Users - Apache Software Foundation

[davidnwelton]

Hello,

After following this list for a bit, and wondering about the (perhaps
just perceived on my part?) low visibility of what is a fairly
extensive project, a thought popped into my head:

Would it be interesting for ofbiz to consider joining forces with the
Apache Software Foundation?

It's something that would certainly increase your visibility.  Here is
one person's take on the advantages:

http://feather.planetapache.org/?p=22

Here are some other resources to look at, as well:

http://www.apache.org/foundation/

http://incubator.apache.org/

http://www.apache.org/foundation/how-it-works.html#incubator

The above URL begins to talk about legal stuff, but that's not really
my area of expertise, and I would want anyone interested to pursue
that with others more knowledgeable than I am.  I will say that the
Apache License is very liberal, so not much, if anything, would change
from that point of view.  Lots of companies take ASF work and use it
within their proprietary products with no problems.

Caveat:  I am a member of the ASF, but can't make any promises on its
behalf.  This would have to be something primarily driven by you guys,
if it looks like something you'd like to do.

My angle: I might be able to use ofbiz where I'm working right now,
but beyond that I don't have a big stake in things either way.  It
just poppped into my head as a potentially interesting idea that would
be beneficial both to the ASF and ofbiz.

Anyway, I am of course open to any questions you may have.  If it
happens, cool. If not, I won't lose any sleep over it either - like I
said, I don't have anything riding on the idea.

--
David N. Welton
 - http://www.dedasys.com/davidw/

Apache, Linux, Tcl Consulting
 - http://www.dedasys.com/
 
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[byersa]

David Welton wrote:

>Caveat:  I am a member of the ASF, but can't make any promises on its
>behalf.  This would have to be something primarily driven by you guys,
>if it looks like something you'd like to do.
>  
>
David,

What does it mean to be an ASF member?
Do you have any clout in getting OFBiz considered as an Apache project?
Aren't there a bunch of requirements that OFBiz may not presently meet?
How would it change how the project goes forward?

-Al
 
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[davidnwelton]

On 11/30/05, Al Byers <[hidden email]> wrote:
> David Welton wrote:

> >Caveat:  I am a member of the ASF, but can't make any promises on its
> >behalf.  This would have to be something primarily driven by you guys,
> >if it looks like something you'd like to do.

> What does it mean to be an ASF member?

This has a paragraph explaining it:

http://www.apache.org/foundation/how-it-works.html#roles

"ASF member is a person that was nominated by current members and
elected due to merit for the evolution and progress of the foundation.
Members care for the ASF itself. This is usually demonstrated through
the roots of project-related and cross-project activities. Legally, a
member is a "shareholder" of the foundation, one of the owners. They
have the right to elect the board, to stand as a candidate for the
board election and to propose a committer for membership. They also
have the right to propose a new project for incubation (we'll see
later what this means). The members coordinate their activities
through their mailing list and through their annual meeting."

> Do you have any clout in getting OFBiz considered as an Apache project?

Yes - see above.  ofbiz is pretty distant from what I've been involved
in with the ASF so far (Tcl/httpd integration), so I'd want to get a
few more people involved.

> Aren't there a bunch of requirements that OFBiz may not presently meet?

There might be - what were you thinking of?  ofbiz seems to have an
active, diverse community, which is one of the most important things
as far as Apache is concerned.  A potential stumbling block is that
ofbiz has a lot of .jars in SVN that I'm not sure are under as liberal
a license as ofbiz itself...  that would have to be investigated in
more detail.  Other concerns?

> How would it change how the project goes forward?

Not too much, hopefully - I mean, ofbiz seems to be working pretty
well right now, no?  The goal would be to give ofbiz more visibility
(good visibility at that... it's my impression that ASF projects are
generally well regarded, because not just anyone can post one, ala
sourceforge), along with some of the other benefits of being involved.
 Honestly, there would be a bit more beaurocracy, I think, but we're
all programmers, and no one likes red tape - so we try and keep it to
a minimum, and in aid of practical goals.  Some of it is just
formalization of good practices, like handing out commit priviledges.

Does that clear things up?  I'm not much of a salesman, nor do I
intend to "sell" something people don't want, but maybe there are
doubts that people have that I don't think about because of my
closeness to the ASF.  I'm more than willing to answer questions.

--
David N. Welton
 - http://www.dedasys.com/davidw/

Linux, Open Source Consulting
 - http://www.dedasys.com/
 
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[Andrew Sykes]

David (Welton),

You made this point in your last email...

"Some of it is just formalization of good practices, like handing out
commit priviledges."

Can you elaborate on this please. OFBiz being as big and complex as it
is, if "good practice" led to liberalisation in this area I'm sure it
would raise a few eyebrows. I feel that the careful control David (E.
Jones) applies in this area is rather reassuring.

Kind Regards
--
Andrew Sykes <[hidden email]>
Sykes Development Ltd

 
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[davidnwelton]

> You made this point in your last email...
>
> "Some of it is just formalization of good practices, like handing out
> commit priviledges."
>
> Can you elaborate on this please. OFBiz being as big and complex as it
> is, if "good practice" led to liberalisation in this area I'm sure it
> would raise a few eyebrows. I feel that the careful control David (E.
> Jones) applies in this area is rather reassuring.

I think this is mostly explained by different bits scattered around
the web site:

http://www.apache.org/foundation/how-it-works.html#meritocracy

"When the group felt that the person had "earned" the merit to be part
of the development community, they granted direct access to the code
repository, thus increasing the group and increasing the ability of
the group to develop the program, and to maintain and develop it more
effectively.

