OFBiz Project Status
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Hello, I've been reading quite a bit about OFBiz and am interested in using
it to build some business applications. The project appears under active development with recent releases, however, I'm a little concerned about the lack of community updates and stale documentation. Here are some examples: The latest "news", i.e. social media and blog posts, are from 2019. All the "useful" OFBiz books were published in the 2008-2013 range The confluence site is a web of confusion. For example From the home page at https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OFBIZ/Home The "Getting Started" link at https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OFBIZ/Apache+OFBiz+Getting+Started is in the confluence "Trash" as seen in the breadcrumb. On the "Getting Started" page is a blurb that says > This document has been moved to the OFBiz website: > http://ofbiz.apache.org/apache-ofbiz-getting-started.html Clicking that link gives a 404 Another example: The "How to articles" page at https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OFBIZ/How-to+articles Has a number of recent updates (which I read and followed perfectly), but they are in the confluence "Wiki Attic" breadcrumb. Which is confusing. Here is the most recent example: https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OFBIZ/How+to+install+OFBiz+with+the+Demo+Data Release Concerns 17.12.04 was just released, but I saw in a commit log reference to an 18.12 release. I can't find anything related to it, other than a few posts to the user mailing list from July 2019. What happened to the 18.12 release? I do believe that OFBiz can be a great backbone for my business applications, but I have the following concerns: - It will be difficult for developers to get acclimated to the project based on the documentation and books as described above. - With no recent "news" the project is stagnating and losing momentum - The latest point release is from two weeks ago, but the major release was from 2017 Based on these, I'm concerned about hitching my wagon to the project. Your thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance -Jeff |
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Hello Jeff,
Thank you for raising concern over OFBiz and I can assure you we are working on to resolve such problems which are faced by the new adaptors. There are problems with every project and with the continuously evolving nature of OFBiz, we are trying our best to make it seamless. Every open source project grows with the support of the community and collaborating can sometimes cause a delay. But this is no excuse. We all are working for the betterment of OFBiz. Yes, the documentation is a bit messy but we are already working on to clear the haystack of documentation. With this thread, I would like to ask the team who handles OFBiz social presence to take a look at the raised concern. And we need people like you to join us and help us in reaching OFBiz to its real potential. Thanks & Regards, Devanshu Vyas. On Wed, Jul 29, 2020 at 11:54 PM Jeff Schwartz <[hidden email]> wrote: > Hello, I've been reading quite a bit about OFBiz and am interested in using > it to build some business applications. The project appears under active > development with recent releases, however, I'm a little concerned about the > lack of community updates and stale documentation. Here are some examples: > > The latest "news", i.e. social media and blog posts, are from 2019. > > All the "useful" OFBiz books were published in the 2008-2013 range > > The confluence site is a web of confusion. For example > > From the home page at > https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OFBIZ/Home > > The "Getting Started" link at > > https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OFBIZ/Apache+OFBiz+Getting+Started > > is in the confluence "Trash" as seen in the breadcrumb. > > On the "Getting Started" page is a blurb that says > > > This document has been moved to the OFBiz website: > > http://ofbiz.apache.org/apache-ofbiz-getting-started.html > > Clicking that link gives a 404 > > Another example: > > The "How to articles" page at > https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OFBIZ/How-to+articles > > Has a number of recent updates (which I read and followed perfectly), but > they are in the confluence "Wiki Attic" breadcrumb. Which is confusing. > Here is the most recent example: > > https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OFBIZ/How+to+install+OFBiz+with+the+Demo+Data > > Release Concerns > 17.12.04 was just released, but I saw in a commit log reference to an 18.12 > release. I can't find anything related to it, other than a few posts to > the user mailing list from July 2019. What happened to the 18.12 release? > > I do believe that OFBiz can be a great backbone for my business > applications, but I have the following concerns: > > - It will be difficult for developers to get acclimated to the project > based on the documentation and books as described above. > - With no recent "news" the project is stagnating and losing momentum > - The latest point release is from two weeks ago, but the major release > was from 2017 > > Based on these, I'm concerned about hitching my wagon to the project. > > Your thoughts would be greatly appreciated. > > Thanks in advance > > -Jeff > |
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In reply to this post by Jeff Schwartz
Hi Jeff,
