Debate - Has Compiere Become Closed? Do We Fork? How?

[red1]

Hm.. it seems that my WIKI post got deleted anyway
Must have broken some law, still not sure but reading thru it seems that they do have an elaborate system.

Thus perhaps others can try to write the WIKI there and might have better luck. Just dont use my same words this time, cos they dont like it.

Victor, about posting files, u can use the FTP access given in the private Council forum u can see when u login. Otherwise u just post a link here and i will replicate that link at the adempiere.org main page for the time being.

"Publish Early, Update Often"

[afalcone]

Hi all,

Wow!! I'm pleasantly surprised with the fast-speed from this project!

The name Adempiere: is perfect for me. Is a real good name!

After all I think that "Compiere Public License" is mandatory, not the comments on web page neither sources.

So, maybe this is the reason why OpenBravo doesn't mention "Powered by" neither use the compiere logo.
I was taking a look at OpenBravo sources, and I see comments like:
* The Original Code is Compiere ERP & CRM Business Solution
* The Initial Developer of the Original Code is Jorg Janke and ComPiere, Inc.
* Portions created by Jorg Janke are Copyright (C) 1999-2001 Jorg Janke, parts
* created by ComPiere are Copyright (C) ComPiere, Inc.; All Rights Reserved.
* Contributor(s): Openbravo SL
* Contributions are Copyright (C) 2001-2006 Openbravo S.L.

For new sources there is no mention to Compiere, only OpenBravo License.

I believe this is the model to follow to avoid legal problems.

I agree with Carlos.

I believe that Victor has a very good roadmap developed. Can you contribute with this material Victor? I think that this is a good initial step in order to begin with the project; could be good that all can read it.

Regards

Alejandro

[vpj-cd]

Adempieres


Red1 i cant login to the Adempiere Ftp, i temporarly upload it here, can you download it and put it on the site?

http://www.e-evolution.com.mx/adempiere/Adempiere.pdf
http://www.e-evolution.com.mx/adempiere/Adempiere.sxi

Victor

[red1]

We now have the www.adempiere.org domain name with email service. I would like to assign to the contributors of source code their email ids such as alfacone@adempiere.org with pass "adempiere" where u can change when u login to http://mail.adempiere.org/ with your email id and that pass.

So pls give me your prefered email id names. I will also do forwarding to your common mailbox so that u need not open that mail often and only for housecleaning. So pls give your forwarding email address also.

[vpj-cd]

Hi Red1 , my email is victor.perez@e-evolution.comand i want my user id to be victor.perez@adempiere.org.

Regards
Victor

[red1]

Email for victor.perez done. Forwarder also done.

[afalcone]

Hi again,

I think that the council, in this first phase should establish a initial roadmap and determine the technical aspects of the project.

In the second phase, i means with the proyect in movement and with a inicial roadmap established, could be a good way that we divide the council in two:

One for Functional aspects: they will receive the functional request of the community, approve (or not) them and determinate the priority of them.

Other for technical: They will be the responsible to define the technical issues, in order to carrying ahead the implementation of the functionalities approved by the first committee.

Both them should receive the contributions, analyze them (functional and technical aspects); both should be coordinated by the leader. (Good luck Red1! )

I think that in this way, we can lighten the work of all, and very important, permit that each one to be concentrate on specific tasks.

What do you think about this?

Regards

Alejandro

[rvergara]

I agree with this, however this only shows that we need to progress the project charter rapidly. A wiki is going to be set (i understand a wiki is on its way) for this purpose.

Ramiro

[misoz]

Hi all,
I just have to say, you gave me new believe that I didn't waste last year studying Compiere code and "documentation". You showed me the light at the end of the tunnel.

At this moment as a junior Compiere consultant I will just follow closely your discussion and hope later will find some way how to use my 10 years experience in ERP development to good of a community.

Kind regards,
Miso.

[vpj-cd]

Hi Adempieres.

