Re: Users - JOB _SANDBOX
Posted by David E. Jones on
URL: http://ofbiz.116.s1.nabble.com/Users-JOB-SANDBOX-tp137182p137190.html
On Feb 3, 2006, at 1:56 AM, Andrew Dupa wrote:
> Well I guess I'll just work it out by reading the code and looking
> at the data model. My question was I thought pretty straight
> forward, unfortunately people responded without thinking.
>
> I was hoping this community would be smart and intelligent enough
> to support end users but they are it seems completely lost in a
> world of never ending development which never brings out the real
> world issues. No release management, no testing framework no
> stability. Users who don't read questions but answer with the
> bleeding obvious.This, perhaps, comes from a misunderstanding of what OFBiz is. It is
clear that it isn't what you expected it to be, and that is the case
for many people who are used to purchasing a piece of software and
becoming a "user" of the software.
In a community-oriented open source project like OFBiz it only exists
because the community drives it. There is no company involved. No
investment from venture capitalists or angels and no bank loans or
anything (well, except maybe American Express and various other
credit card and home equity lenders during slower periods... ;) ).
That means that the dozens of people who contribute to the project on
a regular basis and the hundreds of people who use the software in
their jobs generally can't get involved, I mean really simply cannot
get involved, unless they find some work doing so. Andy and I
invested quite a bit early on in the project, but this is certainly
true of us. Neither of us (while I guess I'm not really sure about
Andy) have a net worth in the black and without money coming in from
consulting work, we'd be in trouble pretty quickly... Actually, it's
not so bad, if it weren't for my ex-wife I'd probably be working 1
week a month for pay, another week per month on the project, and then
spending the remaining time cruising the world on the BMW GS
adventure bike I've been craving for years...
Anyway, back to the point. OFBiz is a community driven project. We
all get along as we can and help move the forward as we can, and to
date ALL significant contributions to the project have been impelled
mostly by making things easier and cheaper in the future for those
involved. Lots of people have wanted to help, but it is just too much
to do as an amateur (unless you have no need for an income... but
even then without a project driving requirements and understanding,
it is hard to get your head around).
So, are there issues? Yeah. It sounds like you want to be involved
with the project as a casual user, and that's almost impossible with
OFBiz. If you aren't involved with the community and working
regularly with the project then you pretty much have to hire someone
who is involved with the community and has invested sufficiently to
be able to work well with it.
How is that different from major ERP packages? For them a "release"
is the same as for us, and they have the same problem with testing as
we do (ie the moving target problem). For them a "release" or a
standardized version is mostly just a sales and marketing tool. Once
these systems are customized (or "installed") out of the box testing
(except for low level components... maybe that's why we have entity
engine unit tests but not much else?) is not very useful, unless they
maintain the tests in parallel with the customizations. They will
also have various patches and changes that bring their system to a
state of being a creation like that of the good Dr. Frankenstein:
some of the "version" they think they have, some of the next version
(but not all), and a bunch of changes that they alone are responsible
for maintaining.
Eventually OFBiz may be more usable for those who want out of the box
use and no involvement whatsoever in the community, but it's not
there yet, and I've written that dozens of times (look at my blog,
the mailing lists, etc for all sorts of things along these lines).
Releases in OFBiz have historically just been marketing efforts. For
anyone doing customization it is a BAD BAD BAD idea to base it on a
release. That will effectively cut them off from interaction with the
community, and it will make it difficult to the point of "not worth
it" to contribute to the project. If everyone just used releases,
OFBiz would simply not exist.
So, I'll say it again: if you aren't involved with the community or
interested in becoming involved then hire someone that is or you'll
be in pain for a long while. It's like "installation" SAP without any
help... not many do that and if they do they hire people with
experience to work on it. There are dozens of service provider
companies all around the world, but don't expect most of them to
advertise much in the OFBiz world. Most of the live sites and other
deployments of OFBiz are sold by the service provider, only a few
companies survive based on the references that come through the open
source project....
Hopefully that's good enough for now... This sort of question comes
up a lot and I try to throw something like this out to the mailing
lists or somewhere every other month or so to make it easier to find.