We call this basic principle "meritocracy": literally, govern of merit."

http://www.apache.org/foundation/how-it-works.html#roles

Basically, ofbiz would not gain any new committers by joining the ASF
- at least not right away.  It's a priviledge to be earned, not
something to be handed out in the hopes that people start writing
code!  Initially, I would see David Jones as being the "Vice President
of OFBiz", some configuration of long-term committers as the Project
Management Committee (PMC), and any other committers who are for
whatever reason not interested or able in taking part in the project's
direction as committers.    Myself and hopefully one or two other
people would initially be part of the PMC as "oversight" and as a
bridge to the rest of the ASF - but not to set technical direction.  I
would most likely bow out of that capacity once things were stable and
ofbiz was well integrated with the ASF.

Over time, hopefully more people would become interested in the
project, and at that point, I think we'd want to see proven people get
access - if that didn't happen, I think it would be indicative of a
problem.  However, OFBiz already has handed out access to a select,
but diverse group of people, something that encouraged me to propose
this idea.

--
David N. Welton
 - http://www.dedasys.com/davidw/

Linux, Open Source Consulting
 - http://www.dedasys.com/
 
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[David E. Jones]

David and others,

This is an interesting discussion and I think one that should  
continue, though I have concerns about the feasibility right now.

There has been quite a bit of discussion about moving to the Apache  
2.0 license, which is something that has been considered for quite a  
while. This is somewhat independent of the idea of moving OFBiz under  
the ASF umbrella, though is probably necessary for that. The biggest  
issue with the change of license is trying to mitigate the risk of a  
contributor complaining, perhaps though legal action, of the change  
and claiming copyright and/or license infringement stemming from  
copyright assignment issues. Right now under the MIT license the  
copyright assignment is only implicit, and there is a risk that it  
won't hold up in court (in some places like Europe evidently a _very_  
big risk). To get around this safely we need to get every contributor  
to sign a copyright assignment form to "The Open For Business  
Project". To get that done we probably need to reorganize it as a non-
profit company or a trust of some sort. Currently it is a partnership  
and was _only_ organized to prevent someone else from organizing  
under the name and claiming ownership of the copyright... A bloody  
mess and not one that is cheap or easy to clean up.

I am also concerned about some culture clash and certain policies  
that are part of Apache. These have proven themselves very  
effectively but seem to mostly involve infrastructure projects and  
the larger ones usually have some corporate sponsorship, often in the  
form of dedicating a certain number of employee hours to the project.  
What concerns me is that OFBiz, especially the business applications  
level, is not funded by any corporation and is not as easy to define  
or draw a line around as a piece of infrastructure software. I may be  
wrong but my impression from interactions with Apache and projects  
there, and from what I have read (including from the links that David  
sent earlier in this thread), is that it may add more overhead and  
limit flexibility in a way that is dangerous for a project like OFBiz  
that is already about as resource starved as it can be without  
folding...

I don't mean to cast a negative light on the way the project is run  
now, but it is something that requires a difficult combination of  
flexibility and consistency. There is no corporation behind the  
project and the core contributors pretty much make a living by  
providing services and solutions based on the software in a small  
business environment, with clients that are mostly medium sized  
businesses. This is actually working out pretty well to keep the  
project going and growing, and especially in the last year we have  
seen a huge explosion of business level functionality in the project.  
This provides for an excellent and flexible collaboration  
environment, though it is I think often frustratingly chaotic for  
those used to a "tell me what to do" type of vendor like Oracle or  
SAP, or almost worse the packages intended for small and medium sized  
companies like QuickBooks or Navision or any of a myriad of similar  
products.

In the end I think what we need is some pretty "big" people who are  
interested in pushing this. We need legal help, organizational help,  
and probably documentation and technical help to better meet some of  
the Apache standards, at least from a review perspective.

Perhaps a bigger issue is the direction that Apache wants to go with  
business level open source applications, if they want to go in that  
direction at all... My feedback from people at larger corporations  
(like Novell, Sun, IBM, etc) has varied between indifferent to openly  
hostile. Apache has pretty close ties to larger corporations and so I  
would be _very_ interested to see the opinions of people inside  
Apache on the topic of open source business applications. Even if  
they are interested in seeing that sort of thing go forward, the  
ideas about how to approach it can vary a LOT. This would include  
things like the tool set to use (often there is a preference for  
object oriented everything, ie persistence, web services interfaces,  
user interfaces, and on and on, and this conflicts with the service  
and relational oriented approach of OFBiz), and would also include  
things like whether there should be one big project, like OFBiz is,  
or a bunch of little more specialized projects (which is the mess you  
get outside of the happy OFBiz world... ;) ).

Fortunately for everyone reading this I'm out of time for tonight and  
have an early training call in the morning... I look forward to any  
comments anyone might have on this, or connections to "big" people  
that we could get feedback from about these ideas.

-David


On Nov 30, 2005, at 4:05 AM, David Welton wrote:

>> You made this point in your last email...
>>
>> "Some of it is just formalization of good practices, like handing out
>> commit priviledges."
>>
>> Can you elaborate on this please. OFBiz being as big and complex  
>> as it
>> is, if "good practice" led to liberalisation in this area I'm sure it
>> would raise a few eyebrows. I feel that the careful control David (E.
>> Jones) applies in this area is rather reassuring.
>
> I think this is mostly explained by different bits scattered around
> the web site:
>
> http://www.apache.org/foundation/how-it-works.html#meritocracy
>
> "When the group felt that the person had "earned" the merit to be part
> of the development community, they granted direct access to the code
> repository, thus increasing the group and increasing the ability of
> the group to develop the program, and to maintain and develop it more
> effectively.
>
> We call this basic principle "meritocracy": literally, govern of  
> merit."
>
> http://www.apache.org/foundation/how-it-works.html#roles
>
> Basically, ofbiz would not gain any new committers by joining the ASF
> - at least not right away.  It's a priviledge to be earned, not
> something to be handed out in the hopes that people start writing
> code!  Initially, I would see David Jones as being the "Vice President
> of OFBiz", some configuration of long-term committers as the Project
> Management Committee (PMC), and any other committers who are for
> whatever reason not interested or able in taking part in the project's
> direction as committers.    Myself and hopefully one or two other
> people would initially be part of the PMC as "oversight" and as a
> bridge to the rest of the ASF - but not to set technical direction.  I
> would most likely bow out of that capacity once things were stable and
> ofbiz was well integrated with the ASF.
>
> Over time, hopefully more people would become interested in the
> project, and at that point, I think we'd want to see proven people get
> access - if that didn't happen, I think it would be indicative of a
> problem.  However, OFBiz already has handed out access to a select,
> but diverse group of people, something that encouraged me to propose
> this idea.
>
> --
> David N. Welton
>  - http://www.dedasys.com/davidw/
>
> Linux, Open Source Consulting
>  - http://www.dedasys.com/
>
> _______________________________________________
> Users mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/users

