On Nov 18, 2008, at 3:34 AM, Markus Studer wrote:
This document has been around for a while, but pretty clearly
describes options available and which to take when:
http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/OFBADMIN/Apache+OFBiz+Getting+Started
yes, that document was the base for our decisions.
This is a problem that goes back to the beginning of OFBiz, and is
fairly unique to community-driven enterprise software. You won't see
the same issue with "commercial open source" like SugarCRM or
Compiere or OpenBravo or the like, because they develop using a
commercial model, and not an open source model.
yes, and I clearly prefer the community-driven approach. Just wanted
to
give you an idea why it is difficult (with limited ressources) for
us to
contribute back when all the work we do is based on older code (and
giving things back is what community driven software is all about).
Yeah, understood. That's the reason for the recommendation to use the
trunk and stick with the community. Otherwise, you're going it alone.
With small resources it's difficult, and while larger numbers of
resources help in a way, they seem to just result in more distance
from the trunk which makes it more expensive (and less likely) to get
back in-sync with the community.
Regardless of the number of resources, it just has to become a way of
working, and it works well for teams small and large. Based on
experiences with dozens of clients over the last seven years the
pattern could not be more clear. Those that update frequently and
stick with the community have a much better experience and far fewer
issues than those that "go it alone". It's really that simple.
The same is true for release branches too, you're just dealing with a
smaller community and less changes. For customization efforts this
isn't so great though because new features can't go into a release
branch, so for those you're stuck and on your own since the main body
of the community has moved on.
It's a tough situation any way you look at it. If you want new
features, and you want to collaborate with others, then the only real
option is to use the trunk and stay up to date (at least during
development cycles, and during pre-production testing periods you
would stop updating temporarily).
That's the only solution I've seen that works, and with a little
explanation I've found that clients really go for it and at Hotwax
we've actually won many contracts over other service providers because
we do that as a general practice and are so involved with the
community (ie we don't "go it alone").
-David
