Please take a few moments to read this note and share your views.
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Rushabh,
I think it is a great initiative and a step in the right direction. I also feel that there should be some place where users of ERPNext can share their requirements and Developers can then decide which app they want to develop. Ofcourse there has to be a way for the developers to get paid. This can help ERPNext to develop faster and better.
regards,
Amit
I agree it seems like a great idea. A lot of little creases to iron out but in general will help improve ERPNext much more rapidly and motivate developers to get involved and stay involved.
Rushabh,
I share your views on the topic.
Just a few thoughts that I think could help moving Frappe and ErpNext in the right direction
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ERPNext vs Frappe
It must be very clear what ERPNext is and what Frappe is. Today, they are more or less interchangeable. Is Frappe a document based general purpose platform, a platform for ERP-like services or the platform for ERPNext? -
ERP-software needs customizations
Unlike many other software, ERP-system are deeply coupled to the core processes of every company. Every company must consider either changing its own processes or customize their ERP-system. This is not easy. Customizations comes with a price, not only the initial cost, but the cost to maintain the customizations. In order for an ERP-system to be successful it must provide adequate means for customizations that are documented, exemplified, powerful enough and stable. ERPNext is on a good path to achieve this, but I believe too many customizations require adding/modifying internal core python modules (just being able to print a report for example).
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Thanks for your comments.
I think this is the crux. The problem with 3rd party developers is that they rarely contribute these back to the product even if their contributions have been paid for.
What this is forcing us to do is to consider starting a “paid feature development” system, where we will build features and add them to the product.
So far we were clear we did not want to conflict with 3rd party developers, but by not contributing they are forcing our hand. We really want these suggestions, contributions back into the project, and if it means that we will have to do them ourselves, so be it.
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Hi. I will try to express my self in english. So follow the idea and not too mutch the words!
I believe any conclusion must take in consideration others successfully solutions like odoo, xtuple, etc. The competition are strong and any reached conclusion that departs from others that are in the market will kill, in my opinion, the product. So the solution, again, in my opinion, is take in consideration what others products like this one are doing and do better, but in the same frame.
For instance, i hear that odoo will/are make(ing) a maket to sell 3rd party product and i also believe that we must follow that pattern too and do better. If the team kill 3rd party doing that him selfs then few other developers will be interested in envolve the product - my opinion of course.
I also believe that the team must follow the bussiness logic of Apple and charge a commission for 3rd party products and, of course, make a portal to sell them.
Just to reforce my idea, check odoo:
I little bit late to comment but anyway.
I come from Odoo world, and I really like your post.
The last version of odoo 9.0 has changed it’s licence and now it has a community version and a enterprise version. A lot of people (me included) didn’t like that change. Before they were a completely open source product and gathered a lot of attention, and now they are closing their product.
“We have always played fair by not making ERPNext a 2 tier application with an “Enterprise” and “Community” version. We would love to keep this that way.”
I hope continues that way.
I’m also considering to help ERPNext.
I think ERPNext shoul be paid or add some licence fee.
also there should be app portal.
Currently there are many developers making intergration with ERPNext. This intergration is not available for all.
If ERPNext paid and Frappe Team make some portal for such trusted integration, it will open world for invester and developer.
This would stop hobbiest developers like to me to contribute.
*right now I don’t contribute to ERPNext
What you mean by contrubution?
write now I can see many developer contributing by answering forum question. Some are updating documetation
some are developing app but not making it available.
some want to give money back to core team
Paid feature will increate developes to contribute and make money devoping school erp, payment gateway, tally integration, ETL Tool integraton, BI Repots/Dashboard
there are lots of things we are doing our own. But hardly few things comes on forum and out of this, its hard to find any trusted integration
But they will not release the source code if it is a paid app.
How the others will help to improve the code?
@danimaribeiro Thanks for writing in and your comments. We are committed to keeping ERPNext clean and open as one tool. Fragmentation is a bad problem for any open source project and we are keen to avoid that.
@kolate_sambhaji The incentive for the service provider is to keep things closed source. We need to create a culture that is different from other open source projects. There is no incentive for us to create an “app store” infact the incentive is opposite. If you have made good features, you should contribute and we will happy to acknowledge you as a developer. This will also help you in winning service contracts.