David, Ian,I believe Ian has a point about "not yet fully developed". As discussed before, the OFBiz framework is fine, complete. It's what's built around the engine (car body, doors, windscreen wipers, seat ejection button, etc) that's incomplete, or to put it in a more PR way to potential customers, "buggy and requires debugging, is all". Let's make a distinction between OFBiz framework and OFBiz-ERP.
David is right that OFBiz is hard, if not impossible, to use OOTB. That's not precisely because OFBiz-ERP is all done up but the market is so choosy and differentiated and finely-segmented, ie everybody has their own ways of doing business. It's because OFBiz-ERP functionalities are very much incomplete. Let's take Made2Manage, for instance. My first guesstimate for boss was:
"I believe OFBiz-ERP is all there, best-practices way of doing things. So if M2M was any good for you at all, I believe we can move you to OFBiz-ERP easily. Only thing we have to work on is to cater for any special ways you do business, any proprietary secret ingenious workflows, any superstitious feng-shui requirements in your corporate culture, etc.".
I'm currently in really hot soup for that wrong guesstimate. Boss has every right to stick with M2M now (a very strong and well-developed and well-supported product too).
I wish I didn't have to say the above out loud. I realize it'll possibly raise red flags for potential OFBiz customers. But I don't know if I can live with sitting by and watching them moths come to a hot flame advertised as "kool light". No, I'm not publicizing my findings, just speaking up here since it seems Ian's (and myself and boss many weeks ago) been asking precisely the above for some time now without getting upfront "honest-to-God and honest-to-good-service" answers.
If only Ian would just focus on how fantastic the OFBiz framework is, such as the entity engine, widgets (if documented right), etc. But I guess Ian's just trying to push us to address a vacuum, a vacuum that could well be blocking OFBiz from explosive world-wide adoption and popularity. And my guesstimate here would be (please let me be right this time!), Ian's right. OFBiz still rocks.
My boss asked me if I would bet my career on OFBiz. I'd say that if I weren't a reverse-engineer in my past life, I'd be better off pushing a real OOTB solution to him and work on impromptu patches/integration to get specialized functionalities welded into that OOTB solution. But bear in mind that I have impossible deadlines (barely a month to cut OFBiz for a sizeable manufacturing operation, didn't figure in bugfixes I had to do myself). So if you could get a sucker to pay $30,000 over 3 months for you to tailor OFBiz, you're on safe(r) ground. Yes, I know, my cases are always close to crazy (that's the way I live).
Don't mind speaking this plainly. I'm intending to work with Ian on that vacuum. I hope we have some volunteers from the community veterans, but if not, we're going ahead ourselves.
But please EVERYBODY here be aware that whether we go it ourselves or with community's blessing/hand-holding, we will STILL be practically leeching off the community's charitable work in OFBiz (SVN trunk). Proper perspective. Just FYI. Remember that.
