Re: Thesis on Open Source ERP development

[David E. Jones-2]

Oscar,

Thanks for your interest. I'm sure there will be people in the  
community behind Apache OFBiz, including me, that would be happy to  
talk/write with you about this topic.

If you want to discuss how requirements turn into implementation of  
OFBiz itself, the dev mailing list would be a great place to send an  
email and start a discussion. If you want to discuss requirements and  
implementation of customizations or derived solutions based on OFBiz  
then the user list would be the place to go. Either way, for more  
information about the mailing lists here is a good resource:

http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/OFBADMIN/Mailing+Lists

If you want to write directly to committers or PMC (Project Management  
Committee) members for OFBiz, this page might be helpful:

http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/OFBADMIN/Apache+OFBiz+PMC+Members+and+Committers

BTW: sorry for issues with this site, it is currently undergoing an  
upgrade of the software that runs it and things like the visual design  
and the searching, and possibly other things, are having occasional  
issues.

To find others who are actively involved I'd recommend looking at the  
mailing list archives, and at the OFBiz issue tracker to see a larger  
list of those who contribute more casually, and just as importantly,  
to OFBiz.

For some documentation that is part of current efforts to collaborate  
on requirements and designs, please see this part of the OFBiz  
documentation site:

http://docs.ofbiz.org/pages/listpages-dirview.action?key=OFBREQDES

For an attempt to actually document process-oriented requirements that  
will drive future refinements and enhancements to Apache OFBiz, please  
see:

http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/OFBREQDES/UBPL+Introduction
http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/OFBREQDES/Universal+Business+Process+Library+Index

To understand this you'll also need to understand the nature of  
community driven software projects that are driven from the edge (from  
the market) instead of being driven from the center, some of my blog  
postings might be helpful:

http://osofbiz.blogspot.com/2007/05/nature-of-ofbiz-community-resources.html
http://osofbiz.blogspot.com/2008/01/glass-cathedrals-and-community-versus.html
http://osofbiz.blogspot.com/2009/06/open-source-community-collaboration.html

This is certainly an interesting topic you've chosen, and is perhaps  
the root of some of the most important distinguishing factors between  
different types of open source projects, and also one of the more  
misunderstood parts of community-driven (sometimes referred as "true")  
open source.

-David



On Nov 20, 2009, at 4:35 AM, Oscar Sjocrona wrote:

>         Hello, we are two students from Lund University who are  
> writing a thesis
> on the requirements engineering process within Open Source ERP
> development.
>
> We realize we're not a part of the press community, but we've had a  
> hard
> time finding any other contact information.
>
> We found the OFBiz project through a swedish IT-newspaper,
> and we're wondering if there was anyone we could talk to about the
> Apache OFBiz ERP project, regarding the requirements engineering  
> within the
> project.
>
> Best Regards
>
> Oscar & Alexander
>
> email: [hidden email]
> email: [hidden email]
>
>
>
>
>
>