Who uses OFBiz?

[Chloé Desoutter]

Hello,

We're a F/OSS company looking at what exists in the ERP sector. We have
internal needs and we have business development needs.

We have been using OpenERP for a while but are quite dissatisfied with
several points :

- Its database schemas are just unreadable w/o the app, so we are bound
to using its web services only and cannot migrate data without writing
magic glue code.
- They have a policy of nagging for registration that displeases us a
lot : end users don't need to see a Piracy-warning-like message on F/OSS.
- It's so tightly bound to the database that it's not possible to
migrate it to another way of storing the data.
- It's not "real Open Source" as it is an Affero GPL product. This means
that whatever we do will eventually be owned by the central company.

OFBiz is at the opposite of these points : its DB schemas are based on
standards, it doesn't have a central authority that wants your money,
it's licensed under a permissive license, and it can already manage to
live in lots of database.

But we need to know who uses OFbiz and how? Who can we make new business
with? Who already makes business with it? Is there room for new experts?

The documentation is scarce and except if we buy books online (written
for outdated versions) it will be a guessing game to know what it is.

Where can we get the fresh news and status of the project?

Yours sincerely

--
Chloé Desoutter
C[A-Z]O, Atasta NET

[Malin Nicolas]

Hello Chloé,
Thanks for your feedback.

You have an official list here
https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OFBIZ/Apache+OFBiz+User+List.

For the documentation, a contributor group work on refresh it.

Currently, at Nereide we deploy OFBiz on international trade projet. If
you want you can contact me directly in french.

Have a nice days,

Nicolas



Le 03/09/2014 09:33, Chloé Desoutter a écrit :

> Hello,
>
> We're a F/OSS company looking at what exists in the ERP sector. We
> have internal needs and we have business development needs.
>
> We have been using OpenERP for a while but are quite dissatisfied with
> several points :
>
> - Its database schemas are just unreadable w/o the app, so we are
> bound to using its web services only and cannot migrate data without
> writing magic glue code.
> - They have a policy of nagging for registration that displeases us a
> lot : end users don't need to see a Piracy-warning-like message on F/OSS.
> - It's so tightly bound to the database that it's not possible to
> migrate it to another way of storing the data.
> - It's not "real Open Source" as it is an Affero GPL product. This
> means that whatever we do will eventually be owned by the central
> company.
>
> OFBiz is at the opposite of these points : its DB schemas are based on
> standards, it doesn't have a central authority that wants your money,
> it's licensed under a permissive license, and it can already manage to
> live in lots of database.
>
> But we need to know who uses OFbiz and how? Who can we make new
> business with? Who already makes business with it? Is there room for
> new experts?
>
> The documentation is scarce and except if we buy books online (written
> for outdated versions) it will be a guessing game to know what it is.
>
> Where can we get the fresh news and status of the project?
>
> Yours sincerely
>

[taher]

Hi Chloé,

We started a company with OFBiz being one of the main components in our
value proposition. We compared OFBiz at length with OpenERP and we
understand your frustration with their sort of restrictive management of
the project which was a big turn-off for us as well. I can highlight the
differences as follows:

OFBiz pros:
- Excellent domain model as you mentioned based on a very well thought book
by Len Silverston
- Easy to quickly dive under the hood. The code is just accessible and
understandable.
- Design is well thought, flexible, and independent of programming
languages and operating systems (just a JVM framework). Python is a
beautiful language but it cannot act as a full operating environment like
the JVM does.
- Robust, solid and battle-tested.
- Real open community and by observing their work I would very smart people
too!

OFBiz cons:
- The user interface is just ugly in comparison with OpenERP. You can
overcome that by working for a while on themes and getting your CSS
resources right.
- Steep learning curve (at least for me) .. it took me a while before I got
comfortable with the framework.
- I would not say documentation for OFBiz is scarce, but rather scattered.
It's not well organized into one nice document that comes bundled with each
release for example. You have to dig in between the wiki, the JIRAs, other
websites and derivative projects. I found a lot of material, but it just
took me a while to find it.

If we had to redo the exercise after what we learned we would still choose
OFBiz hands down, but the learning curve is still an issue.

My 2 cents if it helps

Taher Alkhateeb


On Wed, Sep 3, 2014 at 10:55 AM, Nicolas Malin <
[hidden email]> wrote:

> Hello Chloé,
> Thanks for your feedback.
>
> You have an official list here https://cwiki.apache.org/
> confluence/display/OFBIZ/Apache+OFBiz+User+List.
>
> For the documentation, a contributor group work on refresh it.
>
> Currently, at Nereide we deploy OFBiz on international trade projet. If
> you want you can contact me directly in french.
>
> Have a nice days,
>
> Nicolas
>
>
>
> Le 03/09/2014 09:33, Chloé Desoutter a écrit :
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> We're a F/OSS company looking at what exists in the ERP sector. We
>> have internal needs and we have business development needs.
>>
>> We have been using OpenERP for a while but are quite dissatisfied with
>> several points :
>>
>> - Its database schemas are just unreadable w/o the app, so we are
>> bound to using its web services only and cannot migrate data without
>> writing magic glue code.
>> - They have a policy of nagging for registration that displeases us a
>> lot : end users don't need to see a Piracy-warning-like message on F/OSS.
>> - It's so tightly bound to the database that it's not possible to
>> migrate it to another way of storing the data.
>> - It's not "real Open Source" as it is an Affero GPL product. This
>> means that whatever we do will eventually be owned by the central
>> company.
>>
>> OFBiz is at the opposite of these points : its DB schemas are based on
>> standards, it doesn't have a central authority that wants your money,
>> it's licensed under a permissive license, and it can already manage to
>> live in lots of database.
>>
>> But we need to know who uses OFbiz and how? Who can we make new
>> business with? Who already makes business with it? Is there room for
>> new experts?
>>
>> The documentation is scarce and except if we buy books online (written
>> for outdated versions) it will be a guessing game to know what it is.
>>
>> Where can we get the fresh news and status of the project?
>>
>> Yours sincerely
>>
>>
>

[Jacques Le Roux]

Le 03/09/2014 09:33, Chloé Desoutter a écrit :

> Hello,
>
> We're a F/OSS company looking at what exists in the ERP sector. We have internal needs and we have business development needs.
>
> We have been using OpenERP for a while but are quite dissatisfied with several points :
>
> - Its database schemas are just unreadable w/o the app, so we are bound to using its web services only and cannot migrate data without writing magic
> glue code.
> - They have a policy of nagging for registration that displeases us a lot : end users don't need to see a Piracy-warning-like message on F/OSS.
> - It's so tightly bound to the database that it's not possible to migrate it to another way of storing the data.
> - It's not "real Open Source" as it is an Affero GPL product. This means that whatever we do will eventually be owned by the central company.
>
> OFBiz is at the opposite of these points : its DB schemas are based on standards, it doesn't have a central authority that wants your money, it's
> licensed under a permissive license, and it can already manage to live in lots of database.

Your are the first to ask this question, and I'm not surprised by your totally right analysis.
I'm more surprised that your are the first reporting this after so long years.
This shows that we have still a long road promoting OFBiz.

>
> But we need to know who uses OFbiz and how? Who can we make new business with? Who already makes business with it? Is there room for new experts?

A lot of people and companies are earning a living with OFBiz and there are still a lot of opportunities.
OFBiz is used by small as international companies in diverse domains. One of the 1st then not so big company was Atlassian, which still uses the OFBiz
Entity Engine in Jira. Jira made them what they are now.
The more the size of community  increases the more places for OFBiz new experts increase.
We are still small and there are plenty of places to take out there, long life to OFBiz!

>
> The documentation is scarce and except if we buy books online (written for outdated versions) it will be a guessing game to know what it is.

There is only one "outdated" book (the beginner's tutorla), and as explained at
https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OFBADMIN/OFBiz+Related+Books it's still relevant because for most parts the architecture did not change
since. Of course, underneath few things changed, but you can see this book as an interface to learn how to use OFBiz, even if the implementation has
sometimes changed. We care for our users, not only but also because we are among those users...

>
> Where can we get the fresh news and status of the project?

We maintained this page until December 2013 https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OFBIZ/Main+New+Features
It's now automated with Jira at explained in the Deprecated warning at the top of this page

Jacques

>
> Yours sincerely
>

[Jacques Le Roux]

Le 03/09/2014 10:58, Taher Alkhateeb a écrit :

> Hi Chloé,
>
> We started a company with OFBiz being one of the main components in our
> value proposition. We compared OFBiz at length with OpenERP and we
> understand your frustration with their sort of restrictive management of
> the project which was a big turn-off for us as well. I can highlight the
> differences as follows:
>
> OFBiz pros:
> - Excellent domain model as you mentioned based on a very well thought book
> by Len Silverston
> - Easy to quickly dive under the hood. The code is just accessible and
> understandable.
> - Design is well thought, flexible, and independent of programming
> languages and operating systems (just a JVM framework). Python is a
> beautiful language but it cannot act as a full operating environment like
> the JVM does.
> - Robust, solid and battle-tested.
> - Real open community and by observing their work I would very smart people
> too!
>
> OFBiz cons:
> - The user interface is just ugly in comparison with OpenERP. You can
> overcome that by working for a while on themes and getting your CSS
> resources right.
> - Steep learning curve (at least for me) .. it took me a while before I got
> comfortable with the framework.
> - I would not say documentation for OFBiz is scarce, but rather scattered.
> It's not well organized into one nice document that comes bundled with each
> release for example. You have to dig in between the wiki, the JIRAs, other
> websites and derivative projects. I found a lot of material, but it just
> took me a while to find it.
>
> If we had to redo the exercise after what we learned we would still choose
> OFBiz hands down, but the learning curve is still an issue.