Jonathon David E. Jones wrote:
Ian, About this question:In my ignorance I kind of assumed that once I had a stable version running it would - like my old QuickBooks 3 - keep on going without too much trouble. Provided I didn't want to start customizing and upgrading that is.OK. So new security breaches and the necessary patches to block them are to be expected. I have that already with existing Open Source LAMP e-commerce installations. The cost of keeping them secure is not particularly great. What is it about OFBiz that would make maintenance a luxury I might not be able to afford? Please expand.Unless you automate only a small part of what you do in your company, which is usually the case for small companies, you will HAVE to change the software to meet the needs of the company over time. Unfortunately (for us software peoples) not every company does exactly the same thing. Even more unfortunately is that the same company, large or small, does not do the same thing from one year to the next (or even smaller time periods). Small companies can get away with a single OOTB system because they only automate a very small part of what they do. As companies grow they MUST automate more and more of what they or the company is likely to fail.As far as up-front and ongoing costs go for OFBiz in relation to what you need, you hinted at an answer yourself in this paragraph:When I first discovered OFBiz a couple of months ago I was thunderstruck. Not only did the e-commerce front-end look every bit as good as the LAMP systems I've been installing, but the whole concept and framework looked like it ought to knock both Microsoft and Sage into a cocked hat.I say 'looked like' because, of course, I have subsequently discovered from my short time on this list that OFBiz is not yet as fully developed as I first thought it to be.This means something different for everyone. Some companies are able to use OFBiz 100% out of the box, but this is rare and usually means, as mentioned above, that they are only automated a fairly small percentage of what they do.So, the question that will answer your question is: what do you mean by this? In other words, what are the details behind the statement "OFBiz is not yet as fully developed as I first thought it to be"?The answer to that initially and over time, for your company or each of your clients, is the answer to how much work will be necessary to "install" and "support" the system (ie customize and maintain in more honest terms).-David On Jan 21, 2007, at 9:50 AM, Ian McNulty wrote:Andrew,I'm not looking for anything specific at the moment. Just trying to evaluate current options and keep on top of developments in the hope of offering clients the best, most flexible, most long-term solutions I can find.I checked out GnuCash and SQL Ledger before I discovered OFBiz. They both look fine, as far as small business accounting packages go. You're not going to believe this, but I personally still use QuickBooks 3 which I bought for less than $200 more than 15 years ago to run on Windows 3.1. Since then I've used it to produce budgets, VAT returns and year-end accounts for up to 4 different companies at the same time - some with turnovers around the $1M mark. It has its limitations and idiosyncrasies; but it runs like lightning on XP, has never crashed even once or given me any kind of problems at all (touch wood!!!) So it's going to take something pretty special to persuade me to change to anything else.I started looking at OFBiz as a solution to problems I can see starting to appear on the horizon for clients with established bricks-and-mortar wholesale and retail businesses for whom I have been installing Open Source e-commerce solutions over the past few years.All started with no web presence, all are now finding online sales becoming a significant and in some cases the major part of their businesses.In the beginning, integration with existing in-store EPOS and accounting systems from the likes of MS, Intuit and Sage was not an issue. Now it is quickly becoming the main one as staff spend increasingly longer amounts of time transferring information on paper and re-keying the same data into 3 different systems running in parallel.I have been trying to keep on top of this by installing patches and plugins to get the different systems to talk to each other. But bespoke integration with closed-source, proprietary systems is an arduous and expensive business that few clients can afford. More to the point, it is a very 'tacky' and incomplete solution as it depends largely on staff following rigorously prescribed synchronisation routines to prevent transactions colliding, falling over each other and cancelling each other out. Most staff working at this level will ignore the rules and cut corners if they can, resulting in tangles of inaccurate data which threaten to bring the whole business crashing around everyone's ears.Microsoft and Sage spotted the problems and the opportunities several years ago, and are now offering their own e-commerce clones seamlessly integrated with their own back-ends. I lost my biggest client to them just before Christmas. If I can not offer equivalent backend Open Source integration then it won't be long before I lose all the rest.When I first discovered OFBiz a couple of months ago I was thunderstruck. Not