 
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[MPF-2]

Hi David Jones and others


I want to draw attention to the marketing perspective of this debate.
Arguments applying as a incubator project at apache.org:

- The Big companies will be forced to react on the application for an
incubator project, so it will force them to move theier psoition from
"indifferent" to interested or clearly "openly
 hostile".
It could happen that they will come and start investment just because of
the incubator applicant status! Why should they invest if ofbiz when it
runs as just another opensource project on this planet?

The debate with the appache foundation can only be positive for ofbiz in
several ways
- attracting big ones in sponsoring ofbiz, because IBM might think "if we
dont do it now may be sun or novell will do it tomorrow"
- Drawing attention from the media onto ofbiz "What is this projekt ofbiz
that is applying as an incubator"
        We need to report on it before the others do it!

> Even if they are interested in seeing that sort of thing go forward
.....

At lease there will start a discusion about ofbiz, which will have a huge
markting effect itself even if it doesnt end up in ofbiz becoming a apache
project!

Getting into this debate will consume some effort and I dont see (m)any
who are able to invest that time.


mit freundlichen Grüssen/ Kind regards / muchos saludos
--
Dipl. Wirt.-Ing. Michael Pfurtscheller
zentric  GmbH & Co. KG
mobil: [phone]
fon: [phone]
fax: [phone]
icq# 8724822
mailto:[hidden email]
http://www.zentric.com

[hidden email] schrieb am 01.12.2005 08:45:39:

>
> David and others,
>
> This is an interesting discussion and I think one that should
> continue, though I have concerns about the feasibility right now.
>
> There has been quite a bit of discussion about moving to the Apache
> 2.0 license, which is something that has been considered for quite a
> while. This is somewhat independent of the idea of moving OFBiz under
> the ASF umbrella, though is probably necessary for that. The biggest
> issue with the change of license is trying to mitigate the risk of a
> contributor complaining, perhaps though legal action, of the change
> and claiming copyright and/or license infringement stemming from
> copyright assignment issues. Right now under the MIT license the
> copyright assignment is only implicit, and there is a risk that it
> won't hold up in court (in some places like Europe evidently a _very_
> big risk). To get around this safely we need to get every contributor
> to sign a copyright assignment form to "The Open For Business
> Project". To get that done we probably need to reorganize it as a non-
> profit company or a trust of some sort. Currently it is a partnership
> and was _only_ organized to prevent someone else from organizing
> under the name and claiming ownership of the copyright... A bloody
> mess and not one that is cheap or easy to clean up.
>
> I am also concerned about some culture clash and certain policies
> that are part of Apache. These have proven themselves very
> effectively but seem to mostly involve infrastructure projects and
> the larger ones usually have some corporate sponsorship, often in the
> form of dedicating a certain number of employee hours to the project.
> What concerns me is that OFBiz, especially the business applications
> level, is not funded by any corporation and is not as easy to define
> or draw a line around as a piece of infrastructure software. I may be
> wrong but my impression from interactions with Apache and projects
> there, and from what I have read (including from the links that David
> sent earlier in this thread), is that it may add more overhead and
> limit flexibility in a way that is dangerous for a project like OFBiz
> that is already about as resource starved as it can be without
> folding...
>
> I don't mean to cast a negative light on the way the project is run
> now, but it is something that requires a difficult combination of
> flexibility and consistency. There is no corporation behind the
> project and the core contributors pretty much make a living by
> providing services and solutions based on the software in a small
> business environment, with clients that are mostly medium sized
> businesses. This is actually working out pretty well to keep the
> project going and growing, and especially in the last year we have
> seen a huge explosion of business level functionality in the project.
> This provides for an excellent and flexible collaboration
> environment, though it is I think often frustratingly chaotic for
> those used to a "tell me what to do" type of vendor like Oracle or
> SAP, or almost worse the packages intended for small and medium sized
> companies like QuickBooks or Navision or any of a myriad of similar
> products.
>
> In the end I think what we need is some pretty "big" people who are
> interested in pushing this. We need legal help, organizational help,
> and probably documentation and technical help to better meet some of
> the Apache standards, at least from a review perspective.
>
> Perhaps a bigger issue is the direction that Apache wants to go with
> business level open source applications, if they want to go in that
> direction at all... My feedback from people at larger corporations
> (like Novell, Sun, IBM, etc) has varied between indifferent to openly
> hostile. Apache has pretty close ties to larger corporations and so I
> would be _very_ interested to see the opinions of people inside
> Apache on the topic of open source business applications. Even if
> they are interested in seeing that sort of thing go forward, the
> ideas about how to approach it can vary a LOT. This would include
> things like the tool set to use (often there is a preference for
> object oriented everything, ie persistence, web services interfaces,
> user interfaces, and on and on, and this conflicts with the service
> and relational oriented approach of OFBiz), and would also include
> things like whether there should be one big project, like OFBiz is,
> or a bunch of little more specialized projects (which is the mess you
> get outside of the happy OFBiz world... ;) ).
>
> Fortunately for everyone reading this I'm out of time for tonight and
> have an early training call in the morning... I look forward to any
> comments anyone might have on this, or connections to "big" people
> that we could get feedback from about these ideas.
>
> -David
>
>
> On Nov 30, 2005, at 4:05 AM, David Welton wrote:
>
> >> You made this point in your last email...
> >>
> >> "Some of it is just formalization of good practices, like handing out
> >> commit priviledges."
> >>
> >> Can you elaborate on this please. OFBiz being as big and complex
> >> as it
> >> is, if "good practice" led to liberalisation in this area I'm sure it
> >> would raise a few eyebrows. I feel that the careful control David (E.
> >> Jones) applies in this area is rather reassuring.
> >
> > I think this is mostly explained by different bits scattered around
> > the web site:
> >
> > http://www.apache.org/foundation/how-it-works.html#meritocracy
> >
> > "When the group felt that the person had "earned" the merit to be part
> > of the development community, they granted direct access to the code
> > repository, thus increasing the group and increasing the ability of
> > the group to develop the program, and to maintain and develop it more
> > effectively.
> >
> > We call this basic principle "meritocracy": literally, govern of
> > merit."
> >
> > http://www.apache.org/foundation/how-it-works.html#roles
> >
> > Basically, ofbiz would not gain any new committers by joining the ASF
> > - at least not right away.  It's a priviledge to be earned, not
> > something to be handed out in the hopes that people start writing
> > code!  Initially, I would see David Jones as being the "Vice President
> > of OFBiz", some configuration of long-term committers as the Project
> > Management Committee (PMC), and any other committers who are for
> > whatever reason not interested or able in taking part in the project's
> > direction as committers.    Myself and hopefully one or two other
> > people would initially be part of the PMC as "oversight" and as a
> > bridge to the rest of the ASF - but not to set technical direction.  I
> > would most likely bow out of that capacity once things were stable and
> > ofbiz was well integrated with the ASF.
> >
> > Over time, hopefully more people would become interested in the
> > project, and at that point, I think we'd want to see proven people get
> > access - if that didn't happen, I think it would be indicative of a
> > problem.  However, OFBiz already has handed out access to a select,
> > but diverse group of people, something that encouraged me to propose
> > this idea.
> >
> > --
> > David N. Welton
> >  - http://www.dedasys.com/davidw/
> >
> > Linux, Open Source Consulting
> >  - http://www.dedasys.com/
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Users mailing list
> > [hidden email]
> > http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/users
>
> [Anhang "smime.p7s" gelöscht von Michael Pfurtscheller/Zentric]
> _______________________________________________
> Users mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/users

