TinyERP Source Published - It All Started Here
When I first started open source ERP Guru, I was hoping it could have positive impact on the open source ERP community and I am happy that it started to pay off - TinyERP opened its source code to the general public!.
The move was initiated by one of my readers, Raphael, who posted a request on TinyERP’s forum,asking the project team to consider again the release of Tiny’s source code , citing my blog in that forum post. A couple of days later, the source was released in an announcement published on the same forum thread.
I am very happy that I had some part in making TinyERP’s source code available. I hope my reviews of the different open source ERP solutions will cause more projects to take the path TinyERP took and publish all their source code for free,unrestricted use.
I first noticed what was going on by reading comments posted by Raphael and Yogi(?), TinyERP community members. I would like to take the opportunity to thank them both for their detailed comments.
The rest of this post will answer the issues they both raised. I strongly suggest reading their comments as they provide an interesting insight into the burning issues surrounding open source ERP projects. I hope other projects’ community members will provide their insight as well.
Before I go into answering specific questions posted by Raphael and Yogi, I would like to remind everyone what is the main purpose of this site - to promote adoption of open source ERP software by small-medium businesses worldwide.
In order to archive that, we are targeting the following audiences:
- Small-Medium business owners who are looking to implement ERP and are looking for a single source of information on available open source ERP solutions.
- ERP beginners - I believe open source ERP solutions can gain huge momentum by going after fresh undergraduates or IT professionals looking to make their first steps in ERP.
- Open source ERP community members - this group includes community members of current projects, looking for an outsider point of view on their software and community. They can also learn what the competition is doing and how they fair against each other.
Currently, open source ERP Guru will not go into detailed technical comparison of the underlying technologies and architecture of the different solutions. Therefor, I will not go into the technical questions raised by Raphael regarding Python Vs. Java, for example,as it is beyond the current scope of this site - I am sure that if I will bring together all the architects and lead developers of each project into one room (I might try that someday..), each project will claim their project is the most modern,flexible,easy to use,clean,simple and robust project in the entire universe. I don’t want to get into that discussion (see the target audience).
One thing that this site will not become is a battleground between the different projects. I do not appreciate any of the comments made by Raphael in regards to other projects, especially remarks about specific community members. I am leaving the comments as-is, but any future bashing of any particular person will be deleted. I do encourage active community members to comment and enlighten everyone else with information about their projects, much like Raphael and Yogi did for TinyERP.
We need to remember that the success of any single open source ERP projects adds credibility to the entire community. I believe the different projects should cooperate and exchange knowledge as much a s possible as it can only assist in the evolution of open source ERP into the mainstream.
To answer some specific issues raised in the comments:
- ‘Your criteria of SF.NET is just absurd. What you are saying is that if it is not hosted on Source Forge is it not Open Source. I think you need to reconsider this (Yogi)‘ - If you would have read other posts you would have noticed that I provide extensive coverage to OFBiz, a project not hosted on SF.NET or any other public development platform. Your argument here is not valid.
- ‘I must say the OpenBravo attitude of putting money and marketing first before the features, the platform maturity and the true ecosystem is a bit more shocking to me (Raphael)‘ - First, I am not sure if this statement is true. Second, I disagree with you in regards to your view of open source ERP projects who raised money and where they decide to put it - I believe that for open source ERP software to become mainstream amongst SME’s, capital-raising projects are inevitable. A customer deciding to go for open source ERP solution must feel he has an established company behind him as his entire business is going to run on their software. The funds raised are also being used to make the product appear more professional - for many customers, the right packaging,project website and user interface might be more important than cutting edge architecture or clean code.
- ‘And more important a lot of those modules are done by third party actors: released under the free GPL license while in a sustainable business model fashion. No many oss ERP around with such real community success‘ - Third party add-on modules are important for any ERP solution. Opening up your platform for external development is one of the smartest things any software project can do (did anyone say Facebook??). The number of add-on modules is also a vote of confidence in that particular solution, as developing modules around a platform requires a lot of effort in learning how to use the available API’s. I might use this metric in my Activity Trends page - number of modules written by 3rd party developers.
I did not answer all of Raphael and Yogi’s questions, but despite some unacceptable bashing of other projects, they have opened the door for a discussion between the different projects.
Comments are more than welcomed.
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5 Responses to “TinyERP Source Published - It All Started Here”
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Hi opensourceerpguru,
First of all, thank you very much for taking consideration about TinyERP. I Think the happier should be the guy(s) behind TinyERP actually, but it’s actually good news for anyone claiming to use it.
Small correction again: TinyERP has ALWAYS (at least since 2005) been GPL open source, with source code included in the download.
The only thing new they did last week (and that was said to be planned) was opening their SCM (SVN) to the public.
Still, this was very needed. Indeed, it’s really important when evaluating oss software to be able to track over the time how much the code is changing:
* are the author able to sustain large refactoring efforts or are they only maintaining legacy code?
* is the project dead? (BTW unless is missed something I didn’t see any commit on Neogia trunk since one month)
* how is the code changing? Does it seem to receive a lot of nasty patches to unstable features or are the changes reflecting features increases?
