Hello,
History of this module
----------------------
1. The smtpclient is a personal initiative of one our developer. It was
not in our R&D backlog. I just discovered it a few days ago.
2. We reviewed the smtpclient module just after the publication of the
blog and we decided to remove it from the addons as it was not clean enough.
3. So, the smtpclient will be removed from addons and be moved to
addons-extra. The mailgateway module will be independant of the
smtpclient module.
Our internal policy
-------------------
At OpenERP sa, our policy is quite clear:
* Promote every community's effort, even if we think the module is not
clean or useful enough for the official version.
* If we reuse something from the community, we:
- keep the author in the module
- keep the copyright
- put greetings in the commit.
If one of our developer forget this during his work, we fix this as
soon as we get a notice from someone of the community.
* It is not our policy at all to try to stole copyright.
Please avoid launching trolls about this.
I did not checked the code, but I don't think mga took code from
poweremail module. Mga, can you confirm or not. If you get some code
from poweremail, wan you change the copyright in your module ?
The smtpclient module
---------------------
I'd like to thanks the author of the smtpclient module.
It's a good contribution to OpenERP (even if we think it's not ready to
be ported to v6.0.) It adds several features and some companies may find
the solution they need in this module.
I don't think it's fair to criticise someone who contributes. (whether
is's OpenERP SA, a personal initiative or someone from the community).
Every contribution is a plus to OpenERP.
You can blame OpenERP SA to have added this module in addons because you
think it's not good enough. This is a mistake of us and we will remove
it as soon as we have changed the mailgateway module to remove the
dependency. It's in our backlog since a few days.
Your attitude
-------------
I think your attitude is not open at all !
It's not acceptable to blame someone that develop a new open source
module. Every one is free to develop what he needs, this is what open
source is all about.
You may like the new development or not, but don't blame someone who
contributes. It's sometime a good thing to have several modules that
does the same thing. People will use the module that best fits their needs.
Our policy about duplication of Work
------------------------------------
Our policy is to reuse what exists, if it's possible.
But sometimes it's better to recode than to reuse. Here are some
examples, which lead to great improvements in OpenERP:
1. Scenario
* OpenERP had a test system based on asserts and .XML files.
* C2C did not liked this and made a good contribution with OERPScenario
instead of using/improving the current OpenERP test system.
* We thought the C2C system can not be integrated in the main branch so
we released an improved version of our initial data loading/test
system: YAML.
Today, we have two good tests system in OpenERP: OpenERPScenario and YAML.
I think it's very good to have alternatives, we must keep and promote
both: and that's what we do.
OpenERPScenario is a strong improvement to OpenERP. Even if we decided
to not use it, for reasons I previously explained, we promote their
contribution.
This is exactly what open souce is all about: freedom to use what you
want, freedom to redevelop what you don't like.
2. Report Engine
* Reportlab had a report engine that produced PDF files based on .XML
data. (RML2PDF) This was a great tool because, 10 years ago, every
report engine where based on code, rather than data.
* We decided to redevelop it because it was not open source. So we made
trml2pdf, an open source alternative.
* The community decided to add new report engine because RML has some
limitations and we have about 4 new report engine in OpenERP: OO
headless, mako, etc.
Fortunately these two examples are exceptions. In the 500 modules of
OpenERP, you have only a very few of them that overlaps. This is good
because it's a waste of time to redevelop 2 times the same thing, even
if sometimes it's required.
It works in both ways. If the community do not like a module from
OpenERP, you can redevelop an alternative for it. We will not blame you
but promote your effort.
So, please be open to this.
About Quality certification
---------------------------
> Is it because the community cannot pay for a community contribution
> that the effort is duplicated?
The quality certification is a service for customers, if they want their
module to be checked and maintained in the long term. (migrations of
versions, ...) It's not required and our goal is not to force people to
pass it.
If we think a module is good enough to be integrated in the official
release, we take the certification at our charge. We already announced
we will do it for several accounting modules and for poweremail.
We made the review of poweremail for quality certification and including
it in the next versions of OpenERP because it's clearly interesting
features.
In my first check, I think they are several things to change before
being included in the official version.
Some examples:
* the name of the module must be changed. Something like: email_template
To compare, we will not name a module efficient_sale in the official
addons.
* most menus must be changed according to v6.0 guidelines. It must be in
submenus of Tools, instead of defining a root menu.
* we need the module to send template of emails, but we don't need the
reception of email. (pop/imap) Managing mailboxes is a different
behaviour and I prefer to have light modules.
* Also, there is a good contribution from axelor for webmail which seems
more advanced for managing mailboxes. (reception of emails)
If you allow, we can do the rework (and keep your copyright of course).
Conclusion
----------
> When I conclude this mail, I am not sure if I will ever get a reply
> for this mail from 'Open ERP SA'. But please remember that the more
> you do this, the more the community moves away from you.
Sharoon, please understand that:
1. It was not the intention of OpenERP to duplicate your work. It was a
personal initiative of one of our employee and his intention was to
improve the mailgateway which is a slightly different behaviour than
poweremail. I don't know if he reused code from poweremail or not. But,
you may like it or nto, a contribution is always good thing.
2. If, one day, we reuse your code in one of our module, you should not
criticise this. (unless we forget the copyright of course) This is how
open source projects evolve.
3. If, one day, you reuse our code, we will not criticise you publicly.
We think it's normal and we will probably promote your contribution.
I understand nobody likes to have an alternative module to one of his
work. But this is how open source works: having different alternatives
for the same purpose, and the users use the ones they prefer.
As an editor, we always prefer to reuse and promote the work of the
community if it's possible.
--
Fabien Pinckaers
CEO OpenERP
Chaussée de Namur 40
B-1367 Grand-Rosière
Belgium
Phone: +32.81.81.37.00
Fax: +32.81.73.35.01
Web: http://openerp.com
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