[Erp5-users] Help requested from developers, implementers, and end users....

[Tracy R Reed]

survey at trentend.com wrote:
> Just a quick thank you to the few people from the community who have  
> taken the time to
> fill in my survey. I think it's fair to say that the response has been  
> a little
> disappointing overall, but not entirely unexpected.

Disappointing in what way? Lack of response? I suspect because there is
hardly anyone who cares enough to respond.

I have been following erp5 for 3 years. But I have never implemented it.
Last I looked there were no decent docs. I just took another look and it
looks like that situation hasn't changed much. There are a bunch of one
or two page howto's on erp5.org but still no manual. The community
maintained "handbook" is probably the best thing there is and it is very
incomplete. Probably having something to do with a lack of community.

There is still nothing like a "Getting Started Guide" to explain the
general theory of ERP5 or ERP in general it seems. I am fairly
experienced with Zope and I would like to be able to implement ERP5 but
at this point cannot be comfortable with it. I should check out the
livecd again. A couple years ago I downloaded it and booted it. I
couldn't make it do anything useful. No docs, no examples, nothing. I
asked Nexedi about this and they explained that they can't make it do
much because their clients keep all of their business processes secret
so they cannot include them in a livecd. That was a big cop-out though.
It can't be that hard to implement a basic mom and pop store just as a
demo. I'm downloading it again now and hopefully it has improved.

I always got the impression that ERP5 was just barely open source. The
source is there and you can use/copy it but good luck getting started
with it. All roads lead to paying Nexedi money to help you learn or
implement it and from what I can tell this is by design. Most of the
questions here are answered by Nexedi: Jerome, Jean-Paul, Yoshinori,
etc. and few others because there is little reason for anyone to get
involved when the barrier to entry is so high. What good is an open
source ERP if you are still going to be beholden to one company to keep
your factory running?

I really wish it used the vastly more popular and mature Plone instead
of CPS (which is in the process of switching to Java) but I suspect that
is a religious (and perhaps local or national since CPS is French also)
issue and isn't nearly as important as the issue of documentation and
lack of community.

If I were going to do ERP for a company that needs full functionality
right now I would go with a proprietary system. If I could stand Java I
would use Compiere. If we only need miminal functionality and can afford
to add it on as we grow I would build my own with Plone and Archetypes
etc. and perhaps use MySQL in a similar way that ERP5 uses it if
performance for certain kinds of indexing if it became an issue. Last
year I worked for a company with 50 employees and a rather large
warehouse shipping and receiving thousands of packages of goods a day
and they wrote their own ERP in two years in Perl! Not nearly as fully
featured as ERP5 or one of the proprietary systems but it suited their
needs perfectly and cost them two employees salary for a year to
implement. A very good deal compared to the other options. Now they have
freedom and continue to reap the benefits.