Welcome to the Apache OFBiz ecosystem! I would recommend you to check out the official website[1], Getting Started for Developers[2] & Business users[3] and the confluence documentation[4]. >The confluence site is a web of confusion. For example Thanks for raising the concerns. The community is striving to improve the documentation. We have various documentation efforts going on with Ascidocs etc, we will definitely try to improve the experience. > The "Getting Started" link at > https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OFBIZ/Apache+OFBiz+Getting+Started Thanks for reporting, it was outdated. I have updated it with the Developers[2] and Business users[3] links https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OFBIZ/Home > Has a number of recent updates (which I read and followed perfectly), but > they are in the confluence "Wiki Attic" breadcrumb. Which is confusing. > Here is the most recent example: > https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OFBIZ/How+to+install+OFBiz+with+the+Demo+Data When pages become outdated they are not deleted but moved to Attic. Some references and indexes on search engines may still be there. > Release Concerns > 17.12.04 was just released, but I saw in a commit log reference to an 18.12 > release. I can't find anything related to it, other than a few posts to > the user mailing list from July 2019. What happened to the 18.12 release? The latest release is 17.12.04[5], 18.12 is another release branch that is stabilized for a given time period and may replace the 17.12 for the new releases after some time. HTH 1. https://ofbiz.apache.org/index.html 2. https://ofbiz.apache.org/developers.html 3. https://ofbiz.apache.org/business-users.html 4. https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OFBIZ/Documentation#Documentation-End-UserDocumentation 5. https://ofbiz.apache.org/download.html Thanks and regards, Aditya Sharma On Wed, Jul 29, 2020 at 11:59 PM Jeff Schwartz <[hidden email]> wrote: > > Hello, I've been reading quite a bit about OFBiz and am interested in using > it to build some business applications. The project appears under active > development with recent releases, however, I'm a little concerned about the > lack of community updates and stale documentation. Here are some examples: > > The latest "news", i.e. social media and blog posts, are from 2019. > > All the "useful" OFBiz books were published in the 2008-2013 range > > The confluence site is a web of confusion. For example > > From the home page at > https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OFBIZ/Home > > The "Getting Started" link at > https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OFBIZ/Apache+OFBiz+Getting+Started > > is in the confluence "Trash" as seen in the breadcrumb. > > On the "Getting Started" page is a blurb that says > > > This document has been moved to the OFBiz website: > > http://ofbiz.apache.org/apache-ofbiz-getting-started.html > > Clicking that link gives a 404 > > Another example: > > The "How to articles" page at > https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OFBIZ/How-to+articles > > Has a number of recent updates (which I read and followed perfectly), but > they are in the confluence "Wiki Attic" breadcrumb. Which is confusing. > Here is the most recent example: > https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OFBIZ/How+to+install+OFBiz+with+the+Demo+Data > > Release Concerns > 17.12.04 was just released, but I saw in a commit log reference to an 18.12 > release. I can't find anything related to it, other than a few posts to > the user mailing list from July 2019. What happened to the 18.12 release? > > I do believe that OFBiz can be a great backbone for my business > applications, but I have the following concerns: > > - It will be difficult for developers to get acclimated to the project > based on the documentation and books as described above. > - With no recent "news" the project is stagnating and losing momentum > - The latest point release is from two weeks ago, but the major release > was from 2017 > > Based on these, I'm concerned about hitching my wagon to the project. > > Your thoughts would be greatly appreciated. > > Thanks in advance > > -Jeff |
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In reply to this post by Devanshu Vyas-2
Thanks Jeff and Devanshu,
About the social media presence, I like to say that there is nothing worse than an outdated misleading documentation. I'd venture to say the same for the social media presence. Either we have it or we remove it.- This said we are a voluntering community with moving priorities. Anyway we have already started something again/new for at least the blog during this conversation, please see https://the-asf.slack.com/archives/GFCDJ9FNK Jacques Le 30/07/2020 à 07:13, Devanshu Vyas a écrit : > Hello Jeff, > > Thank you for raising concern over OFBiz and I can assure you we are > working on to resolve such problems which are faced by the new adaptors. > > There are problems with every project and with the continuously evolving > nature of OFBiz, we are trying our best to make it seamless. Every open > source project grows with the support of the community and collaborating > can sometimes cause a delay. But this is no excuse. We all are working for > the betterment of OFBiz. > > Yes, the documentation is a bit messy but we are already working on to > clear the haystack of documentation. With this thread, I would like to ask > the team who handles OFBiz social presence to take a look at the raised > concern. > > And we need people like you to join us and help us in reaching OFBiz to its > real potential. > > Thanks & Regards, > Devanshu Vyas. > > > On Wed, Jul 29, 2020 at 11:54 PM Jeff Schwartz <[hidden email]> wrote: > >> Hello, I've been reading