openerp-community team mailing list archive

[Geert Janssens <geert@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wednesday 21 May 2014 15:16:35 Fabien Pinckaers wrote:
> > Hello Fabien,
> > that's cool to hear you may change your mind a few things you
> > announced. But tell us, that would of course never apply to the
> > established licenses under which all the contributions were made of
> > course? Even in case of emergency plan right? We have your word
> > right?
> Copy/paste from one of my latest blog:
> 
>   We removed the words "Open" and "ERP" from our name. But Odoo is and
> always will be fully open source. Our open source business model is
> unchanged. Our commitment to an open software and community remains.
> And it's the same for ERP; Odoo's key priorities are still management
> applications like accounting, project management, crm, inventory,
> etc.
> 
That's good news and I trust you on this.
> 
> You guys are bothering me. After so many years, you still see the
> devil in every move...
> 
It is equally bothering that every move invokes suspicions of this kind. 
There is likely a good reason for that. However I don't think this 
reason is ill will or bad intentions from your side.

> There are only a very few companies in the world like us, with a so
> strong open source commitment. After 8 years, you still think we have
> hidden agendas. I don't know how I can explain it better...
> 
I have been involved in a couple of free software projects for years now 
and that has probably colored my expectations. OpenERP/Odoo claims to be 
open source and by a narrow definition it is indeed: the source code is 
publicly available. My sincerest gratitude for that. It is what 
attracted me to your product in the first place.

There is however much more to a successful open source project than just 
providing the source code for download. For such a project to succeed 
that community is essential and should be taken as an equal partner.

You managed to create a community. A lively one at that as well. So 
that's good. However I'm not sure you are treating them as equal 
partners. And that can induce malcontent, suspicion and other frictions.

Also from how I perceive it the community is mostly a community of 
partners. I don't see/hear many users raising their voice in the 
community.

Perhaps that's part of the nature of your product (a suite of business 
management tools), perhaps also partly due to the business model in 
which the user is considered an outsider, the masses that have to be 
convinced to pay OpenERP and its partners for their product.

I have seen many open source projects struggle when there was one 
central company managing it and treating the community as second class. 
Take Qt while it was managed by Nokia. It only really revived when Digia 
took over which really took the community seriously. The same for 
OpenOffice/LibreOffice. It had all kinds of trouble/friction while Sun 
and later Oracle was in control (the Oracle period was the worst of the 
two). Now under the wings of the Document Foundation it flourishes.

I do understand OpenERP is your brainchild and by no means I mean to 
imply you should let go of it. I'm mainly pointing out how a healthy 
community is critical for your success. That's not directly countable in 
dollars but it would be unfortunate to underestimate what added value a 
good community can bring. A few examples have already been mentioned on 
this list like localization.

I can imagine with the recent funding you must ensure you have 
sufficient ROI to keep the stakeholders happy. But just be careful not 
to steer away from an open ecosystem in which open communication as 
equal partners is essential.

> These are the kind of attitude that makes me stop discussing with you
> and focus on doing things / moving forward.

It's not my intention to criticize every move made by OpenERP/Odoo 
although I have had my fair share of frustration with OpenERP both in 
support as in sudden changes in course.

I'm only a customer with great interest in getting involved in the 
community. And I have chosen to share my view on open source communities 
in the hope it can benefit the Odoo ecosystem as a whole.

Regards,

Geert