Thanks  Taher,
it's now a week I boil waiting to grab enough continuous time with a fresh mind to help Ron and Sharan. They are refactoring the wiki to improve not
only the content of the documentation but also its organisation which we all agree is bad.
Then you (I) find that creating, and especially organising, a documentation for a tool like OFBiz is not as easy as reviewing a couple of patches and
commit them (at least it's quite different). I guess, one of the reasons, we are in this situation.

Jacques

>
> My 2 cents if it helps
>
> Taher Alkhateeb
>
>
> On Wed, Sep 3, 2014 at 10:55 AM, Nicolas Malin <
> [hidden email]> wrote:
>
>> Hello Chloé,
>> Thanks for your feedback.
>>
>> You have an official list here https://cwiki.apache.org/
>> confluence/display/OFBIZ/Apache+OFBiz+User+List.
>>
>> For the documentation, a contributor group work on refresh it.
>>
>> Currently, at Nereide we deploy OFBiz on international trade projet. If
>> you want you can contact me directly in french.
>>
>> Have a nice days,
>>
>> Nicolas
>>
>>
>>
>> Le 03/09/2014 09:33, Chloé Desoutter a écrit :
>>
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>> We're a F/OSS company looking at what exists in the ERP sector. We
>>> have internal needs and we have business development needs.
>>>
>>> We have been using OpenERP for a while but are quite dissatisfied with
>>> several points :
>>>
>>> - Its database schemas are just unreadable w/o the app, so we are
>>> bound to using its web services only and cannot migrate data without
>>> writing magic glue code.
>>> - They have a policy of nagging for registration that displeases us a
>>> lot : end users don't need to see a Piracy-warning-like message on F/OSS.
>>> - It's so tightly bound to the database that it's not possible to
>>> migrate it to another way of storing the data.
>>> - It's not "real Open Source" as it is an Affero GPL product. This
>>> means that whatever we do will eventually be owned by the central
>>> company.
>>>
>>> OFBiz is at the opposite of these points : its DB schemas are based on
>>> standards, it doesn't have a central authority that wants your money,
>>> it's licensed under a permissive license, and it can already manage to
>>> live in lots of database.
>>>
>>> But we need to know who uses OFbiz and how? Who can we make new
>>> business with? Who already makes business with it? Is there room for
>>> new experts?
>>>
>>> The documentation is scarce and except if we buy books online (written
>>> for outdated versions) it will be a guessing game to know what it is.
>>>
>>> Where can we get the fresh news and status of the project?
>>>
>>> Yours sincerely
>>>
>>>

As anew developer to Ofbiz I think it could be better, but many folks have lots of great docs.
I was able to get working tutorials that show and example many of the techniques.
I did invest like 500.00 in books after the fact. I would recomend anyone wanting to do what I am doing (modify ofbiz for their own project) to buy the books first as some of them help significantly.
I am used to working in different technologies, but I am still struggling with the many technologies.
I found I like the ftl and groovy, but as I am modifying many screens already done I end up many times with widgets in XML. Overall the experience has been very positive. I highly recommend ofbiz. I can see why there are so many adopters. I have  been able to get it to do exactly what I need, and thus far I have not written any of the core services, so it is extremely flexible. Took me like 2 months to get a few screens done. I am in month 3 and have like 8 out of 10 screens done for our project (inventory for a POS). This list is a great resource, and there are several other sites (hotwax etc).

[Ron Wheeler]

Great comments.
Any specific things that you now feel would have helped you at the start?
Any areas of the wiki that you found really helpful or that could be
improved?

Ron

On 04/09/2014 8:47 AM, [hidden email] wrote:

> As anew developer to Ofbiz I think it could be better, but many folks have
> lots of great docs.
> I was able to get working tutorials that show and example many of the
> techniques.
> I did invest like 500.00 in books after the fact. I would recomend anyone
> wanting to do what I am doing (modify ofbiz for their own project) to buy
> the books first as some of them help significantly.
> I am used to working in different technologies, but I am still struggling
> with the many technologies.
> I found I like the ftl and groovy, but as I am modifying many screens
> already done I end up many times with widgets in XML. Overall the experience
> has been very positive. I highly recommend ofbiz. I can see why there are so
> many adopters. I have  been able to get it to do exactly what I need, and
> thus far I have not written any of the core services, so it is extremely
> flexible. Took me like 2 months to get a few screens done. I am in month 3
> and have like 8 out of 10 screens done for our project (inventory for a
> POS). This list is a great resource, and there are several other sites
> (hotwax etc).
>
>
>
> -----
> Joel Fradkin
> --
> View this message in context: http://ofbiz.135035.n4.nabble.com/Who-uses-OFBiz-tp4654748p4654835.html
> Sent from the OFBiz - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>

--
Ron Wheeler
President
Artifact Software Inc
email: [hidden email]
skype: ronaldmwheeler
phone: [phone], ext 102