 
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[Andrew Sykes]

Michael, David, all,

> The Big companies will be forced to react on the application for an
> incubator project, so it will force them to move theier psoition from
> "indifferent" to interested or clearly "openly hostile".

It seems that someone ultimately has to make a judgement about whether
the timing is right. At present OFBiz is operating 'under the radar'.
Clearly if project resources are stretched, an "openly hostile"
competitor isn't necessarily conducive to the furthering of the project.

I must admit I don't have a clear opinion on this, but it seems on the
marketing front, you can either assume that OFBiz has achieved critical
mass in which case any interest is good interest. Or that it hasn't in
which case it would be more sensible to simply carry on as is.

Kind Regards
--
Andrew Sykes <[hidden email]>
Sykes Development Ltd

 
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[davidnwelton]

> I must admit I don't have a clear opinion on this, but it seems on the
> marketing front, you can either assume that OFBiz has achieved critical
> mass in which case any interest is good interest. Or that it hasn't in
> which case it would be more sensible to simply carry on as is.

I think the case could also be made that the added visibility and
credibility would be helpful, but that's something you guys will have
to decided.

One case where you might not want the visibility is if you think that
your open source project is not ready to be looked at closely by a lot
of people for fear that they find it wanting, and you think that it's
going to get better at some point, and you want to wait to turn on the
publicity nozzle.  That's not the case here as far as I can tell -
people are running their businesses on this stuff!

I'll write a more detailed response to David's questions and comments
later, and see about digging up a few more ASF people more familiar
with the Java world and Apache's interactions with it to weigh in.
That will take a few days though, so for now, back to your regularly
scheduled ofbiz programming...

--
David N. Welton
 - http://www.dedasys.com/davidw/

Linux, Open Source Consulting
 - http://www.dedasys.com/
 
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[David E. Jones]

I agree that if nothing else pursuing something like this would be  
good for marketing exposure. I guess sooner or later we'll have to  
deal with wider exposure and possible negative reactions to that, and  
I'm glad that for now at least we aren't really considered a threat  
by the incumbents in the industry... Not that I know of anyway.

With my comments about feedback from employees and some executives of  
larger companies I kind of had something else in mind. One concern I  
have with approach the powers that be at ASF is that they may respond  
similarly to how others have responded. Of course, over the last  
couple of years a number of open source business application software  
companies have surfaced, in fact quite a number, and so it may be  
that a more neutral and commercially friendly organization like the  
ASF may actually like the idea of such a project coming under the  
umbrella.

So, if possible my preference would be to feel out the thoughts of  
the decision makers in the ASF to see if there is enough interest  
(and hopefully positive interest... though I guess negative interest  
is sometimes acceptable for marketing too...) to warrant further  
effort and investment in moving OFBiz in that direction, or at least  
taking care of preliminary things like changing the license to the  
Apache 2.0 license (which I'd really like to do anyway, BTW).

As to whether OFBiz is ready for wider spread visibility... I don't  
know. I think it is the case that in a few months OFBiz will be  
significantly better suited for this sort of exposure. What I mean by  
that is right now there are various things that are a bit "up in the  
air" and other things that are still glaringly under-represented in  
the current OFBiz functionality. One of the big ones is the still-
separated accounting extensions that include the General Ledger and  
various invoice and payment entry and maintenance features. There is  
still a fair amount of funding required to get this back into the  
project (I think about $18k, would have to check with Si), and I was  
hoping we would reach this by the end of the year based on the  
progress made in September and October, but November has been pretty  
dry and unless people decide to spend extra end of year budgets to  
move it forward in December, it may take a while longer.