I just modify the roadmap document with all the discussed here:

Red1: is there a way to add this roadmap to a wiki so everybody can work on this ?


http://www.e-evolution.com.mx/adempiere/Adempiere_rev01.pdf
http://www.e-evolution.com.mx/adempiere/Adempiere_rev01.sxi

Regards
Victor

[red1]

i tried to register the WIKI again

Adempiere is an Italian word, meaning 'to fulfill' but with additional context of "to complete, reach, practice, perform the duties of, or free (discharge)"; meanings that are now used by an Open Source group's effort to defend the interests of a Community that has outgrown from the corridors of the premier Open Source ERP/CRM project which is named Compiere, also another Italian word, by its creator, Jorg Janke.

Most of the user community first appear in SourceForge forums, mostly either posing questions or helping each other in a voluntary and published fashion, identifying with the goodwill provided by free and available source codes that was placed there by contributors in the first place.

The most contributive members of the community began to question the original Compiere's commercial patron, ComPiere Inc. openly in the forums and another active contributor site red1.org that eventually debated the pros and cons of forking this great project that has often hit the top ten rankings since it was formed about 5 years ago.

The eventual consensus leads to the forming of a friendly fork that will maintain reverence to Compiere but promote an active contributive community that has code writing rights.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adempiere"

But the rules are profound but i agree with their impartiality. Just that we got to hit the right notes of a WIKI. So others pls add on so that it appears as genuine as it is meant to be.

Victor, your links here is gud enuf for the moment. As long as publishing occurs, ppl get to it, spirits kindled, things happen.

[afalcone]

Hi Red1,

So pls give me your prefered email id names. I will also do forwarding to your common mailbox so that u need not open that mail often and only for housecleaning. So pls give your forwarding email address also.

My email is alejandro.falcone@openbiz.com.arGENTINA and i want my user id to be alejandro.falcone@adempiere.orgANIZATION

Kind regards

Alejandro

[globalqss]

Hi, such a movement on this forum, I have been one hour reading !!

is Carlos - Spanish or Italian?

I'm from Colombia and speak spanish, just I made a little research on Italian to get the name, I am happy you liked this name

Would like to transfer .com to Carlos (as the name suggester)

As nobody pronounced against this idea, so I'm going to get the adempiere.com domain. I'm only forwarding to adempiere.org. Thanks Red1.

Thus it will be a friendly addon community. Just that in ADEMPIERE we give out CVS rights as merited and regulate the dynamic versioning and support. We also resolve the issue of not been held back for selective release of the core to give commercial advantage to paid partners vs bugs resolved by the community that must be released immediately back to the world.

Yes!!! More bazaar, less cathedral

So pls give me your prefered email id names

preferred e-mail : carlos.ruiz at adempiere.org
forward to : carlos.ruiz at globalqss.com

_________________

Welcome to misoz, mhafod, wellx, li_speedyg, Rasmus Luffen, StevenK, karsten-thiemann. I like to see other people joining this project.
_________________

Please make a small correction:
My name "Carlos Ruiz" is mispelled at adempiere.org "Carlos Ruis"
_________________

Regards,

Carlos Ruiz - globalqss
http://globalqss.com

[red1]

Both Carlos and Alejandro mail ids created and forwarded.

Yes, Carlos u go ahead and booked that domain under your name. It seems that account holder is only single person, and we then have to explore the use of WILLS to announce transfer of domain to the next leader chosen by the Council in future.

I also corrected the mispelled name to ruiz.

Anyone else wanting this hotest email-id? Just show us the codes here and u get it. (if the codes are short just paste here. If a lot then do links to it).

I m personally so happy cos i never tot of seeing a bazaar taking shape myself with our own team effort. I remember debating with Marco some years back like armchair professors but never seeing it first hand.

Also i have a confession to make. My red1.org hosting space has been alloted 5 gigabytes (due to competition among ISPs) that i hardly used. Its always been about 200Mbytes and now i can get lots of company and occupants to fill up such a vast empty space

[moyses]

Hello Everybody:

Please let me introduce myself to this forum. My name is Moises and I am from Mexico. My formal education includes a Bachelor Degree in Accounting and Finance and an MBA, I am a also a Linux and open source advocate.

With the help of E-evolution I have been using Compiere for about a year in the Company that I work for. So, in short terms I am a Compiere final user, thas a difference with most of you, hopefully I will be able to contribute to the project.

