Users - SSL Setup

[cjhowe]

Adrian,

I think there are at least a couple of things that you
don't understand about OFBIZ specifically, and Open
Source and Enterprise Resource Planning Software
generally.

While there may be several companies attempting to
profit (ie earn a living) off of the Open for Business
software, they're not attempting (at least as far as I
can tell) to become to ecommerce what pick and shovel
barrons were to the gold rush.  So called
"competition" from the likes of Google and Amazon
don't affect OFBiz. The companies set up around OFBiz
offer consulting services.  Why are consulting
services even necessary?  Because enterprise resource
planning is hard stuff.  The principles themselves are
dificult for humans to keep in order even with our
fine tuned heuristic behaviors that can focus on the
important and ignore the unimportant.  Much less try
to make a computer duplicate these behaviors.  In
addition, EVERY company is different and no cookie
cutter solution will effectively work for any two
companies.  

Customized versions of OFBiz are great.  The thing is
with the exception of the few companies whose business
model is based on customized versions, anyone that has
been on this list that has created a customization
that does anything significant has contributed back a
generic version of it if possible (and even those
companies whose business model is to make customized
version have contributed back).  However, most
customizations are of no benefit to anyone except the
person or company that did the customization.

While OFBIZ has an ecommerce application and an order
app, etc built off of it (and that is certainly a draw
for most of the community), at it's core is no longer
intended to be ecommerce software.  The ease of
writing code that manipulates a database is
incredible.  Let me rephrase that.  The ease of
writing code that manipulates the multitude of
databases available as fungible data stores is
incredible.  That is of course once your understand
how OFBiz is written. The framework of OFBiz is just
that a framework of tools.  

Now to the point of Open Source software.  If you're a
fan of economics explanations, Open Source only exists
(created, grown and maintained) because proprietary
solutions are either inept or prohibitively expensive.
 Enterprise Resource Planning just happens to be both.
 If Google or Amazon or anyone else could create a
platform that made it any easier and more sufficient
than OFBiz, everyone on this list with the exception
perhaps of David and Andy (because of all of the
blood, sweat, and tears they've poured into the
project) would abandon it for such a solution.  And if
that happened, realistically no one should care.  It's
as trivial as someone who only uses a computer to
check email, browse the web and word process bickering
over which is better, Windows, Mac OS or some Linux
distro.

In regards to release cycles.  It depends on how you
look at OFBiz.  Sure you could create releases based
on just the framework without a problem.  But I
imagine you're expecting one that encapsulates all of
the features of SVN.  OFBiz is almost in reality about
8 or 9 software programs.  To coordinate all of those
programs into a release that's stable enough to keep
people from getting annoyed with some of the bugs that
exist would be an accomplishment that would be
difficult for a community the size of the Mozilla
project, much less the size of the OFBiz community.
Not to mention, it would stifle the growth of those 8
or 9 apps.

OFBiz in it's current state is many many lines of code
(David, do you have a recent number?).  And even as it
reuses more and more code every day, it's still full
of redundant code.  Until that is taken care of (which
is A LOT of work) upgrades are prohibitively difficult
especially when keeping in mind backwards
compatibility.

Anyway Adrian, if you're having any trouble with
getting OFBiz to do what you're wanting, please ask
away.  The strange thing that happens with Open Source
software is that all of these little customizations
people make don't get contributed back to the
community because the author of the customization
didn't think it was useful for anyone else.  When you
ask questions about things that you find difficult
someone might respond with their customization and
make everyone's life easier.

P.S.  Not to detract from my reply, but what right do
you have to question anyone's involvement in any
company or organization?  Nobody owes you or any of us
anything.  If David wanted to, he could close up OFBiz
today and the only thing you'd have any right to is
the last SVN that you or someone else checked out.
Make revision 6474 proprietary and shut down the SVN.
Be a little grateful that people are willing to share
their hard work with you.
==================Adrian Grealish wrote:

I understand, sorry didn't mean to be so biting...or
start a flame war

I'm still a great supporter of ofbiz, I'm just looking
from a different
angle.

