openerp-community team mailing list archive

[Phong Nguyen <phong.nguyen_thanh@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello,

I agree with Luis arguments on partner selections, ranking, and pricing (for services and training). It's not possible to have the same price in different places in the world, especially for the developing countries, where pricing is more sensitive. I've found that it is extremely hard to sell to companies an open source solution that is almost the same TCO as that of from big names like MS, Oracle, SAP, etc. I'd like to see a partner ranking system where partners are rewarded with points associated with either the money they contribute to OpenERP SA (via sales of subscriptions, services, etc), or the technical contribution (via bug fixes, modules, etc), from which their level are determined. That way, we can encourage the adoption in developing countries where it has smaller margins but potentially large number of clients.

Best regards,

Phong.




>________________________________
>From: Albert Cervera i Areny <albert@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>To: openerp-community@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>Cc: Fabien Pinckaers <fp@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>Sent: Wednesday, August 3, 2011 4:31 PM
>Subject: Re: [Openerp-community] Towards a contributor agreement for OpenERP
>
>
>A Divendres, 29 de juliol de 2011 17:38:53, Fabien Pinckaers va escriure:
>> Albert,
>> 
>> I was not talking about nan in my email. I have a lot of respect for nan
>> which is a very good company and that share a good open source vision.
>> 
>> > So, guys, don't be confused by what's being said; some activists are
>> > motivated by something else than creating a strong product and community
>> > on OpenERP. We always hear the same people criticising, they do not
>> > represent the community.
>> > This "they want to fuck us with no real reason" is nonsense, at least
>> > if you include NaN in this.
>> 
>> I do not. Why should I say that from nan, you contributed a lot and you
>> are fair on what you say.
>> 
>> > I saw so much good contributors going not open when starting to talk
>> > about money (axelor, sharoon, pragtech, ...) That's why I am afraid to
>> > give a copyright to that kind of people that could lock OpenERP in the
>> > future. I fully agree with you in this. When starting to talk about
>> > money
>> >
>> >ome have tried to create closed developments, web interfaces or plugins
>> >or other applications. Even some have created a closed migration process!
>> >
>> > You're absolutely right: "we should be afraid to give a copyright to
>> > that kind of people that could lock OpenERP in the future."
>> 
>> I know we disagree on that.
>> 
>> But you can not compare selling a module and selling a migration service.
>> We are not in favor of selling modules, but selling services is good for
>> theproduct. Each migration requires us several hours of work. A migration
>> service is like a bugfix or a support service, it's several hours of work
>> per request. I am sure you will discover that doing a migration costs
>> always times and money: even with the promess of tryton, you will rarely
>> succeed to migrate without wasting time on it.
>
>
>Do they sell a module or a module + a guarantee? That would also be a service. Anyway, we also spend time solving bugs in OpenERP in each and every new install we make and that doesn't prevent us from working on it. Migration is a service but not the software used to acomplish it. The same way integration is a service but not OpenERP. Of course you're free to play with words, yet do not accuse others of being evil for doing the same OpenERP SA does. Or at least accuse OpenERP SA too ;-)
>
>
>> PS: may be I should explain what you call the sensorship on the mailing
>> list.
>> We think the partner list must be moderated as we had a lot of partners
>> that unsubscribed because they say there are too much noise on the list.
>> We have mainly directors in this list, they don't want to waste time on
>> unconstructive discussions. So we often apply moderation (not sensorship)
>> to keep the list focused on business topics. We moderate: if it's a support
>> question, technical issues on openerp, promotion of commercial offers,
>> complaints (about openerp or another partner). I would say that we moderate
>> about 30% of the mails.
>> 
>> In order to avoid frustrations like you had, we have now an automated
>> message that explains the reasons why me moderate to the author.
>
>
>It's curious that you say that you added the automated message because of my frustration. Non of the authors of the three e-mails that were "moderated" was informed of that "moderation" *but* when It was me the one that sent me an e-mail out of the scope of the mailing list I was properly notified that the list was moderated (that happened just one or two days after those first e-mails). It's curious that authors of innocent e-mails like mine were notified whereas the authors of the other e-mails were not. Specially because just a few days before you had told me that you had received no complaints about OPW and partnership.
>
>
>> Our goal is not to censor the community as you say. They are others
>> channel that are not moderated like the community list and the forum.
>> We just want to use the right channel for the right purpose and avoid