I have dedicated many hours studying and testing the differents modules in Compiere since 2004. I totally agree in the creation of this Compiere's fork.

I just finished reading all the messages. So I will allow myself some comments.

a) Name of the project. I guess it was already decided. Anyway I consider it is important that the name should be simple and meaningful for the final user. I arrived late to the discussion.

b) Naming a leader is important, the project needs a "face" for the outside world, maybe Victor, Trifon or Red One. But I consider that the council is even more important. In my opinion the council should be integrated by people with different skills. An ERP implementation requieres a lot of knowledge, in different disciplines. Meritocracy could be a good system of goverment for the project.

c)For version revision control I would suggest using svn rather than csv.

d) Considering what Victor have done (manufacturing, payroll, etc) it would be a good starting to integrate other valuable contributions such as Trinfon's .

I can colaborate with the project in some ways but not limited to:

Maintainance of the Spanish Translation.
Testing Modules and sending feedback.
Extensive Testing for the Accounting and Finance Modules
Support for final users in forums or mail list
Asterisk- Compiere integration (we use both here in our company but they are not working together)

By the way Jorg Jank have given a message to the community, what do you think about it? It was the product of this discussion? Certainly it was!.

http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php? ... _id=108148

Best regards Moyses

[li_speedyg]

Hi Moses,

Yes I have seen Jorgs reply.
And, frankly I was expecting it.
The power the community is greater than the individual voices.
So, I think we should use our new power to test Compiere's resolve to addfress our (the community) needs and see if they truly means what they say.

my .5 cents

[red1]

Hi, i think i got my 5 cents back. From WIKI that is:

What caused your article to be deleted is to a large part WP:WEB, and WP:VANITY. If you believe that your group does meet the criteria for inclusion its best to make sure you address the concerns in those articles to stave off potential deleters of new content. Just because the article was deleted now doesn't mean that you can never have an article on that content, but do not simply repost the content that was deleted as it will likely be deleted again. If you want, you can create and article in your userspace and when you get it to a point where it isn't likely to be deleted you can move it out in to articlespace. Syrthiss 18:08, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Since it looks like you are making another attempt at the article, let me drop you some links that might be helpful for improving it.

Welcome
Hello, Red1 D Oon, and welcome to Wikipedia. Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. If you are stuck, and looking for help, please come to the New contributors' help page, where experienced Wikipedians can answer any queries you have! Or, you can just type {{helpme}} on your user page, and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

The Five Pillars of Wikipedia
How to edit a page
Editing tutorial
Picture tutorial
How to write a great article
Naming conventions
Manual of Style
I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! By the way, you can sign your name on Talk and vote pages using three tildes, like this: ~~~. Four tildes (~~~~) produces your name and the current date. If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome! Syrthiss 22:05, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Syrthiss for acceptance and this truly warm welcome. I am beginning to understand this WIKI business, and i must say it can be my latest addiction, and shall work at it to avoid the pitfalls u mentioned. Give me a couple more days to digest. It was a long sleepless night from here just now scratching my head. Best Regards Red1 D Oon

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Red1_D_Oon"

[globalqss]

Ready, http://www.adempiere.com/ also points to project site !!!

Although this domain is registered to my name, please consider it a community property, we'll see later which is the better use for this domain.

________________________________________

I was thinking a lot if I must comment about Jorg's post, and finally as Red1 said, I consider is better to be totally open to discuss here.

Obviously first impression is that Jorg wrote pressed by Adempiere, his last post was in november/2005, and he (neither Kathy) didn't answer direct questions about future of Compiere in last months.

I really believe that this project is needed independently of the message from Inc.

So please give us a little bit more time to get our act together

For me this sounds as a message for Adempiere and partners getting involved with this project.

To be very clear – there were quite a few changes, but what did NOT change is our commitment to Open Source

My very personal opinion is:

As I said previously "one single word from Compiere Inc. can change completely this discussion"

But I believe the word is not "commitment to Open Source", what community and partners are asking for is not a central directed Open Source project, but maybe the Bazaar project discussed and proposed here, this is:
- acceptance and publishing of contributions of community and partners
- bug fixing (and acceptance of bug fixing of community and partners)
- stable releases
- REALLY OPEN CODE (not private unstable releases)
- not partners as guinea pigs when community can test better
- etc.