Having real world release cycles brings out real world
issues when running
Ofbiz in production. Things that can't be fixed when
you're in dev cycle for
so long with no real ship date.These issues would get
fixed and put back
into the main line for release if the user knew the
next release was coming.
otherwise you get the custom versions running and not
willing to contribute
their fixes because it gives a competitive advantage.

It's a good framework but it could be great if you
have regular releases
that were production ready with upgrade features.

If not then I'm well within my rights to raises
questions about the purpose
of your involement with undersun consulting.

what about test infrastructure? is there a complete or
plans to have a
complete suite of tests that ensure the platform is
running? the demo app
should be the basis for this. it should be a
requirement to have a test
suite with every feature checked in.

All things I'm sure you're aware of but if you don't
want to be completely
wiped off the map when google/amazon release their
platform that is easy to
use and upgradable then this project will die.


Adrian


>From: "David E. Jones" <jonesde at ofbiz.org>
>Reply-To: OFBiz Users / Usage Discussion <users at
lists.ofbiz.org>
>To: OFBiz Users / Usage Discussion <users at
lists.ofbiz.org>
>Subject: Re: [OFBiz] Users - SSL Setup
>Date: Fri, 6 Jan 2006 14:21:14 -0700
>
>
>On Jan 6, 2006, at 12:22 PM, Adrian Grealish wrote:
>
>>When are you planning a new release? not for the
consulting arm for  the
>>open source community remember collaboration is the
way to  success?
>
>You are correct that collaboration is the way to
success, but it is  not
>true that official releases increase collaboration.
In fact, they  _reduce_
>collaboration. OFBiz is still maturing and the
limited  resources are
>dedicated to development and maintenance of the
software by various groups
>with various different, but all  overlapping,
priorities.
>
>The point of the Sequoia project that Si Chen has put
together is to  have
>a community that is more dedicated to maintaining
point releases  with bug
>fixes and what not done there and back-patched from
the open  source
>project. That's the idea anyway...
>
>For OFBiz the only real purpose for a release is:
marketing! Users of  
>OFBiz who take a release instead of keeping up to
date during their  
>development process CAN NOT effectively collaborate
with the  community or
>contribute to the project. They are using older code
and  not updating to
>get work that others do nor can they base their
changes on the latest
>stuff, so it's just impossible to collaborate.  They
can sometimes
>contribute, but generally not as effectively,
depending on what it is and
>how much it has changed since the date of  the
revision they are using.
>
>So, releases aren't a big priority for OFBiz right
now. The project  has
>gone, and to some extent is still going, through some
MAJOR  additions and
>until these settle down it doesn't make much sense
and  isn't easy or cheap
>to do a release (including the necessary testing  and
bug fixing, related
>marketing artifacts for new features and
announcements and what not, and
>so on). Creating a binary is easy,  that's not the
issue, but just a binary
>isn't a very valuable release  and is guaranteed to
have more problems than
>we'd like and so it does  more _harm_ than good...
>
>We are working on becoming an Apache project, though
I don't know if  that
>will go through or not. If it does we will most
likely do a  release in a
>few months to push things along there, and mostly for
 marketing purposes
>to help new people interested in the project get  an
idea of what's up. If
>they are doing development though and  customizing
OFBiz we will still
>encourage groups/people to NOT use  the releases, but
rather to keep up
>with SVN until they are ready to  start their
pre-production integration
>and user level testing.
>
>>Why can't a user search the mailing lists? I tried
codecomments.com  but
>>their search doesn't work either.
>
>This simply isn't up yet after the mailing list move
though it will  be up
>in the future.
>
>As with all things: if it is important enough to you
to do something  about
>it, then do so! That is how every single little
detail in OFBiz  is
>handled...
>
>-David
 
_______________________________________________
Users mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/users

[Jacques Le Roux]

OK, (well) done ;o)

Thanks Chris !