>> to create noise for partners.
>
>
>Well, I don't think those e-mails were creating noise, where else shoud partner contracts and conditions be discussed otherwise? In the thread there were already some complaints about market regulation of training prices, for example. Well, just to let people judge for themselves, here's the e-mail Luis Falcon sent in the first place (sent with his permission, of course):
>
>
>Dear partners
>Hope this time this mail gets out... I sent it last week but it seems like it never reached the partners....
>Let me take this opportunity to set straight my point of view and position on the latest decisions that OpenERP is taking.
>Thymbra is TinyERP / OpenERP partner since 2005 (one of the oldest). Lately, I started to note trends that, IMO, are not compatible with the initial community philosophy. It is my right and duty to share them with you, so we can solved them as soon as possible, and keep on delivering the best Free ERP to the community. 
>1) Upgrade policies : The community is worried about the lack of information / documentation and scripts to do the migrations. They are right. We need NO LOCK-IN policies. I understand the OpenERP warranty support contract is an important business line / model for you, and that is perfect. But more important than that is the fact that companies that install OpenERP need to have the peace of mind of being able to upgrade their systems to the newer OpenERP releases. It would be up to them to contract OpenERP or a partner to do it for them. Some of them might not have the resources to do it, so, in that case, they should have the documentation and/or tools to carry the upgrade process by themselves.
>Just imagine that upgrading GNU/Linux or Postresql would be hard, or subjected to a support contract, OpenERP and many other great systems would not exist today. OpenERP users should feel confident that they can grow and keep the system updated. Of course, I'm talking about standard scenarios. If the user has problems with the update guide or the scripts, then he has the choice to ask the community and wait for an answer or get it solved directly from OpenERP if he/she has the support contract. Both are equally valid options.
>2) CTP and market regulation issues : I am surprised on the latest announcement of imposing a lower / bottom price of 2000 €. First of all, in the CTP partnership clearly states that we, as partners, can put the price that we find appropriate. This is the logic approach, since each country has its own economic reality.You can not charge the same price in New York, Kampala, Buenos Aires or Sao Paulo . It's not real. Moreover, we already told the price to the interested parties, and we can not change it suddenly.
>This has nothing to do with unfair competition. On the contrary. We pay the 15% commission, we pay in advance the student packs and so on. Now leave it up to the partner to put the final price. This is free market and should not be regulated. You said in one the original contract "...the CTP can decide autonomously on the training session pricing for end customers."
>What can be expect next ? The imposition on the consulting services ?? Please stick to the initial written document and don't change it arbitrarily. Otherwise it looks like you wake up one day and take a decision, announce it, and in the evening, change the whole thing again. Please don't forget that we, as partners, are putting a lot of time, effort and money, and are and integral part of the project.
>3) Partner rankings : Let me paraphrase one of the sentences you had in the previous contracts, and that reflects what I and most of the original partners were looking for:
>"The main objective of this system is to set up a win-win relationship and to make our partnership more valuable for both partners and Tiny ERP through the measurement of each aspect of our collaboration.
>With this new system, a partner who write a customer success story may be equally or more valuated than a partner who has paid a Gold Partner Contract."
>Summing up
>1) We need stable, long term, predictable policies that allow us to keep on investing in OpenERP partnership.
>2) We need clear and open documentation, with related scripts that will enable the OpenERP upgradeprocess.
>.3) Please don't fall in the mistake of money as the only indicator. IMHO that would be a shorted-vision policy. I read an email talking about the eligibility of being gold partner or silver partner based on the generated revenues. This is a discriminating policy for the developing countries partners. Definitely money is far from being a good indicator of partnership quality / level. If you are like many of us, who believe in Free Software as a tool to leverage the developing countries, please don't use the revenue to rank the partners. 
>This is a constructive criticism, far from perfect, but well-intentioned and open to discussion, from someone who has been partner, supporting and contributing for many years and who wants the best future for OpenERP and its community.
>Kind regards
>Luis Falcon
>Founder and CEO
>Thymbra
>
>
>> It's a pity that those misunderstandings created frustrations between us.
>> I hope we will be able to collaborate efficiently again.
>
>-- 
>Albert Cervera i Areny
>http://www.NaN-tic.com
>Tel: +34 93 553 18 03
>
>
>http://twitter.com/albertnan 
>http://www.nan-tic.com/blog
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