Open Source ERP Projects Activity Trends
One of the most important evaluation criteria for open source ERP is project activity. The Sourceforge graveyard is full of open source projects skeletons. When you measure a projects activity, the most important thing to measure is trends, or the rate of change in the parameters you measure.
In the last few days, I have been collecting data from the Sourceforge statistics RSS. The following graph displayes the number of downloads per day for the most popular open source ERP projects (this is still Beta so numbers might vary):
Please remember that the statistics were not checked thoroughly so actual numbera might vary!.
The data in the graph was gathered in the last few days. I think the absolute number of daily downloads is not really important. What important is the relative number of downloads and the daily trends. We can immediately see that Openbravo is the most downloaded software in past few days, followed by Postbooks. Compiere and its spin-off project, Adempiere, have almost identical popularity as far as downloads are concerned- around 200 downloads per day.
The statistics analysis is still in development but I believe it will be a very important part of Open Source ERP Guru. I will add a separate page to this blog that will display daily open source ERP projects statistics – downloads, forum posts, website popularity,blog buzz and other important metrics. Collecting this information over time will provide valuable insight into the trends of the industry.
The activity trend page will be active within the next couple of days.
Nice initiative. I0m looking forward for the results.
Thanks
Hi tic616,
I hope to get the activity trends page up and running within the next couple of days. I hope it will bring a lot of value, among others, to the different projects development teams.
The Opensource ERP space is a really interesting one right now, and I’ve got a few questions regarding it. How are they faring against standard ERPs aimed at the mid-market. Is Opensource integral to the success of companies like Compiere and Openbravo, or is it more a marketing tool? Who are the people writing the Open Source? it’s not the CTOs of SMEs, so is it the ERP partners?
What I keep coming back to is: How does being Opensource translate into a concrete competitive advantage for these ERPs?
Your thoughts much appreciate! Thanks.
Hi Chris,
You are raising some very good questions. Because of the importance of the issues you raise, I will write a post to answer your questions, within the next couple of days. You can stay tuned by reading my RSS feed.
Hey,
I would suggest if you could add ERP5 (www.erp5.org) into your tracking list for Open Source ERP. Though its not on sourceforge (actively), but there is a lot going on. A comparision with initiatives like Compiere or Opentaps/OfBiz would be invaluable.
V.
Great! I look forward to reading it then.
C
Hi Vihang,
In my post titled Open Source ERP Solutions to Consider,I mention ERP5 as a solution I might look into in the future. I believe open source projects are all about community and transparency. ERP solutions hosting their project on Sourceforge, for example, are making it easier for people like my to really understand the project-from download statistics,forums posts, bug fixes etc.
Having said that, I also hope that Open Source ERP Guru will deliver value to potential customers, looking for an appropriate open source ERP solution. From a customer perspective, I am not sure if he cares if the project is hosted on Sourceforge or not-he is looking for the best solution for his own requirements. Therefore, I will include in future posts detailed analysis of projects such as ERP5 or TinyERP.
[...] of our readers, Chris, commenting on Open Source ERP Activity Trends, had some very good questions and I decided to answer them, one by one, in a dedicated [...]
this graph is interesting, but ERP5 is clearly missing. In my view, it is one of the top5 open source ERP