[Erp5-users] Project management style (was: What companies provide Erp5 Technical Support since Nexedi doesn't?)

[MLO]

Bartek,


Your comments regarding the "Nexedi controlled Erp5" is the reason why I
cant depend upon it.  Nexedi's actions/inactions exemplifies mistrust!

Now, this does not preclude any other individual/entity forking Erp5 :)

Let see what the future holds, or if Nexedi will ever change.

Hope springs eternal on BOTH FRONTS!

Sincerely,



On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 4:29 AM, bartek <bartek at gorny.edu.pl> wrote:

> On Sun, 16 Jan 2011 23:45:34 +0100
> jp at nexedi.com wrote:
>
> > Hi,
> >
> > Here are some replies and some informations.
> >
> > > around ERP5, community support is next to none, community
> > > contribution is next to none (as even Nicolas pointed out while
> > > talking about wiki).
> >
> > Significant community contributions were made outside Nexedi :
> > - cloudooo document conversion server
> > - complete translations of ERP5 in portuguese
> > - Petri-net based modeling of NEO distributed storage
> > (http://www.neoppod.org/)
> > - Various accounting plans and localisations business templates
> > - ERP5 eGov, e-government system
> > - Audio and Video support in ERP5
> > - raskon buildout and wiki pages
> >
> > Community support :
> > - Nexedi replies to questions to mailing list (for example, to you
> > last year, for a significant issue you raised)
>
> This is not a community support - a community support is a support done
> by a community. Community is something which is not Nexedi.
>
> > - Nexedi provides for free TioLive Grid to simplify initial ERP5
> > configuration (this saves many hours)
> > - raskon & friends supports users of raskon buildout and raskon wiki
> > pages
>
> (sigh) Funny you should now use Boris and myself to prove to me that
> there is a community :D Let me just remind you about some cases:
>
>  - when Boris made Debian packages, you started making you own Debian
>   packages
>
>  - when people used raskon buildout, you repeatedly said on the ML
>   "please don't use that one, please use the official buildout, it is
>   the only reliable installation, you should use this one" etc etc.
>
>  - when Luke and me set up a handbook to provide an organised
>   documentation, the only thing you did was telling users not to use
>   it - you didn't use it, you didn't review it, zero collaboration.
>
>  - when I made erp5admin, which is being used by every erp5 developer I
>   know (including some within Nexedi), there was zero cooperation from
>   your side [1] - instead, you did erp5_development_bar "to replace
>   one day the erp5_admin extension"
>
> That's your "collaborative project". Now, try to prove Nexedi is happy
> about community initiatives...
>
> Of course you are going to tell me that there were lots of
> initiatives which you were very happy about it and which were
> successfully completed with your eager cooperation.The problem is,
> you can tell lots of stories like that. You can tell about gazillions of
> users somewhere, about "large companies and research institutes" which
> happily contribute, about extremely successful community initiatives, et
> ceatera. But all those things are invisible - there is no visible
> evidence any of these exists. All this is only your words. What we see
> is dead mailing lists and we-do-everything-ourselves attitude.
>
> To be precise: I know there are some companies which are your
> customers, and there probably are some research institutes which do
> some R&D paid for by EU grants. And there are people outside Nexedi
> which you subcontract do to certain things. But all this is private
> (non-public) and commercial, and has nothing to do with a real
> open-source community. It is only your private network of
> subcontractors which you manage, and nothing more. There is no visible
> sign of any community/open source activity taking place. Unless you can
> prove otherwise.
>
> >
> > I do not know if TioLive counts as community, but thousands of people
> > have received free support through TioLive.
>
> I know nothing about it. I use TioLive too. Some time ago I asked your
> "community manager" how can I contact other TioLive users. The answer
> was that I couldn't, because there was no mailing list and a forum was
> under construction. How, then, do TioLive users receive community
> support from other TioLive users?
>
> Bartek
>
> >
> > > This is clear for anyone who takes a look on the mailing list. The
> > > key
> >
> > Most community work happens for ERP5 outside the mailing list,
> > through personal interactions between people who know each other
> > quite well. This has the advantage to protect the trade secret of
> > certain large users of ERP5 and to minimize the effects of Philippe's
> > Law (the productivity of a software developer in a team of N people
> > is diminished by dividing it by the cube root of N). It has the
> > disadvantage that some people thus believe there is no community
> > although there is.
> >
> > > question is: is Nexedi happy about it, or not?
> >
> > Nexedi is happy that people outside Nexedi already made significant
> > contributions and would be happy to see more.
> >
> > To make sure this happens, Nexedi is sponsoring the "One Student One
> > ERP" (www.osoe-project.org) project in universities all over the
> > world. By training students to understand ERPs in general and get
> > some practice with ERP5, we expect to increase the number of people
> > capable to contribute in the long term to ERP5 and use it without
> > Nexedi's support. We also hope to raise the awareness of how tough
> > implementing an ERP can be for social reasons.
> >
> > > them by raising issues, asking questions, lobbying for tickets,
> >
