that OpenERP is an inferior solution. Yet he loses
> contracts to OpenERP. Why? Partly because OpenERP looks more polished
> and finished, and appearances are in fact important. However, the
> bigger issue is that OpenERP is more user-friendly (meaning more
> inviting to users, who are not developers).
>
> The general perception in the OFBiz community seems to be that if you
> want an ERP solution, you will need to customize it. For that, you need
> a developer, and we are those developers. So if you want an OFBiz
> solution, pay us and we'll get you a custom OFBiz solution-- otherwise,
> don't waste our time.
>
> Sorry, but that attitude is ass-backwards. You have the cart driving
> the horse. Even record and movie companies (the most ass-backward
> marketing people on the planet) know that they don't get people to buy
> records without radio play, or movie tickets without trailers. Even
> low-life drug dealers grasp the simple marketing concept of the "loss
> leader"-- you can get more people using your product by giving it away
> for free, initially. In my business, we give away lots of free samples
> because it it the best way to get people converted to our products.
> People need to know up front what value they are going to get, and also
> how much it is going to cost.
>
> As an end-user with OpenERP, you get that information (I looked hard at
> OpenERP a few months ago), but with OFBiz, you really don't. You have
> to look really hard (under the hood) to see the things that make OFBiz
> better, and as developers, you probably all know what those advantages
> are. OFBiz's weaknesses, on the other hand, are right on the surface--
> the very things that Ruth complains about.
>
> Choosing any ERP solution is a hard, painful task, and the initial
> difficulty of evaluating and customizing OFBiz makes it a harder choice
> than most. Inertia (personal and institutional) definitely works
> against acceptance and adoption of OFBiz, initially.
>
> If OFBiz had a polished, truly "OOTB" solution, then users could try it
> and (hopefully) find it immediately useful, at least for some limited
> applications. Once the nose of the camel gets inside the tent, the rest
> of the body will follow. use breeds curiosity, and the incremental cost
> (other than learning curve) of using more features and applications is
> zero, so the learning process is encouraged. Soon, the customer is
> fully committed and using OFBiz for many things, but inevitably, there
> are some customizations they would like to make. Cha-ching! Customers
> create themselves. Instead of a "missionary sale", you have more
> customers than you can service, and they are looking for you, instead of
> the reverse.
>
> That is the difference between OpenERP and OFBiz in a nutshell. From a
> user's perspective, OpenERP delivers benefits first and costs later,
> while OFBiz demands costs up front and delivers the benefits later.
> Which way do you think is the FASTEST path to a LARGE user community?
> The venture capitalists have already cast THEIR vote.
>
> On Wed, 2010-02-24 at 14:31 -0500, 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:
>>
>> 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.
>>
>> 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.
>>
>> 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.
>>
>> 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? 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!
>>
>>
>> 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
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >
>> >
>> >
>
>
> --
> Matt Warnock <[email protected]>
> RidgeCrest Herbals, Inc.
>
--
Matt Warnock <[email protected]>
RidgeCrest Herbals, Inc.