Right now given the nature of the OFBiz community and how the project  
progresses what we really need is more service providers with paying  
projects, and service providers that are _willing_ to work with the  
open source project and put as much as possible and applicable of  
their work into the project. Some companies are using it "out of the  
box", but it isn't as well suited to that right now, and given the  
fact that there is no corporate entity to leverage the benefits of  
such users, their adoption of the software only helps the project  
progress indirectly and in a less significant way. Still, this is  
going fairly well and I'm aware of dozens of consulting and other  
companies that are making pretty good money based on OFBiz-based  
services and solutions.

So, I guess to sum up, I think it is a great time to start talking  
about this and about more marketing and alliance efforts in general,  
but I don't think it is the time to jump on that yet...

-David


On Dec 1, 2005, at 3:23 AM, David Welton wrote:

>> I must admit I don't have a clear opinion on this, but it seems on  
>> the
>> marketing front, you can either assume that OFBiz has achieved  
>> critical
>> mass in which case any interest is good interest. Or that it  
>> hasn't in
>> which case it would be more sensible to simply carry on as is.
>
> I think the case could also be made that the added visibility and
> credibility would be helpful, but that's something you guys will have
> to decided.
>
> One case where you might not want the visibility is if you think that
> your open source project is not ready to be looked at closely by a lot
> of people for fear that they find it wanting, and you think that it's
> going to get better at some point, and you want to wait to turn on the
> publicity nozzle.  That's not the case here as far as I can tell -
> people are running their businesses on this stuff!
>
> I'll write a more detailed response to David's questions and comments
> later, and see about digging up a few more ASF people more familiar
> with the Java world and Apache's interactions with it to weigh in.
> That will take a few days though, so for now, back to your regularly
> scheduled ofbiz programming...
>
> --
> David N. Welton
>  - http://www.dedasys.com/davidw/
>
> Linux, Open Source Consulting
>  - http://www.dedasys.com/
>
> _______________________________________________
> Users mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/users

 
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[YoavShapira]

Hi,
I'd like to chime in with a couple of quick words.  I've used OFBiz in
the past, and I joined this list yesterday following a heads-up from
David Welton about this thread.  Like David, I'm a Member of the ASF,
although I tend to work more in the Java areas (primarily Tomcat and
log4j, also some smaller things) than the HTTP server itself.

> With my comments about feedback from employees and some executives of
> larger companies I kind of had something else in mind. One concern I
> have with approach the powers that be at ASF is that they may respond
> similarly to how others have responded.

While the ASF has a good number of people who are employed by big
companies, virtually all of them take extreme care to put only their
ASF hat on when making decisions on what projects to take forward.
And there are still enough independent people to make sure every
project received a fair and open review and discussion.  Please don't
let the perception that the ASF is dominated by big companies and
their projects cloud your decision-making: the other factors mentioned
(marketing exposure, etc.) in this thread are more significant IMHO.

> Of course, over the last
> couple of years a number of open source business application software
> companies have surfaced, in fact quite a number, and so it may be
> that a more neutral and commercially friendly organization like the
> ASF may actually like the idea of such a project coming under the
> umbrella.

Yeah.

> So, if possible my preference would be to feel out the thoughts of
> the decision makers in the ASF to see if there is enough interest
> (and hopefully positive interest... though I guess negative interest
> is sometimes acceptable for marketing too...) to warrant further
> effort and investment in moving OFBiz in that direction, or at least
> taking care of preliminary things like changing the license to the
> Apache 2.0 license (which I'd really like to do anyway, BTW).

Positive interest from one person here, like David ;)  If you have
specific questions, feel free to ask them here or in private, as you
wish.

> As to whether OFBiz is ready for wider spread visibility... I don't
> know. I think it is the case that in a few months OFBiz will be
> significantly better suited for this sort of exposure.

That's undoubtedly true, but it will also be undoubtedly true in a few
months, and a few months after that, and forever ;)

> going fairly well and I'm aware of dozens of consulting and other
> companies that are making pretty good money based on OFBiz-based
> services and solutions.

Are you in touch with any of them?  Do they have people who post (or
lurk) on the dev/user lists?

> So, I guess to sum up, I think it is a great time to start talking
> about this and about more marketing and alliance efforts in general,
> but I don't think it is the time to jump on that yet...

Good conclusion, I agree. ;)

--
Yoav Shapira
System Design and Management Fellow
MIT Sloan School of Management
Cambridge, MA, USA
[hidden email] / www.yoavshapira.com
 
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[MPF-2]

David Jones, David Welton and Yoav Shapira

I totally agress with Yoav who said regarding "when is the functionality
good enough?"
> That's undoubtedly true, but it will also be undoubtedly true in a few
> months, and a few months after that, and forever ;)

That shouldnt stop from getting in touch with the asf. Since that is a
process that takes time too. I would say a couple of month until all
contacts are clearly identified and established.

And marketing efforts and technical development are tasks that can be
separeted well .

Some questions: To David Welton and Yoav Shapira
Could you be a mentor for a ofbiz incubator application  or do you have
contact to people who could become mentors?
Who would be the sponsor? The Incubator PMC?