Jacques

----- Original Message -----
From: "Chris Howe" <[hidden email]>
To: <[hidden email]>
Sent: Saturday, January 07, 2006 5:18 AM
Subject: [OFBiz] Users - SSL Setup

> Adrian,
>
> I think there are at least a couple of things that you
> don't understand about OFBIZ specifically, and Open
> Source and Enterprise Resource Planning Software
> generally.
>
> While there may be several companies attempting to
> profit (ie earn a living) off of the Open for Business
> software, they're not attempting (at least as far as I
> can tell) to become to ecommerce what pick and shovel
> barrons were to the gold rush.  So called
> "competition" from the likes of Google and Amazon
> don't affect OFBiz. The companies set up around OFBiz
> offer consulting services.  Why are consulting
> services even necessary?  Because enterprise resource
> planning is hard stuff.  The principles themselves are
> dificult for humans to keep in order even with our
> fine tuned heuristic behaviors that can focus on the
> important and ignore the unimportant.  Much less try
> to make a computer duplicate these behaviors.  In
> addition, EVERY company is different and no cookie
> cutter solution will effectively work for any two
> companies.  
>
> Customized versions of OFBiz are great.  The thing is
> with the exception of the few companies whose business
> model is based on customized versions, anyone that has
> been on this list that has created a customization
> that does anything significant has contributed back a
> generic version of it if possible (and even those
> companies whose business model is to make customized
> version have contributed back).  However, most
> customizations are of no benefit to anyone except the
> person or company that did the customization.
>
> While OFBIZ has an ecommerce application and an order
> app, etc built off of it (and that is certainly a draw
> for most of the community), at it's core is no longer
> intended to be ecommerce software.  The ease of
> writing code that manipulates a database is
> incredible.  Let me rephrase that.  The ease of
> writing code that manipulates the multitude of
> databases available as fungible data stores is
> incredible.  That is of course once your understand
> how OFBiz is written. The framework of OFBiz is just
> that a framework of tools.  
>
> Now to the point of Open Source software.  If you're a
> fan of economics explanations, Open Source only exists
> (created, grown and maintained) because proprietary
> solutions are either inept or prohibitively expensive.
>  Enterprise Resource Planning just happens to be both.
>  If Google or Amazon or anyone else could create a
> platform that made it any easier and more sufficient
> than OFBiz, everyone on this list with the exception
> perhaps of David and Andy (because of all of the
> blood, sweat, and tears they've poured into the
> project) would abandon it for such a solution.  And if
> that happened, realistically no one should care.  It's
> as trivial as someone who only uses a computer to
> check email, browse the web and word process bickering
> over which is better, Windows, Mac OS or some Linux
> distro.
>
> In regards to release cycles.  It depends on how you
> look at OFBiz.  Sure you could create releases based
> on just the framework without a problem.  But I
> imagine you're expecting one that encapsulates all of
> the features of SVN.  OFBiz is almost in reality about
> 8 or 9 software programs.  To coordinate all of those
> programs into a release that's stable enough to keep
> people from getting annoyed with some of the bugs that
> exist would be an accomplishment that would be
> difficult for a community the size of the Mozilla
> project, much less the size of the OFBiz community.
> Not to mention, it would stifle the growth of those 8
> or 9 apps.
>
> OFBiz in it's current state is many many lines of code
> (David, do you have a recent number?).  And even as it
> reuses more and more code every day, it's still full
> of redundant code.  Until that is taken care of (which
> is A LOT of work) upgrades are prohibitively difficult
> especially when keeping in mind backwards
> compatibility.
>
> Anyway Adrian, if you're having any trouble with
> getting OFBiz to do what you're wanting, please ask
> away.  The strange thing that happens with Open Source
> software is that all of these little customizations
> people make don't get contributed back to the
> community because the author of the customization
> didn't think it was useful for anyone else.  When you
> ask questions about things that you find difficult
> someone might respond with their customization and
> make everyone's life easier.
>
> P.S.  Not to detract from my reply, but what right do
> you have to question anyone's involvement in any
> company or organization?  Nobody owes you or any of us
> anything.  If David wanted to, he could close up OFBiz
> today and the only thing you'd have any right to is
> the last SVN that you or someone else checked out.
> Make revision 6474 proprietary and shut down the SVN.