As said in this project, we want to keep good relations with Jorg, we respect him (although I believe he underestimated us)

I want to repeat the message: best solution will be Compiere staying open source and becoming more "community driven". Jorg post point to stay open source (he doesn't clear our doubts about the crippled version, what is a very important point, not only open source, but open source WHAT?)

Note: It's my point of view - not consulted with council

Regards,

Carlos Ruiz
carlos.ruiz@adempiere.org

[AlexD]

Hello Everyone,
I have been watching Compiere since 2002(!) waiting for it to release a version with a (usable) web based UI. Needless to say after a few recent posts went unanswered and no signs of anything being done I started to look around for an alternative.

I read through everything here and I have to say I am very impressed with the new life you are breathing into this long dead project. I am here to offer my help with testing and also offering my business experience (clothing manufacturer and distributor) and looking forward to the first stable fork to test out.

On a good example of a successful breakaway fork check the Joomla project (www.joomla.org/ / www.opensourcematters.org/).

As far as web UI, I have been checking out OpenBravo and it seems they did exactly what I expected of Compiere years ago. I was actually planning to test it out until I stumbled upon the forum post talking about this discussion.

Now I think after reading all these intelligent and passionate posts I will wait and see how Adempiere develops first. As mentioned many times the most important part of the open source project is community.

Best,
Alex

[red1]

Carlos,
Great that u booked tha crucial dotcom. Yes. It belongs to the community of which u and me and Jorg involved!

Wana share a small secret here . I just went into Compiere's wiki and wrote some creative stuff *haha* Sorry but i cant help it. If anyone disagrees, pls do me the favour and correct them - objectively toh.

Its nice to hear from Jorg, and he did refer to a Conference, which most of us can't go there. Hmm... does ComPiere Inc do sponsorhips? Some contests perhaps?

But to click from our keyboards here dont require plane fares and hotel rooms, so we can certainly click reply and respond freely. Carlos said it, "one word from Jorg can change everything".

As long as its public debate, where all can read and give objective comments to do everyone the big favour of getting the best of the community (again of which Jorg is privy to). (I formerly meant that if Compiere maintains the status quo then we have done our dues of making the hit rates high enuf, its time we switch back closer to consolidate as managing a fork is actually very hard. (anyway i do remember what Carlos refered to me saying, so let me check if my context is correct).

But things are made easier with great responses here, thus the best policy of Compiere future notwithstanding, we still can consolidate all the hard work of Trifon, Marco, Victor, Bob Klein, etc into one place. I m not surprised that we actively hand back codes to Jorg (licensing and authorship/contributorship applied) In fact that would be the happiest ending.

We can then try to be a better example than Redhat, Fedora, Mandrake or Suse.

[vpj-cd]

it seems that my WIKI post got deleted anyway Shocked

Goals of this Project

In our experience, we have been working with Compiere for many years. We have gotten many satisfactions, and we have taken advantage of the great job made by Jorg Janke with Compiere. With the acquired experience we have a dream: to create a project that evolves from Compiere, a project with leading edge technology where everyone can share their ideas, with the GPL license, where the problems of the end users are listened to, where we can integrate our effort with the effort of others, where the requirements of business clients are heard, where our clients feel that they have true support, are in summary some of the things that need improving. Its for those reasons that we dare to invite everyone interested in this proposal, with a big desire of working and to support this dream together.


Why to do a New Project?

-Really stable , performance, flexibility, easy to use, facility of maintenance and scalability product

-Expand functionality footprint to be on par to world class ERP solutions

-The change of technology from a client-server to a more modern: three layers application

-User Interface focused in an easy use, intuitive, attractive and well Organized

-The necessity of a real community where it is possible to integrate the others job and to collaborate in the development in a scheduled way

-Tools to upgrade, migrate and apply bug corrections and improvements

-Use of open source tools to collaboration and development (SF.net , Netbeans , Java_eclipse)

-To improve the product, based on the community necessities.

-A 100% open source and GPL project


What are the benefits?

-A better product

-A project with vision and better direction

-One road map clearly defined

-A real Community

-A fast evolution of the product

-A useful application for the final customer


Fundamental Differences

-A product with edge technology.