See also:
http://incubator.apache.org/projects/index.html



mit freundlichen Grüssen/ Kind regards / muchos saludos
--
Dipl. Wirt.-Ing. Michael Pfurtscheller
zentric  GmbH & Co. KG
mobil: [phone]
fon: [phone]
fax: [phone]
icq# 8724822
mailto:[hidden email]
http://www.zentric.com

[hidden email] wrote on 02.12.2005 13:26:07:

> Hi,
> I'd like to chime in with a couple of quick words.  I've used OFBiz in
> the past, and I joined this list yesterday following a heads-up from
> David Welton about this thread.  Like David, I'm a Member of the ASF,
> although I tend to work more in the Java areas (primarily Tomcat and
> log4j, also some smaller things) than the HTTP server itself.
>
> > With my comments about feedback from employees and some executives of
> > larger companies I kind of had something else in mind. One concern I
> > have with approach the powers that be at ASF is that they may respond
> > similarly to how others have responded.
>
> While the ASF has a good number of people who are employed by big
> companies, virtually all of them take extreme care to put only their
> ASF hat on when making decisions on what projects to take forward.
> And there are still enough independent people to make sure every
> project received a fair and open review and discussion.  Please don't
> let the perception that the ASF is dominated by big companies and
> their projects cloud your decision-making: the other factors mentioned
> (marketing exposure, etc.) in this thread are more significant IMHO.
>
> > Of course, over the last
> > couple of years a number of open source business application software
> > companies have surfaced, in fact quite a number, and so it may be
> > that a more neutral and commercially friendly organization like the
> > ASF may actually like the idea of such a project coming under the
> > umbrella.
>
> Yeah.
>
> > So, if possible my preference would be to feel out the thoughts of
> > the decision makers in the ASF to see if there is enough interest
> > (and hopefully positive interest... though I guess negative interest
> > is sometimes acceptable for marketing too...) to warrant further
> > effort and investment in moving OFBiz in that direction, or at least
> > taking care of preliminary things like changing the license to the
> > Apache 2.0 license (which I'd really like to do anyway, BTW).
>
> Positive interest from one person here, like David ;)  If you have
> specific questions, feel free to ask them here or in private, as you
> wish.
>
> > As to whether OFBiz is ready for wider spread visibility... I don't
> > know. I think it is the case that in a few months OFBiz will be
> > significantly better suited for this sort of exposure.
>
> That's undoubtedly true, but it will also be undoubtedly true in a few
> months, and a few months after that, and forever ;)
>
> > going fairly well and I'm aware of dozens of consulting and other
> > companies that are making pretty good money based on OFBiz-based
> > services and solutions.
>
> Are you in touch with any of them?  Do they have people who post (or
> lurk) on the dev/user lists?
>
> > So, I guess to sum up, I think it is a great time to start talking
> > about this and about more marketing and alliance efforts in general,
> > but I don't think it is the time to jump on that yet...
>
> Good conclusion, I agree. ;)
>
> --
> Yoav Shapira
> System Design and Management Fellow
> MIT Sloan School of Management
> Cambridge, MA, USA
> [hidden email] / www.yoavshapira.com
>
> _______________________________________________
> Users mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/users

 
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[YoavShapira]

Hi,

> Could you be a mentor for a ofbiz incubator application  or do you have
> contact to people who could become mentors?

Yes and yes.

> Who would be the sponsor? The Incubator PMC?

Not the Incubator PMC: either an existing Apache PMC (not sure any are
appropriate) or the Apache Board itself.  If the latter, OFBiz would
become its own top-level project after incubation most likely.

http://incubator.apache.org/faq.html

Yoav
 
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[davidnwelton]

On 12/1/05, David E. Jones <[hidden email]> wrote:

> There has been quite a bit of discussion about moving to the Apache
> 2.0 license, which is something that has been considered for quite a
> while. This is somewhat independent of the idea of moving OFBiz under
> the ASF umbrella, though is probably necessary for that.

I think Apache projects can include BSDish code as-is without
problems, but having contributor agreements and moving to the ASL 2.0
is clearly best.

> To get around this safely we need to get every contributor
> to sign a copyright assignment form to "The Open For Business
> Project".

If you'd like to talk legal stuff, the ASF's "V.P. of Legal Affairs",
Cliff Schmidt said he's willing to answer questions.  I feel a bit
over my head making any firm statements.

> To get that done we probably need to reorganize it as a non-
> profit company or a trust of some sort. Currently it is a partnership
> and was _only_ organized to prevent someone else from organizing
> under the name and claiming ownership of the copyright... A bloody
> mess and not one that is cheap or easy to clean up.

That is one big advantage of the ASF - you have a ready made
non-profit with all the bells and whistles.

> I may be
> wrong but my impression from interactions with Apache and projects
> there, and from what I have read (including from the links that David
> sent earlier in this thread), is that it may add more overhead and
> limit flexibility in a way that is dangerous for a project like OFBiz
> that is already about as resource starved as it can be without
> folding...

It's a tradeoff.  There is some additional beaurocracy, but on the
other hand you get a lot of other stuff.  The ASF organizes
conferences, does care of the non-profit paperwork, runs the
infrastructure, and so on.  As far as "limiting flexibility", I think
you'd have to be specific about what sorts of things you see
yourselves as not being able to do as easily or quickly as now.
Technically, I've always felt quite free to do what I needed to within
my projects and others I've taken an interest in.  The overhead, for
me, is more in terms of procedures, but they're really not that bad.

> I don't mean to cast a negative light on the way the project is run
> now, but it is something that requires a difficult combination of
> flexibility and consistency. There is no corporation behind the
> project and the core contributors pretty much make a living by
> providing services and solutions based on the software in a small
> business environment, with clients that are mostly medium sized
> businesses. This is actually working out pretty well to keep the
> project going and growing, and especially in the last year we have
> seen a huge explosion of business level functionality in the project.

> This provides for an excellent and flexible collaboration
> environment, though it is I think often frustratingly chaotic for
> those used to a "tell me what to do" type of vendor like Oracle or
> SAP, or almost worse the packages intended for small and medium sized
> companies like QuickBooks or Navision or any of a myriad of similar
> products.

> In the end I think what we need is some pretty "big" people who are
> interested in pushing this. We need legal help, organizational help,
> and probably documentation and technical help to better meet some of
> the Apache standards, at least from a review perspective.

That is partly what the incubator process is for, so that you get the
help you need to make things work right, but I think ofbiz is in
pretty good shape right now.