> > Nexedi welcomes questions. Our resources are limited so it is not
> > possible to reply to all of them. But we try.
> >
> > > like. Recent change in the way documentation is managed - from wiki,
> > > to which some people (like me) did in their time contribute a lot -
> > > towards a closed documentation repository - seem to confirm it. But
> > > for
> >
> > The documentation management did not change unlike what you describe.
> > - developer howtos are hosted on the wiki (www.erp5.org) which
> > provides easy way to community to contribute
> > - end user documentation is hosted on erp5.com which provides a good
> > conversion engine for the tutorials
> >
> > Once erp5.com can provide the same level of contribution support as
> > moinmoin wiki, content will be moved to erp5.com. But not until it
> > can provide the same level of ease for community.
> >
> > > real "community project" (or even an open source project) because
> > > that is cheating people.
> >
> > ERP5 is a real community project. It meets all the criteria of a
> > community driven project as defined here:
> > http://almaer.com/blog/community-driven-open-source
> >
> > - committers from outside of Nexedi (ex. ERP5 eGov, Video)
> > - cleaning up documentation for the community (erp5.com documentation
> > index)
> > - users who have helped with the documentation (you for example,
> > people in Brazil)
> > - some kind of forums/lists where people help each other (this one
> > for example)
> > - a lot of effort to build your community to get true benefits (OSOE
> > project, training developers in Africa)
> >
> > Of course, we could always do more. But it would be unfair not to
> > recognize the efforts made and the progress towards more community in
> > recent years.
> >
> > > Otherwise - if you are not happy about it and would really like this
> > > project to have an active developer and user community - please
> > > state what you are going to do to make it happen. Open Source is
> > > truly not
> >
> > In order to progress further towards larger community, here is what
> > Nexedi is going to make happen:
> > - more OSOE (please help on this, please help a lot)
> > - publication of ERP5 roadmap
> > - publication of bug tracker by investing time of Nexedi staff to
> > cleanup bug reports from any sensitive information
> > - migration of ERP5 repository from subversion to a DVCS (git seems
> > to be the favoured one) so that more people can fork ERP5 and merging
> > later gets simplified
> > - migration of TioLive FAQ to erp5.com
> > - release of new applications based on ERP5 which do not require as
> > much knowledge of management and are easier  to grasp by developers
> > than a full ERP
> > - funding of joint R&D projects based on ERP5 (feel free to contact
> > me if your company is in EU, Russia, Korea, Israel, Swiss, Norway or
> > Brazil, there are some good things to do)
> >
> > I think it is also now a good time to define the purpose of ERP5
> > mailing lists:
> > - erp5-user to explain how to use the default configuration of ERP5,
> > ie. the one which is provided by TioLive through this bt5
> > (http://svn.erp5.org/erp5/trunk/bt5/erp5_configurator_standard/) by
> > improving documentation and howtos
> > - erp5-dev to explain how to develop with ERP5 by improving
> > documentation and howtos
> > - erp5-discussion for other topics (for example, this thread should
> > go there from now, so that users can help each other)
> >
> > This way, people interested in using ERP5 ask questions to erp5-user
> > and help improving the FAQ. Developers ask question to erp5-dev and
> > help improving erp5.org developer howtos. Nexedi can invest time on
> > both FAQs to help the community.
> >
> > > difficult to learn what it takes to make an OS project at least
> > > developer-friendly. This book: http://producingoss.com/ can be a
> > > good start.
> >
> > Karl Fogel provides one point of view on what is a community. There
> > are other point of views.
> >
> > The path chosen for ERP5 community, a path in which mailing list is
> > less important than friendly relations between an ever expanding
> > group of engineers in different companies and countries, has its own
> > merits which should not underestimated. What is happening in Brazil,
> > in Sénégal, in France and some more countries shows how important it
> > is to meet most people in person to convince them how ERPs and ERP5
> > can be useful. Without face to face meeting, people and especially
> > developers only see ERP5 as a development tool and often have no idea
> > how to use it to handle complex social organisations. Thanks to face
> > to face meeting, it is easier to transfer know how and underlying
> > philosophy of ERP5.
> >
> > About communities, I am very much interested in this article by Brian
> > Prentice:
> >
> http://blogs.gartner.com/brian_prentice/2009/11/03/open-source-business-apps-is-there-a-disconnect/
> >
> > The real issue to build a long term ERP5 community should be to bring
> > companies which already use ERP5 to collaborate on how they use ERP5,
> > how they could improve their business rather than keep in a situation
> > in which each company customizes ERP5 to their needs and does not try
> > to share knowledge. This is still an open issue because of the
> > conflicts with the notion of trade secret. Yet, I have good hopes to
> > find a path some day.
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > JP Smets.
> > Nexedi CEO
>
>
> [1] One commit from Jerome and one from Luke (not counting Luke's
> commits when he was not yet in Nexedi)
>
> --
> "Po co zaraz idealny stan? Czy nie lepiej, kiedy nikt nie może zrobić z
> nikogo abażura do lampy?" (Mec. Finkelstein, w: Stanisław Lem "Wizja
> Lokalna")
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