-A product with key functionality in synch with industry business process best practices

-A stable product.

-A Product focused on the user.

-A Product of the Community and for the Community.

-A product totally Open Source and GPL.


Ordered evolution of the Product

The ordered evolution of the product is a central point in order not to create an application impossible to maintain


Proposal:


To use the model JCP (Java Community Process)

http://www.jcp.org/en/home/index

The primary target of this process is to generate a request for specification to create any technical or functional improvement , this specification will have to pass through a process of analysis, verification and approval from the expert members of the community in the specific subject.


Once approved the request of specification it can be taken by the community of developers.




Community

-The creation of a participative community.

-Forums of discussion.

-Mailing list

-Manual on line (Wikis).

-Tutorial.

-Examples.

-Industry Study Cases

-SVN Repository into SF.net

-Voice and Vote in the priorities of the developments.




Road Map

This is a propousal it is not ordered right now, the priorities will be stablished by Adempiere's Council

-Stabilizating Adempiere code (ComXE 253b join CMPCS 253b)

-Add bug fixes from other contibutors

-Business Rules Engine Rules_engine

-Suggestion: I like the Callout, the ModelValidationEngine, etc. But this can and must be extended a lot

-Suggestion: Documents doesn't have that flexibility

-Give a name to this project (Done: Adempiere)

-Define a council and council role

-Review the license with a lawyer

-Redact and sign a contributor agreement for this project

-Define the host site for the project (Done: www.adempiere.org)

-We, the community stop giving support on SF compiere - maybe encourage people to ask for support on the new project.

-Make the "AD Customization Keeper" (ADCK?) from Red1/Marco/Trifon a standard, improving usability, documenting how to use it, etc.

-Define the team involved on this roadmap, developers, testers, etc.

-Once the tool is finished, contributions MUST be made with a combination of XML/Druid/Jar, maybe a install tool, I believe we must only accept contributions on this format to give order to the project.

-We can accept contributions in other formats, if another contributor agrees to translate it to the tool

-Start a wiki to concentrate documentation there.

-Start discussion of new functionalities and technical requirements needed and changes to core

-REMOVE any commercial parts (PDF, reports & etc)

-Add Jasper or Pentaho integration into main CVS (or SVN ?) tree.

-Adding addons from another projects

-In same time start discuussion about new features (as ex. AJAX - which tools, framworks, codenames, ...)
[edit]

Development Plan

Architecture

-Data Persistence

-Migration Tools API Plugging and Wizard

-Business Rules Engine

-Report Generator

-New Light Client

This implies a radical change but it is a required change. To take the product from a client/server to a three layers application would solve many problems, the most important of them are those that impact the performance and independence of the database. We have to take into account also those related with edge technology.


In summary, the proposal is to change the persistence model and client to EJB3 (JPA) and SAO, next you will find a scheme of the architecture I propose.




Functional Improvements

-Integration of Manufacturing Modules

-Integration of Human Resources and Payroll

-Integration of Fixed Assets

-Integration of Cash Flow

-Reports in Multiple Currencies

-Improvements in the Financial part

-Development of Plant and Equipment maintenance




Proposal To change PO by Persistence EJB3 (JPA)

Requirements: -Independence of the DB

-Better model of Persistence

-Based on a Standard

-Powerful query language

-Impact in the speed of the development

-Increase in the Performance via cache


Proposal

To use Persistence EJB3 Entity Management TopLink Implementation


API Plugging and Wizard Migration Management System.

Requirements:

-Maintain the Application Dictionary updated

-New version migration

-New components integration

-Bugs Correction Application

-Export and Import the Data Dictionary

-Export and Import Entity Data (Client)

-Delete entities (Client)

-Wizard to create new windows


Proposal: Improve the ADCK Tool to do migrations based on XML Formats, so it will be easier the integration to new versions. Improve the tools created by Red1, Marco, Trifon y Rob Use the DdlUtils Apache(http://db.apache.org/ddlutils/) project libraries for this porpouse.


Business Rules Engine

Requirements:

-Modify the Business Logic without changes in the source code, and online.

-The Business Rule must be in the Application Dictionary.