> Perhaps a bigger issue is the direction that Apache wants to go with
> business level open source applications, if they want to go in that
> direction at all...

The ASF will go where its members take it, no more, no less.

> Even if
> they are interested in seeing that sort of thing go forward, the
> ideas about how to approach it can vary a LOT. This would include
> things like the tool set to use (often there is a preference for
> object oriented everything, ie persistence, web services interfaces,
> user interfaces, and on and on, and this conflicts with the service
> and relational oriented approach of OFBiz), and would also include
> things like whether there should be one big project, like OFBiz is,
> or a bunch of little more specialized projects (which is the mess you
> get outside of the happy OFBiz world... ;) ).

The ASF is not a monolithic entity by a long shot - people doing the
code make the decisions, and it's ok to have projects that compete or
overlap.  This means that no one is going to tell you what to do
technology-wise.

--
David N. Welton
 - http://www.dedasys.com/davidw/

Linux, Open Source Consulting
 - http://www.dedasys.com/
 
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[Andrew Sykes]

Yoav,

>> going fairly well and I'm aware of dozens of consulting and other
>> companies that are making pretty good money based on OFBiz-based
>> services and solutions.

>Are you in touch with any of them?  Do they have people who post (or
>lurk) on the dev/user lists?

Yes, we're one of those groups :-)
--
Andrew Sykes <[hidden email]>
Sykes Development Ltd

 
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[Ian Gilbert]

Likewise.  Although we haven't made too much money so far ;)  (Might be
because we're an end user as well - in that capacity we've certainly saved
a ton of cash).

Best wishes

Ian

On Fri, December 2, 2005 9:22 pm, Andrew Sykes wrote:

> Yoav,
>
>
>>> going fairly well and I'm aware of dozens of consulting and other
>>> companies that are making pretty good money based on OFBiz-based
>>> services and solutions.
>
>> Are you in touch with any of them?  Do they have people who post (or
>> lurk) on the dev/user lists?
>
> Yes, we're one of those groups :-)
> --
> Andrew Sykes <[hidden email]>
> Sykes Development Ltd
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Users mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/users
>
>

 
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[David E. Jones]

On Dec 2, 2005, at 5:26 AM, Yoav Shapira wrote:

>> going fairly well and I'm aware of dozens of consulting and other
>> companies that are making pretty good money based on OFBiz-based
>> services and solutions.
>
> Are you in touch with any of them?  Do they have people who post (or
> lurk) on the dev/user lists?

You probably saw the response from Andrew Sykes about this. There are  
quite a few service provider companies and a few individuals that do  
consulting based on OFBiz. My rough estimate now is around 40-50 that  
we know about. There are many that "lurk" on the mailing lists and  
participate from time to time, especially if they see an opportunity  
to collaborate or if certain issues coincide with different parts of  
their development cycle. There are various others that are pretty  
active on the mailing lists and with code and bug report/fix  
contributions, but a smaller number, perhaps 2 dozen people. Of  
course this group varies over time as people start and finish  
projects and move on to other things or move into more of a  
maintenance mode and such.

Another pretty big group that is involved in the OFBiz community are  
the end-users of the software. Some of these companies have technical  
teams in-house and interact more with the open source project, but  
many of them only interact with the community and open source project  
through service provider companies. We have various clients that use  
OFBiz in this way. They turn to us or other service providers rather  
than going directly to the project. I think this is actually a very  
important part of the OFBiz community as these companies, even if  
they don't interact directly with the project, provide a good  
percentage of the resources that drive the project forward.

I just saw the email from Ian Gilbert about this. He is part of an  
interesting type of end-user company that is smaller, but technically  
advanced and quite ambitious. I've seen a few smaller groups like  
this do amazing things with OFBiz when they have skilled and  
ambitious people to deploy and take care of the software, but many of  
the users are a bit bigger. What's neat is that some of these groups  
that started out smaller, like Ian's group, are growing significantly  
and hopefully OFBiz will remain a good fit through some pretty  
significant growth.

-David


 
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[David Garrett]

Hi all,

I am a long term "lurker".

I have a strong belief in Ofbiz and am actively trying to create a business
around it. Unfortunately I am not yet making "pretty good money from it".
But I would appreciate an education from those who are.

I feel that the decision to migrate to ASF should be one that David and Andy
are totally comfortable with.

I believe the product is ready for the broader visibility and I also with
Yoav Shapira's view that Ofbiz will be better in a few months and even
better again some months after that. I am sure the product will stand up to
scrutiny now.

I have a keen interest in the move to the Apache 2.0 licence and would like
to offer what assistance/time I can to aid this process.

If I can help please let me know.

David Garrett

-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]]
On Behalf Of David E. Jones
Sent: Saturday, 3 December 2005 12:36 PM
To: OFBiz Users / Usage Discussion
Subject: Re: [OFBiz] Users - Apache Software Foundation


On Dec 2, 2005, at 5:26 AM, Yoav Shapira wrote:

>> going fairly well and I'm aware of dozens of consulting and other
>> companies that are making pretty good money based on OFBiz-based
>> services and solutions.
>
> Are you in touch with any of them?  Do they have people who post (or
> lurk) on the dev/user lists?

You probably saw the response from Andrew Sykes about this. There are quite
a few service provider companies and a few individuals that do consulting
based on OFBiz. My rough estimate now is around 40-50 that we know about.
There are many that "lurk" on the mailing lists and participate from time to
time, especially if they see an opportunity to collaborate or if certain
issues coincide with different parts of their development cycle. There are
various others that are pretty active on the mailing lists and with code and
bug report/fix contributions, but a smaller number, perhaps 2 dozen people.
Of course this group varies over time as people start and finish projects
and move on to other things or move into more of a maintenance mode and
such.

