We do see some great Ideas around what is needed. There was lot of conversation on this topic in ApacheCon 2008 and then in 2009 (based on messages on list).
You will be surprised there is lot done. We have seen lot of activity in documenting business processes and end user documentation. More recently David proposed a simple system derived from Ofbiz that will address needs of small business. We have lot more Ofbiz technical contributors then Business process knowledge contributors. It will be really nice if people in this part of community will step up. It will be nice if business users or power business users who are technical developers as well started to take part of requirement documents and add to UBPL or EZBIZ effort. If users can document their business processes needs, give some wireframe help then technical developers will be able to help map them to OOTB features (Gap Analysis). Unless we get real business requirements documents coming from user community there is no way for us to fulfill them. I hope you understand I am not asking anybody to break NDA or whatever. Thanks and Regards Anil Patel HotWax Media Inc Find us on the web at www.hotwaxmedia.com or Google Keyword "ofbiz" On Dec 6, 2009, at 8:22 PM, Cimballi wrote: > Hi devs, > > Here my opinion about the subject. > To make things clear, it makes about 3-4 month I am working with > OFBiz, using it to implement a project. > > I thing one way to have more people involved in the project is to > lower the "difficulty level" required to understand OFBiz. > > And for this there are several possbilities, and I will focus on two : > - modularize the project > - more functional documentation inside the source files > > Modularize the project > > I've seen this subject has already been discussed and I think it can > profit to the project in several points : > - more modules means less code in each module, which means modules are > eaiser to understand, which means more developer may be interesting to > participate to its development, test, ... There is at least one > obvious module which could be very interesting to externalize, it's > the entity engine. I don't know so much OFBiz architecture but I think > it should be possible to externalize this module and a lot of projects > totally different of OFBiz could be interesting in it, and so > potentially a lot more developers to maintain and enhance it. > - on another side, more modules would also make it easier to > distribute the issues, each developer specialized on a specific > module. Maybe it's already the case... > > More functional documentation inside the source files > > Here my feeling is that with OFBiz, you really requires both technical > and functional knowledge to understand how the project work. Some part > like the entity engine are purely technical, but the order module for > example is really functional, I mean, you need to know a lot about how > ordering works in a company to be able to use the module and even more > to custommize or propose enhancements to it. So, with more > documentation in the source files, like the XML entity files, and then > in the source code for example explaining what a method concretly does > may help a lot to understand OFBiz. It seems the link David sent about > UBML is about his. > > Here is my feeling about OFBiz as a fresh developers. I try to > participate to the project at least by providing bug reports, I still > feel for away from providing patches ! :-) > > Hope this will help you, devs, the project is already great, let's > make it more accessible ! > > Cimballi