Proposal:

Use the Java Standards JSR 223 Scripting APIs & AOP, the use of a script language no typed facilitates the interaction with every application components, and every persistent class must implement an inspector to validate if there is a Business Rule in the Application Dictionary.

The AfterSave , BeforeSave , AfterDelete , BeforeDelete methods must be rewrited with Inspection classes.
[edit]

Reports Generator

Requirements:

-An easy to use , User Interface

-Use a Wizard to build new Reports

-Drill Down & Drill Across

-Charts

-Export reports to several formats (HTML,PDF,OpenOffice)

-A query language without creating views previously


Proposal

Integrate Pentaho or Jasper Report Design Wizard in the system core Report customization using Pentaho or Jasper Report Design




New Light Client

Requirements:

-A User interface focused in the easy, intuitive use , attractive and well organized.

-Keep just one application client.

-The client has to be really light

-Engine to build maintenance screens based on the AD

-Just get the information that the user is asking for

-Capture high volume of data in a simple, multiple and mixed way.

-Universal client (any internet browser)


Proposal

We want to create a new user interface, considering the ideas behind Gnome. Using AJAX technology the client will be communicated with the server using SOA technology.

After reviewing a lot of AJAX solutions , we believe the best option is to use GWT Google Toolkit.


Note: All this point are been discussed by the community, this is just a propousal.


Adempiere Council

[red1]

Victor, i have linked your Roadmap files to www.adempiere.org

Yes, WIKI is at it again.

It is proposed that this article be deleted, because of the following concern:

this seems to be a log of a debate. WP is not a blog.
If you can address this concern by improving, copyediting, sourcing, renaming or merging the page, please edit this page and do so. You may remove this message if you improve the article, or if you otherwise object to deletion of the article for any reason. To avoid confusion, it helps to explain why you object to the deletion, either in the edit summary or on the talk page. If this template is removed, it should not be replaced.

The article may be deleted if this message remains in place for five days (This template was added: 9 September 2006).

If you created the article, please don't take offense. Instead, consider improving the article so that it is acceptable according to the deletion policy.

I m now at wit's end. Even my vocabulary can't hookwinked them. What actually is it that makes a WIKI? Someone else, who has experience, pls edit our WIKI into acceptance.

Come to think of it, we have yet to hit some atmosphere, i.e. global recognition before ppl let us in, so that means only one thing: We have to work under our own steam and real hard now, for acceptance by all. We await the birth of adempiere's Sf and its CVS. Its better to behave more of artisans then journalists, so lets forget about the WIKI for a while. Others who can come out with a wiser WIKI, just inform us and we link to it.

[vpj-cd]

Red1

I am agree with last commnet.

Can you check the link, I find a problem

I find a problem in www.adempiere.org

good night
Victor

[StevenK]

Red1,
I think that the Wikipedia is right in not letting create an entry for Adempiere. The project is still in its infancy, and who would have put something so new in an encyclopedia? When the project has its own site, forums etc, and made a name for itself on the outside world, noone will object. It is just too early for Wikipedia. Lets set up owr own Wiki on Adempiere.org. I was searching for a Wiki for my own company anyway - i will post some more on this on monday, when i get back to the office.
What infrastructure is available to support a WIKI in Adempiere.org (database etc)?

Victor,
On the licencing, the next Compiere GPL version is supposed to have a drammatically reduced functionality, ie:
1 language
1 client
1 warehouse
and restrictions on the max users, products and invoice lines (not that much significant)
It seems to me that these restrictions are much more important than the GPL licence - maybe an older version with full functionality and mozilla licence would be more suitable ?

Regards,
StevenK

[red1]

Thanks for the great info StevenK!

I use ISP hosting services of www.exabytes.com.my which gives 5 g space, MySQL DB, PhpAdmin, ruby service etc. I may work at getting a dedicated server when situation warrants. We alos welcome mirror sites to host our services and portals.

I look forward to u taking away the WIKI homework We are ready to role with ppl like u on board!

Thanks for keeping us abreast of licensing (rumours?). It will certainly be a pity if that is true. This lock-out behaviour will prove Compiere's ondoing. It will open the field to the Carribean folks.