> Be a little grateful that people are willing to share
> their hard work with you.
> ==================Adrian Grealish wrote:
>
> I understand, sorry didn't mean to be so biting...or
> start a flame war
>
> I'm still a great supporter of ofbiz, I'm just looking
> from a different
> angle.
>
> Having real world release cycles brings out real world
> issues when running
> Ofbiz in production. Things that can't be fixed when
> you're in dev cycle for
> so long with no real ship date.These issues would get
> fixed and put back
> into the main line for release if the user knew the
> next release was coming.
> otherwise you get the custom versions running and not
> willing to contribute
> their fixes because it gives a competitive advantage.
>
> It's a good framework but it could be great if you
> have regular releases
> that were production ready with upgrade features.
>
> If not then I'm well within my rights to raises
> questions about the purpose
> of your involement with undersun consulting.
>
> what about test infrastructure? is there a complete or
> plans to have a
> complete suite of tests that ensure the platform is
> running? the demo app
> should be the basis for this. it should be a
> requirement to have a test
> suite with every feature checked in.
>
> All things I'm sure you're aware of but if you don't
> want to be completely
> wiped off the map when google/amazon release their
> platform that is easy to
> use and upgradable then this project will die.
>
>
> Adrian
>
>
> >From: "David E. Jones" <jonesde at ofbiz.org>
> >Reply-To: OFBiz Users / Usage Discussion <users at
> lists.ofbiz.org>
> >To: OFBiz Users / Usage Discussion <users at
> lists.ofbiz.org>
> >Subject: Re: [OFBiz] Users - SSL Setup
> >Date: Fri, 6 Jan 2006 14:21:14 -0700
> >
> >
> >On Jan 6, 2006, at 12:22 PM, Adrian Grealish wrote:
> >
> >>When are you planning a new release? not for the
> consulting arm for  the
> >>open source community remember collaboration is the
> way to  success?
> >
> >You are correct that collaboration is the way to
> success, but it is  not
> >true that official releases increase collaboration.
> In fact, they  _reduce_
> >collaboration. OFBiz is still maturing and the
> limited  resources are
> >dedicated to development and maintenance of the
> software by various groups
> >with various different, but all  overlapping,
> priorities.
> >
> >The point of the Sequoia project that Si Chen has put
> together is to  have
> >a community that is more dedicated to maintaining
> point releases  with bug
> >fixes and what not done there and back-patched from
> the open  source
> >project. That's the idea anyway...
> >
> >For OFBiz the only real purpose for a release is:
> marketing! Users of  
> >OFBiz who take a release instead of keeping up to
> date during their  
> >development process CAN NOT effectively collaborate
> with the  community or
> >contribute to the project. They are using older code
> and  not updating to
> >get work that others do nor can they base their
> changes on the latest
> >stuff, so it's just impossible to collaborate.  They
> can sometimes
> >contribute, but generally not as effectively,
> depending on what it is and
> >how much it has changed since the date of  the
> revision they are using.
> >
> >So, releases aren't a big priority for OFBiz right
> now. The project  has
> >gone, and to some extent is still going, through some
> MAJOR  additions and
> >until these settle down it doesn't make much sense
> and  isn't easy or cheap
> >to do a release (including the necessary testing  and
> bug fixing, related
> >marketing artifacts for new features and
> announcements and what not, and
> >so on). Creating a binary is easy,  that's not the
> issue, but just a binary
> >isn't a very valuable release  and is guaranteed to
> have more problems than
> >we'd like and so it does  more _harm_ than good...
> >
> >We are working on becoming an Apache project, though
> I don't know if  that
> >will go through or not. If it does we will most
> likely do a  release in a
> >few months to push things along there, and mostly for
>  marketing purposes
> >to help new people interested in the project get  an
> idea of what's up. If
> >they are doing development though and  customizing
> OFBiz we will still
> >encourage groups/people to NOT use  the releases, but
> rather to keep up
> >with SVN until they are ready to  start their
> pre-production integration
> >and user level testing.
> >
> >>Why can't a user search the mailing lists? I tried
> codecomments.com  but
> >>their search doesn't work either.
> >
> >This simply isn't up yet after the mailing list move
> though it will  be up
> >in the future.
> >
> >As with all things: if it is important enough to you
> to do something  about
> >it, then do so! That is how every single little
> detail in OFBiz  is
> >handled...
> >
> >-David
>  
> _______________________________________________
> Users mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/users

 
_______________________________________________
Users mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/users