Should the development team think about "Voting" again?

Hello everybody,

A couple of years ago, ERPnext had a features voting option that would prioritize development of some features based on votes given to it. Later @rmehta decided that the team has to do without the voting, I think it was inspired by how Apple operates or something. Apple don’t value user voice much, instead they depend on the value of their brand and need of some people to “carry” the logo. Apple of course has very good products too. I think ERPnext is not Apple, EPRnext is still a brilliant work in progress, and I think the development team values the customer voice, at least that’s what I heard in a couple of posts.

So with all of that said, isn’t it time to bring the features voting back and let users help in highlighting priorities?

Notice, I am talking about features and not bug fixes and major coding or programming decisions.

Regards,
Ahmed

@ahmed the voice of the community is already being heard via the community. There is bountysource and other ways of crowdfunding too.

I think the community must also pitch in with funds and development, to make ERPNext great, this must be a community effort.

I see a lot of people demanding features, but won’t even donate a $100 towards it. The only sustainable business model we have is the cloud hosting and that is our priority. The community should not only expect us to do all the work.

Maybe with a more contributing community, we will be happy to listen more!

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@rmehta I see your point clearly. The small team has to focus on the revenue generating models first to be able to survive, opensource is not for charity. I get that.

What I don’t get is that if these paying customers (the cloud hosted, or self-hosted with yearly agreements) don’t get some of the important features they ask for, how will the cloud (or self-hosted paying for support) model continue to grow?! How do you priorities on features development now? I am not questioning, rather inquiring.

Could there be a way around this without differentiating between users? Last thing you want to do is a move like Odoo that differentiates between a payed version and free version.

It’s not an easy question, neither is its answer!

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Paying user are using the system for what-it-is. We do occasionally promise a feature, but its rare. And yes, paying users do get a lot more “mindspace” in terms of what they would like to use.

Where did I suggest such a thing! Infact we have always publicly stated that we are not here to make a billion dollar company and our goal is to make the best open source ERP.

I don’t see any conflict anywhere. The more all of us pitch in as a community, the better our own value will be. How much each member contributes is based on their understanding of the present and future value of using this product+ecosystem.

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