http://ofbiz.116.s1.nabble.com/Users-JOB-SANDBOX-tp137182p137202.html
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>
> David E. Jones sent the following on 2/3/06 12:46 PM:
> >
> > 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
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> >
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