only did the e-commerce front-end look every bit as good as the LAMP systems I've been installing, but the whole concept and framework looked like it ought to knock both Microsoft and Sage into a cocked hat.I say 'looked like' because, of course, I have subsequently discovered from my short time on this list that OFBiz is not yet as fully developed as I first thought it to be.Your analogy with office space is interesting but I'm not entirely convinced it compares like with like. The cost of over-capacity in bricks-and-mortar space is clearly very heavy. The cost of over-capacity in Open Source virtual software space, not necessarily so.On the other hand, the cost of not building into the virtual software space the option for future expansion could well be crippling. It isn't just the cost of new installations and transfer of data. The major cost is staff retraining. People who adapt easily to such things do not usually end up working as warehousemen or office clerks.Your Project-Open link looks like it might be able to do what I need. The use of virtualisation looks very attractive. The web site is clean and crisp. The lack of forums, user groups or mailing lists is not so encouraging. I haven't even scratched the surface yet so I have no idea how it compares with OFBiz. When I do I promise to let you know.One thing you say at the end of your posting really does concern me:I was aware that the cost of installing a usable version of OFBiz might not be inconsiderable. But I had no idea that the cost of servicing it could be so high it could be a luxury I might not be able to afford.Can you really afford the luxury of servicing something as large as OfBiz en route?In my ignorance I kind of assumed that once I had a stable version running it would - like my old QuickBooks 3 - keep on going without too much trouble. Provided I didn't want to start customizing and upgrading that is.OK. So new security breaches and the necessary patches to block them are to be expected. I have that already with existing Open Source LAMP e-commerce installations. The cost of keeping them secure is not particularly great. What is it about OFBiz that would make maintenance a luxury I might not be able to afford? Please expand.Ian Andrew Sykes wrote:Ian, It depends on what you're looking for. If the focus is still a "small business accounting package" as the subject line says - I know I know, there have been a zillion posts to this thread, so perhaps not. - If it's accounting, two spring to mind... For a desktop system, have a look at GnuCash... http://www.gnucash.org/ For a web based system, SQLLedger seems good and I've heard a few favourable reports about it... http://www.sql-ledger.org/ Finally, for a project which *seems* to have a more OOTB focus, although I've really only started looking at it this weekend, take a look at the Project:Open stuff... http://www.project-open.com/ I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on this one as I've only just scratched the surface... One of the criteria you should consider is the cost of upgrading from an OOTB solution sometime in the future versus the cost of implementing OfBiz now. Generally if you are at the stage of being an enterprise with more "M" than "S" turnover (SME) and have implemented a lot of bespoke business processes which form part of you USP then OfBiz is a safe bet. If you plan to get to that point one day, it's probably better waiting for that day to come and using something OOTB in the meantime. Consider the analogy with office space, you wouldn't buy up half an industrial estate because the business plan you had written in your front room said one day you'd be bigger than ICI! Even if you factored the cost of hiring a van to help with the move, it would still look a bit dodgy on the balance sheet! Choosing the right system is about being on top of your overall business strategy, where are you going? how long and how much is it going to take to get you there? Can you really afford the luxury of servicing something as large as OfBiz en route? - Andrew On Sun, 2007-01-21 at 09:58 +0000, Ian McNulty wrote:OK David. Maybe just one last thing. No more soap-boxing. A simple question for a change :) David E. Jones wrote:Looking around the OFBiz documents and such I don't think this distinction is adequately represented, so I added some text similar to the above to the home page of ofbiz.apache.org. It should be public within a few hours, ie whenever the next deployment job runs.Reading your new text, this stood out:"OFBiz can certainly be used OOTB (out of the box), but if you're looking for something that works really well for that there are many open source projects that do a great job there."OK. So maybe those projects might be more what I'm looking for.I searched a couple of months ago and didn't find anything I thought could do a better job than OFBiz. What other open source projects are you thinking of here?Ian-David On Jan 20, 2007, at 3:49 AM, Ian McNulty wrote:Chris, David, Everybody.One last thought on the subject before I have my porridge and another lie down ;)I'm wondering if any of you guys have ever taken a good hard look at the osCommerce, Zen Cart or Ubuntu forums?http://www.zen-cart.com/forum http://forums.oscommerce.com http://www.ubuntuforums.org/ Yes. I know php is nasty. But that's not the point. Look at the accessibility and structure of the interface. All user levels are accommodated. All find their natural place.Nearly a quarter of a million members on Ubuntu. 