quite a bit about OFBiz and am interested in using >> it to build some business applications. The project appears under active >> development with recent releases, however, I'm a little concerned about the >> lack of community updates and stale documentation. Here are some examples: >> >> The latest "news", i.e. social media and blog posts, are from 2019. >> >> All the "useful" OFBiz books were published in the 2008-2013 range >> >> The confluence site is a web of confusion. For example >> >> From the home page at >> https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OFBIZ/Home >> >> The "Getting Started" link at >> >> https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OFBIZ/Apache+OFBiz+Getting+Started >> >> is in the confluence "Trash" as seen in the breadcrumb. >> >> On the "Getting Started" page is a blurb that says >> >> > This document has been moved to the OFBiz website: >> > http://ofbiz.apache.org/apache-ofbiz-getting-started.html >> >> Clicking that link gives a 404 >> >> Another example: >> >> The "How to articles" page at >> https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OFBIZ/How-to+articles >> >> Has a number of recent updates (which I read and followed perfectly), but >> they are in the confluence "Wiki Attic" breadcrumb. Which is confusing. >> Here is the most recent example: >> >> https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OFBIZ/How+to+install+OFBiz+with+the+Demo+Data >> >> Release Concerns >> 17.12.04 was just released, but I saw in a commit log reference to an 18.12 >> release. I can't find anything related to it, other than a few posts to >> the user mailing list from July 2019. What happened to the 18.12 release? >> >> I do believe that OFBiz can be a great backbone for my business >> applications, but I have the following concerns: >> >> - It will be difficult for developers to get acclimated to the project >> based on the documentation and books as described above. >> - With no recent "news" the project is stagnating and losing momentum >> - The latest point release is from two weeks ago, but the major release >> was from 2017 >> >> Based on these, I'm concerned about hitching my wagon to the project. >> >> Your thoughts would be greatly appreciated. >> >> Thanks in advance >> >> -Jeff >> |
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Administrator
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In reply to this post by adityasharma
Hi Jeff,
I can't resist to add inline some comments to Aditya's good answer Le 30/07/2020 à 07:43, Aditya Sharma a écrit : > The confluence site is a web of confusion. For example > Thanks for raising the concerns. The community is striving to improve > the documentation. We have various documentation efforts going on with > Ascidocs etc, we will definitely try to improve the experience. The AsciiDoc documentation is indeed a well advanced WIP. You may find more information under https://ci.apache.org/projects/ofbiz/site/ stable: current stable release documentation next: next stable release documentation trunk: : trunk documentation We are not yet referring to it, but it will eventually be the official documentation (hopefully before end of year) >> they are in the confluence "Wiki Attic" breadcrumb. Which is confusing. >> Here is the most recent example: >> https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OFBIZ/How+to+install+OFBiz+with+the+Demo+Data > When pages become outdated they are not deleted but moved to Attic. > Some references and indexes on search engines may still be there. Those can still be useful for old users custom projects. OFBiz is 19 years old... >> I do believe that OFBiz can be a great backbone for my business >> applications, but I have the following concerns: >> >> - It will be difficult for developers to get acclimated to the project >> based on the documentation and books as described above. OFBiz has not fundamentally much changed since these books and documentation were created. It has mostly improved. Which mostly means, less bugs, more features, more and better documentation, better code. >> - With no recent "news" the project is stagnating and losing momentum Not at all, the project is mature but still thriving in certain areas. * Soon we will have REST, also for exporting services * The ecommerce part is now using Boostrap for a better UI * The code continue to improve in term of readability and * ... >> - The latest point release is from two weeks ago, but the major release >> was from 2017 We have a conservative way of releasing. Most of the time, each year we freeze the trunk and create a release branch. One or more years after, we release packages from this branch. We name this branch stable when its 1 packages is released. The previous one is then names old and is no longer supported. This is reflected in demos, where the trunk (master if you prefer) is also available. After the creation of a yearly branch, bugs fixed in trunk are backported to still supported branches (R17 and R18 are current examples). This ensures stability (no regressions) and reliability (less bugs). Apart from community consensus, no important features are backported. Few trivial but safe and worthy features may be backported, that's rare. It happens that, for misc. reasons - security can be one, some years we don't freeze the trunk. This happened in 2019 where we received a lot of security reports. Vulnerabilities are always backported to supported branches. It also happens that, again for misc. reasons, some yearly branches are never released, R14 and R15 are examples. That's also rare. HTH Jacques |
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