Open Source Compiere

[juddm]

Hi All - I'm Michael Judd - you may have seen me lurking round the Compiere forums over the last 4 years or so.

I notice that you're looking at forking the code base and I thought I might share with you all where I am at - having done exactly that a year ago. I outlined my reasons at the time - but I think that there is a growing realisation that Compiere is not really open - and this is something I set out to try and fix. I've been working away behind the scences quite a lot on all sorts of things I thought might help open up the project. For example - I lobbied the OSI about Compiere's illegal use of the OSI logo on their website - as they did not have an approved open source license. This pressure resulted in Compiere changing its license to be in line with MPL and to remove the tie in on the logo's etc. However, eventually, I got sick of fighting against Jorg and decided to fork the code base.

So one year on - what have I achieved.

The strategy:
- The mission is to deliver a fully open source ERP2 system. I have some information on ERP2 - C-Commerce (Collaborative Commerce). This means no dependency on oracle or the pdf library. We have developed a pdf wrapper similar to the one I have seen around the place but engineered in to the JazzERP codebase. We have also been working on MySQL and Postgresql ports although I am short on both time and skills to complete the testing on this work. However, our port is significantly further than that compiere+postgresql project .......
- We want to generate a massive demand in mainstream businesses for JazzERP and in order to achieve this we not only need the full open source stack, but we intend to release a bootable cd on sourceforge. This will be backed up with an online user manual which is also free. I beleive this will help create a massive demand for consultants.

The positives:
- We have been at two trade shows in London - Linux World and B2B London. We have marketing collateral from this and we have been making sure that people in mainstream business know about open source business systems and JazzERP in particular.
- I have had a number of articles published in mainstream business journals - such as Business Risk Magazine (The magazine for the Institute of Chartered Internal Auditors in the UK) and I am writing for other mainstream journals such as CIMA Insight (Chartered Institute of Management Accountants).
- We have implemented JazzERP in a number of businesses including a number of implementations on ThinDesk (remote desktop on linux).
- We are continuing to promote JazzERP and are in discussions with two pharamceutical companies about implementing JazzERP accross Europe (if you're in Europe and have experience with Compiere drop me a line - we may need some help)
- We have developed a brand and have some recognition in the UK market.
- I have had some very positive feedback from one investor and I'm talking to another about the possibility of funding some of the development and marketing material. I've already set up the necessary business side from a legal / regulatory sense (I'm an accountant - why not)

The negatives:
- I haven't been able to interest many people in joining the project from a development - other than involving my own developers and a few people from the open source world. The result has been not much of a desire to update websites etc and the project has continued to grow more offline than online. I had hoped that people would join as they came to realise that Compiere Inc wasn't aligned with open source but this has not been the case.
- I've put a very large amount of time and resources in to this over a period of time and I'm very committed to making it work. However, I think the critical success factors are to market this product to the mainstream of business, to make the product and documentation fully open source and then to build a business on the global and regional marketing and support. I have a very detailed business model and plan on this that I have been sharing with investors (I'm in London and have access the some very large capital markets) so I can't share it with you all at this stage - but if we can all agree to work together I think there's a good chance we can all benefit from this and realise what might be a join goal of delivering the product.

So this is a long post already - and I haven't read all of the traffic before this ......

But to summarise - I really need to build a community around JazzERP. I have infrastructure in place for the build environment that I am willing to share. I have some websites and some information available in a tool that is designed for collaboration. I have some brand recognition and some customers.

I'd really like to your input, thoughts and ideas. I'd like us to be able to band together, agree some roles and then plan our activities together. There is some info on the Jazzerp.org site about the contribution model - JazzERP is owned by the contributors and I have created a legal structure called a Limited Liability Partnership that allows ownership and rewards from the business to be allocated to the contributors based on their contributions. This means that JazzERp will always be open source not only as a piece of software - but the contributors to the proejct will be directly rewarded for their contributions. It is entirely possible that people will make it their full time jobs to contribute to the project and they will receive a very good return for doing so. I don't know about anyone else - but all of my contributions to the Compiere codebase now have Jorg's copyright on them and no acknowledgement of my work.

Anyway, I'm sorry I can't go in to more detail at this stage - but hopefully some of you will decide to collaborate on this and we can move this project forward at a rapid pace.

[red1]

Hi Mike,
Yes, i will always remember yours as the first forum site i visited to solve my Jasper Integration task when i first started.

U mentioned that u havent read the other threads. Well, u shuld, particularly the one on Forking Debate. Then your analysis is much appreciated as to whether that road map and yours coincide which i personally am impressed with your journey and experience.

Your early contributions are recognised by us. And perhaps u can repost those code snippets at the Contributors Corner - as may be a museum soon.

Thus based on merit, i humbly invites Michael Judd of Jaztek to join the Adempiere Council.

(u may use your other id that u just reactivate - jaztek, and login as that to get in).

[jaztek]

Thanks - I did go and read the other thread and I must say that the opinions everyone extpressed were the same things I've been dealing with for years - as you all have.

I think there's some real synergy here and a good mix of skills. I'll pop in to the other forums and have a read up on them too.

[globalqss]

Hi Michael, welcome to Adempiere, I completely agree with Red1 about Michael Judd of Jaztek to join the Adempiere Council.

Regards,

Carlos Ruiz

[rvergara]

Hi Michael,

Yes, Being of the oldies around I do remember seeing many of your posts in the SF forum.

Welcome to our Bazaar.

As a member of the bazaar every member has to cope with the fact that the direction of the community is driven by the community itself. In other words, Adempiere becomes something of much larger value than the sum of all its parts. Having said so, you are very much welcome to collaborate in the development of our project.

I second your appointment to the Adempiere Council

Regards

Ramiro

[jaztek]

I am happy to contribute on that basis - I have been looking from the start to find others who I can collaborate with so I'm happy to find like minded people.

Thanks for your support - I have quite a lot of general information at work - which I will post on to the council forum on Monday.

[vpj-cd]

Hi Michael!

after reading your large post, I remember that we speak sometime before.

I think that the little succes you have integrating people around jazzerp was becaues it wasnt a bazaar, in my point of view JazzERP was seen more like a cathedral than a bazaar, like now is Adempiere.

I also read your policy about contributors, and i think that it is utopic, generally in the open source world the contributors works becuase we like it, and we make business with the service and support, trifon is an example of this.

Adempiere is totally open to any discussion and work , so if you contribute with work, ideas or anything else is fine with me, we are all in the same boat.

We will be very happy to have JazzERP as a Adempiere contributor.

All of us are waiting your contributions.

More Bazaar , and less Cathedral

regards
victor.perez@adempiere.org

[jaztek]

Hi Victor,

I just want to let you know that I'm not trying to control either project and I don't see what I have been doing with JazzERP as a cathedral - I think of it very much as a bazaar - but an organised bazaar (I know that doesn't make perfect sense in the literal meaning of a bazaar).

I should clarify in that the development part of the proejct is very much a bazaar in the true sense.

But there are other parts that do need to be organised a little - if you read Edward DeBono (who invented the term "lateral thinking") - he reasonas that all humans are self organising and they 'like' to create systems to put order in their life.

So I'm not trying to create a huge cathedral - but I'd like to be invovled in a project where the development is a bazaar and some of the other aspects are organised.

Mike