120K on osCommerce. 2,347 and 824 currently active respectively at this very moment as we speakA working model of how to build a user base surely, if nothing else? Ian Chris Howe wrote:------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Ian, While I certainly enjoy the analogies, who are you ultimately suggesting create these lowest common denominator (LCD) documents? As has already been mentioned, once you pass that "aha" moment in OFBiz, it's difficult to understand why the engineering documentation didn't make sense the first time around. 3D vector calculus, as you put it, seems so elementary obvious at that point that it's difficult to convey it in simpler terms; even though you remember it not being obvious when you started. I don't think it's very time/quality productive for someone who's passed that "aha" moment to produce this documentation; at least not without the aid of an "uninitiated". If you'd like to be that test subject, I'm sure there are a mess of people, including myself, that would be willing to help explain things to you as you make your way through the concepts, documenting as you go. But the POV of the documentation cannot be from someone who's already gotten the bird off the ground, because they're not really sure which button they pressed to make it all seem second nature. --- Ian McNulty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------David, I don't get the proposition that there are 100 different pilot roles. There are many 1,000s of different destinations. Maybe more than a dozen different pilot roles (commercial, fighter,bomber, spotter, etc.). But but there IS a lowest common denominator.They all fly planes. They all start off on fixed wing, singleengine props. They all need to understand basic navigation, aerodynamics,flight-engineering etc. But it is very basic. The need to understand lift, drag, how to calculate take off velocities etc. But I doubt ifthey start of with 3D vector calculus or need to know what a Reynold'snumber is. So why can't the target be whatever denominators are common to all pilots? How to find the door handle and the start buttonwould be top of my list. If they can't find those then they ain't nevergonna fly. Ian David E. Jones wrote:On Jan 20, 2007, at 1:25 AM, Ian McNulty wrote:David, I can see where you're coming from on this. Thisproject is betterdocumented than anything else I've seen in thefield.You yourselfhave produced a truly awesome amount ofdocumentation. I don't knowwhere you find the time. All are extremely wellwritten, very clear,very well laid out. A model of their kind. (NoI'm not sucking up - Imean it :) So what could possibly be the problem. I found the Introduction Videos and Diagrams pageyou link to here acouple of days ago myself. It was whilst working through these videos thatthe light bulb went off.What you're talking us through is a diagram ofthe wiring harness ofa jumbo jet. Essential for the engineers who need to serviceit.Absolutely the last kind of map a pilot wants tofind on his lap.Know what I mean?Uh, yeah, that's because it is meant to cover theframework, not theapplications. The two are very different, changevery differently,need to be understood by different people indifferent ways, etc. Mycurrent estimate is that to produce somethingadequate for a "pilot",given that there are about 100 different "pilot"roles in OFBiz, wouldrequire many times the effort to produce that theframework videoswith their diagrams, reference materials,transcriptions, etc. Rightnow I don't have the $500k to get into that... andthe $40k alreadyspent on the documents which are now PDF-dumpedinto thedocs.ofbiz.org site was clearly inadequate,especially as it is mostlyreference materials (which is why you won't findhow-to stuff in thereference guides, they are references after all,just for referencepurposes). The Application Overview for Users isprobably more of whatyou're looking for, though that section onlyrepresents maybe 3-5% ofwhat is in OFBiz right now. Of course, that's assuming such documents couldeven be written in away that is close to generally useful. How do Iuse it? Well, thatdepends on what you want to do... andunfortunately across a fewdifferent industries that list grows into hundredsof thousands ofactivities... So, that's the big question with any document: whois the targetaudience? The more specific the answer, the betterthe document willaddress their needs. But who is the targetaudience for OFBiz? ... ?-David--==============================================================================================mcnultyMEDIA 60 Birkdale Gardens Durham DH1 2UL t: +44 (0)191 384 4736 e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] w: www.mcnultymedia.co.uk==============================================================================================This communication is for the exclusive use of the intended recipient(s) named above and is confidential. Any form of distribution, copying, discussion or use of this communication, its contents, or any information contained herein without prior consent is strictly prohibited. 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