As of now, anyone can disable components, and enable them as an extra commercial plugins. An if they are downloaded separately, it doesn't add to their commercial value. I am not sure if I missing something here.
For example, at this point, anyone can disable Birt component, and say "Hey, I can add for you a reporting tools for $XXXX extra". The work involved will be just enabling it. IMHO there's no way to control the honesty of any commercial organization except competition and keeping it open source. Jacopo's proposal is good for the health of the product. I believe having a smaller code base will encourage users to contribute more, and enforce a little bit more control over what goes into the SVN. If there's unmaintained code, then it can be marked unmaintained by moving it out, and eventually, someone party will pick it and maintain it as an open source or commercial, depending on their business model. On Wed, Mar 21, 2012 at 9:00 AM, Hans Bakker <[email protected]> wrote: > (I also copied the user list because users are heavily impacted here. Users > please read the development forum at http://www.ofbiz.info) > > Hi Everybody interested in the future of ofbiz, > ------------------------------------------------------------- > *i am very concerned with the current route which is proposed by Jacopo in > the development mailing list: "Lose Weight Program for OFBiz"* > > Why? > > Have only a minimal core ERP with minimal functionality, anything extra is > moved to either: > 1. *Apache extras* (http://www.apache-extras.com) which is just a url link > menu into "Google projects" This will not be maintained by the Apache OFBiz > committers and only outside the Apache environment. > 2. *attic* (abandoned=deleted) > > Pushing out complete components and functions like for example all > components in the specialized directory such as e-commerce, project manager, > asset manager and others and also Birt (Reporting) integration out of the > OFBiz core system will actually mean: components will be abandoned even when > stored in "apache extra's" and will be picked up by commercial companies > like mine (Antwebsystems) and others and will promote them as commercial > add-ons for a fee. > > [my Antwebsystems CEO hat on] > Actually we (AntWebsystems) already started the process a couple of months > ago, we have internal chat/live chat(see our website), twitter, sitemap, > saas/tenant extension, shindig/igoogle integration, task manager and more > because a number of committers objected that we added more functions, so we > stopped contributing major functions. > > [my Apache PMC member hat on] > This can now happen with anything that will be removed from the core system. > There are many articles about the commercialization of open source products > on the internet, examples are Sugercrm and Magento and OFBiz will be the > next one: > > *In the future, a reasonable OFBiz system cannot be be run without > commercial extra's! > * > Please keep this in mind if you react on the proposal "Lose Weight Program > for OFBiz": do not agree too easily. > > [my Antwebsystems CEO hat on] > From a commercialization point of view please remove as much as > possible..... > [my Apache PMC member hat on] > Only remove the component/functions which are not maintained. > > Regards, > Hans Bakker > *Proud Apache OFBiz PMC member* and yes also CEO Antwebsystems Co.Ltd. >