Another pretty big group that is involved in the OFBiz community are the
end-users of the software. Some of these companies have technical teams
in-house and interact more with the open source project, but many of them
only interact with the community and open source project through service
provider companies. We have various clients that use OFBiz in this way. They
turn to us or other service providers rather than going directly to the
project. I think this is actually a very important part of the OFBiz
community as these companies, even if they don't interact directly with the
project, provide a good percentage of the resources that drive the project
forward.

I just saw the email from Ian Gilbert about this. He is part of an
interesting type of end-user company that is smaller, but technically
advanced and quite ambitious. I've seen a few smaller groups like this do
amazing things with OFBiz when they have skilled and ambitious people to
deploy and take care of the software, but many of the users are a bit
bigger. What's neat is that some of these groups that started out smaller,
like Ian's group, are growing significantly and hopefully OFBiz will remain
a good fit through some pretty significant growth.

-David



 
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[Si Chen-2]

Hi everybody,

I am 100% in favor of OFBiz joining the Apache Software Foundation.  I
think it will:
1.  Help raise the visibility of OFBiz
2.  Help us by interacting with other developers of the Apache projects
3.  Help the other Apache projects by seeing the work that we are doing
at the applications level with our architecture and toolkit.  I think
seeing how a large enterprise application can be built by an open source
community should really help them think about what tools are really helpful.
4.  Hopefully attract more developers to OFBiz

If anything needs to be done to achieve this, please let me know.  I
will do everything I can to help and minimize any additional workload on
the other OFBiz developers.

Si

David Welton wrote:

>On 12/1/05, David E. Jones <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
>  
>
>>There has been quite a bit of discussion about moving to the Apache
>>2.0 license, which is something that has been considered for quite a
>>while. This is somewhat independent of the idea of moving OFBiz under
>>the ASF umbrella, though is probably necessary for that.
>>    
>>
>
>I think Apache projects can include BSDish code as-is without
>problems, but having contributor agreements and moving to the ASL 2.0
>is clearly best.
>
>  
>
>>To get around this safely we need to get every contributor
>>to sign a copyright assignment form to "The Open For Business
>>Project".
>>    
>>
>
>If you'd like to talk legal stuff, the ASF's "V.P. of Legal Affairs",
>Cliff Schmidt said he's willing to answer questions.  I feel a bit
>over my head making any firm statements.
>
>  
>
>>To get that done we probably need to reorganize it as a non-
>>profit company or a trust of some sort. Currently it is a partnership
>>and was _only_ organized to prevent someone else from organizing
>>under the name and claiming ownership of the copyright... A bloody
>>mess and not one that is cheap or easy to clean up.
>>    
>>
>
>That is one big advantage of the ASF - you have a ready made
>non-profit with all the bells and whistles.
>
>  
>
>>I may be
>>wrong but my impression from interactions with Apache and projects
>>there, and from what I have read (including from the links that David
>>sent earlier in this thread), is that it may add more overhead and
>>limit flexibility in a way that is dangerous for a project like OFBiz
>>that is already about as resource starved as it can be without
>>folding...
>>    
>>
>
>It's a tradeoff.  There is some additional beaurocracy, but on the
>other hand you get a lot of other stuff.  The ASF organizes
>conferences, does care of the non-profit paperwork, runs the
>infrastructure, and so on.  As far as "limiting flexibility", I think
>you'd have to be specific about what sorts of things you see
>yourselves as not being able to do as easily or quickly as now.
>Technically, I've always felt quite free to do what I needed to within
>my projects and others I've taken an interest in.  The overhead, for
>me, is more in terms of procedures, but they're really not that bad.
>
>  
>
>>I don't mean to cast a negative light on the way the project is run
>>now, but it is something that requires a difficult combination of
>>flexibility and consistency. There is no corporation behind the
>>project and the core contributors pretty much make a living by
>>providing services and solutions based on the software in a small
>>business environment, with clients that are mostly medium sized
>>businesses. This is actually working out pretty well to keep the
>>project going and growing, and especially in the last year we have
>>seen a huge explosion of business level functionality in the project.
>>    
>>
>
>  
>
>>This provides for an excellent and flexible collaboration
>>environment, though it is I think often frustratingly chaotic for
>>those used to a "tell me what to do" type of vendor like Oracle or
>>SAP, or almost worse the packages intended for small and medium sized
>>companies like QuickBooks or Navision or any of a myriad of similar
>>products.
>>    
>>
>
>  
>
>>In the end I think what we need is some pretty "big" people who are
>>interested in pushing this. We need legal help, organizational help,
>>and probably documentation and technical help to better meet some of
>>the Apache standards, at least from a review perspective.
>>    
>>
>
>That is partly what the incubator process is for, so that you get the
>help you need to make things work right, but I think ofbiz is in
>pretty good shape right now.
>
>  
>
>>Perhaps a bigger issue is the direction that Apache wants to go with
>>business level open source applications, if they want to go in that
>>direction at all...
>>    
>>
>
>The ASF will go where its members take it, no more, no less.
>
>  
>
>>Even if
>>they are interested in seeing that sort of thing go forward, the
>>ideas about how to approach it can vary a LOT. This would include
>>things like the tool set to use (often there is a preference for
>>object oriented everything, ie persistence, web services interfaces,
>>user interfaces, and on and on, and this conflicts with the service
>>and relational oriented approach of OFBiz), and would also include
>>things like whether there should be one big project, like OFBiz is,
>>or a bunch of little more specialized projects (which is the mess you
>>get outside of the happy OFBiz world... ;) ).
>>    
>>
>
>The ASF is not a monolithic entity by a long shot - people doing the
>code make the decisions, and it's ok to have projects that compete or
>overlap.  This means that no one is going to tell you what to do
>technology-wise.
>
>--
>David N. Welton
> - http://www.dedasys.com/davidw/
>
>Linux, Open Source Consulting
> - http://www.dedasys.com/
>
>_______________________________________________
>Users mailing list
>[hidden email]
>http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/users
>
>  
>

 
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