* what kind of code correction was needed to what kind of bug?
And finally, having an open SCM makes receiving community patches and enhancements a lot easier.
One more correction, when you speak about your “activity trends”, all I wanted to tell is that Tiny is receiving half of OpenBravo and five times Compiere forum activity, which isn’t small and isn’t zero as you put in your graph. Also I also tried AlexaRank myself but concluded it was not usable because a Sourceforge hosted project would actually take the AlexaRank of Sourcefore itself. I rather went for number of Delicious bookmarks instead to reflect community interest: http://del.icio.us/url/bf933e46fc974c81a5d3088d4036eae4
OK, finally, I’ve nothing against VC (fund raising) with open source. For instance I’m all the more happy Alfresco exists. And I even think ERP needs some money to fuel it properly because not all ERP code is either funny nor easy to develop or maintain. I’m even happy OpenBravo raised funds and that’s why we decided to partner with them, but that didn’t blind me.
I do believe indeed that cutting edge architecture often does matter a lot more than funding. If VC were to fuel hundreds of thousand of pl/SQL lines of code which makes the code as it unmaintainable nor evolve-able. Then what, they might rewrite all? They could but it’s more like they will be starting from scratch with money but unproven technical skills (yet). That might success eventually but it’s much more likely the cutting edge projects will rather take the lead, finally raising funds eventually.
And on the contrary I saw so many well funded non cutting edge project dying slowly later on, that’s why I believe a lot more in project minimizing the number of line of code per feature so that they can be ported form technological platforms to newer as technological revolutions arise (TinyERP could be ported to Jython and have lower layer externalized to Java code for instance).
And this isn’t only about technology. By design, in TinyERP, verticalizing the ERP to account for instance for perishable products is only about overriding the product object and a few of its methods (a few lines of code, see existing modules). On the contrary, in Compiere or OpenBravo, if it’s easy to add a limit date in the product structure, it’s not easy at all to make suddenly all existing stock valorization or inventory picking methods take into account that new field. You would even barely reuse them, forcing you to spend time re-implementing and maintaining the duplicated logic. It’s the whole difference between real OOP all the way and basic OOP backed with procedural programming. I think it does finally matter for you target audience because it will mostly determine how much verticalizations will exist for free (should be cheap to build), finally bringing an ERP that will match more closely the needs of the end user. Same remark goes for embedding a true BPM engine in TinyERP.
Again don’t get me wrong. I’m happy OfBiz and OpenBravo exist, I wish them luck and we will integrate them with the IT firm (Smile) I work eventually (we even partner with OpenBravo). Still not everything is always black or white and I do have some criticism about OpenBravo. But I would say, those aren’t absolute criticisms, they are only relative to what I think is better. I didn’t wrote them for free bashing but rather because I felt like TinyERP was was somewhat unfairly discriminated. Finally, once against being open to criticism and having to face them is what makes open source better than proprietary software. So OpenBravo and Compiere might very well tackle the criticism about having tire table references from the former Goodyear dev in their code and clean their code. Everyone would win and no one could bash them anymore. May be just like my bashing about TinyERP made them open their SCM a bit faster.
OK, Finally I’ll release a 60 pages white paper about oss ERP myself in some two weeks. Unfortunately, because I was forced to, it’s in French. But fortunately Google translations tools makes that at least readable so I’ll let you know. Regards,
Raphaël Valyi.
Hi Raphael,
Thank you again for the detailed post and for the corrections - I guess I still have a lot to learn about TinyERP’s history.
As for the Activity Trends page - currently, I am only measuring SourceForge hosted forum activity through their RSS. I will check to see if TinyERP forums provide a feed.
As for the Alexa Rank - I do not measure activity of the SourceForge project pages. Instead, I measure Rank of the projects’ .com or .net website (openbravo.com, for example).
I look forward to reading your whitepaper. Let us know when it’s out and how we can get hold of it.
When I saw your site I was suprised that you didn’t feature TinyERP because that is the OSERP I am recommending to clients.
As a system developer from a total Microsoft & Oracle background (for over 10 years) I was converted to open source and I have now changed my direction completely.
One of my first clients needed an erp system so I did some research and played with some oserp systems - My findings - TinyERP , Open Bravo and Compiere made my shortlist and when I started trying to install, configure and customise them I personally found TinyERP was so much better - mainly because simple examples were readily available and it just seemed to work well from the first step onward.
Currently, I am putting a highly customised business solution in place using TinyERP as the basic framework. It really is far better than I expected - I have had some pain but customised development speed is very quick and robust(even as a novice python programmer). I still have some issues with advanced custom reports (I am using OpenRPT for some more complex ones) and I am sticking triggers in the postgresql database for somethings I cannot get TinyERP to do but so far I consider it an excellent product and will be recommending it again.
Hi Rob,
It seems like TinyERP does have an enthusiastic community around it and that is so importrant for the success of open source ERP projects.
I will start writing about TinyERP in upcoming posts.
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