Open Source ERP Guru

There is a lot going on around the different open source ERP projects. The amount of commercial activity is impressive, although some would argue that all the investment going into marketing, re-branding and partnering is better put into development of a better product. It’s an ideological debate that is becoming louder as projects move away from a voluntary,completely free,technologically driven community to a more commercial business model.

Balancing between the hardcore developer community and the ‘guys with the suits’ is not easy. One can ask, just like in the case of the ship of Theseus, if you replace your open source ‘planks’ one by one, is it still open source? When does a project become completely commercial? and how would it differentiate itself from a purely commercial solution who one day decides to release its code as open source?

Those might be heavy questions worth a discussion. I will be glad to host a panel with members from the different open source ERP solutions and discuss these issues. In the meantime, a news roundup-TinyERP,Xtuple,Compiere.

TinyERP Rebrands

TinyERP is no longer Tiny-it is now just OpenERP. OpenERP is a great domain name to get high ranking in search engines for those looking for open source ERP, but I’m sure there is much more behind that change.

First, Tiny are going to offer a hosted version of their ERP solution.

I think,in general, that hosting open source ERP is a great idea. I am not sure if the project itself should do that-it might be better for the project to focus on development and expansion of the ecosystem-hosting is a completely different story from development. A partnership with an established application hosting company can work well.

Tiny also launched OpenObject-it sounds to me a lot like SalesForce Force.com platform. As Tiny is known as a very flexible, easy to customize solution, opening the solution as a platform for outside developers makes a lot of sense. I hope to get more detailed information on this move by Tiny soon.

Xtuple Rebundles

Xtuple offers 3 different ERP solutions – the basic,free PostBooks, which is more of an accounting software with limited inventory and manufacturing functionality, Standard edition and the commercial OpenMFG edition.

XTuple offers subscription based support for PostBooks but you can download and use if for free. The pricing for the other solutions-Standard and OpenMFG-can be paid monthly,yearly or through a single payment, but you would still have to pay 1 year maintenance.

Compiere Introduces Compiere

Compiere are having two introductory sessions – one for prospective partners tomorrow (June 5th) and another one for potential customers next week. This is part of their ongoing effort to expand their partner network. As I’ve said before, I believe that currently, this is the most important activity the different open source ERP communities should invest in-expand their partners ecosystem.

I was hoping I could take part in one of those sessions, but due to time constraints that would not be possible. If you got a chance to take part, please tell me how it was. I also hope Compiere will have those sessions recorded and available on their website.