-David
_______________________________________________
Users mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/users
URL: http://ofbiz.116.s1.nabble.com/Users-JOB-SANDBOX-tp137182p137190.html
On Feb 3, 2006, at 1:56 AM, Andrew Dupa wrote:
> Well I guess I'll just work it out by reading the code and looking
> at the data model. My question was I thought pretty straight
> forward, unfortunately people responded without thinking.
>
> I was hoping this community would be smart and intelligent enough
> to support end users but they are it seems completely lost in a
> world of never ending development which never brings out the real
> world issues. No release management, no testing framework no
> stability. Users who don't read questions but answer with the
> bleeding obvious.
clear that it isn't what you expected it to be, and that is the case
for many people who are used to purchasing a piece of software and
becoming a "user" of the software.
In a community-oriented open source project like OFBiz it only exists
because the community drives it. There is no company involved. No
investment from venture capitalists or angels and no bank loans or
anything (well, except maybe American Express and various other
credit card and home equity lenders during slower periods... ;) ).
That means that the dozens of people who contribute to the project on
a regular basis and the hundreds of people who use the software in
their jobs generally can't get involved, I mean really simply cannot
get involved, unless they find some work doing so. Andy and I
invested quite a bit early on in the project, but this is certainly
true of us. Neither of us (while I guess I'm not really sure about
Andy) have a net worth in the black and without money coming in from
consulting work, we'd be in trouble pretty quickly... Actually, it's
not so bad, if it weren't for my ex-wife I'd probably be working 1
week a month for pay, another week per month on the project, and then
spending the remaining time cruising the world on the BMW GS
adventure bike I've been craving for years...
Anyway, back to the point. OFBiz is a community driven project. We
all get along as we can and help move the forward as we can, and to
date ALL significant contributions to the project have been impelled
mostly by making things easier and cheaper in the future for those
involved. Lots of people have wanted to help, but it is just too much
to do as an amateur (unless you have no need for an income... but
even then without a project driving requirements and understanding,
it is hard to get your head around).
So, are there issues? Yeah. It sounds like you want to be involved
with the project as a casual user, and that's almost impossible with
OFBiz. If you aren't involved with the community and working
regularly with the project then you pretty much have to hire someone
who is involved with the community and has invested sufficiently to
be able to work well with it.
How is that different from major ERP packages? For them a "release"
is the same as for us, and they have the same problem with testing as
we do (ie the moving target problem). For them a "release" or a
standardized version is mostly just a sales and marketing tool. Once
these systems are customized (or "installed") out of the box testing
(except for low level components... maybe that's why we have entity
engine unit tests but not much else?) is not very useful, unless they
maintain the tests in parallel with the customizations. They will
also have various patches and changes that bring their system to a
state of being a creation like that of the good Dr. Frankenstein:
some of the "version" they think they have, some of the next version
(but not all), and a bunch of changes that they alone are responsible
for maintaining.
Eventually OFBiz may be more usable for those who want out of the box
use and no involvement whatsoever in the community, but it's not
there yet, and I've written that dozens of times (look at my blog,
the mailing lists, etc for all sorts of things along these lines).
Releases in OFBiz have historically just been marketing efforts. For
anyone doing customization it is a BAD BAD BAD idea to base it on a
release. That will effectively cut them off from interaction with the
community, and it will make it difficult to the point of "not worth
it" to contribute to the project. If everyone just used releases,
OFBiz would simply not exist.
So, I'll say it again: if you aren't involved with the community or
interested in becoming involved then hire someone that is or you'll
be in pain for a long while. It's like "installation" SAP without any
help... not many do that and if they do they hire people with
experience to work on it. There are dozens of service provider
companies all around the world, but don't expect most of them to
advertise much in the OFBiz world. Most of the live sites and other
deployments of OFBiz are sold by the service provider, only a few
companies survive based on the references that come through the open
source project....
Hopefully that's good enough for now... This sort of question comes
up a lot and I try to throw something like this out to the mailing
lists or somewhere every other month or so to make it easier to find.
-David
_______________________________________________
Users mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/users
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