Re: Compiere now #1 on sourceforge

[Todd Boyle]

At 02:20 PM 5/28/02, Derek Neighbors wrote:
> > Part of the challenge in it is that it's a J2EE system, thus meaning
> > that it's only quasi-open-source.
>
> Yes exactly.


Almost everybody on earth, that is, millions of people are using
proprietary, commercial software.

SMEs live in a world where *all* their software has completely
closed source and a deliberate strategy to lock in the users,
exploit them in every way the law allows, I think Compiere is
breathtakingly open in comparison.

So, it is kind of sad that the first things out of peoples'
mouths are " Compiere is not open enough...."   To be
fair, Compiere is 9000% more open than ANY software
platform in the world that has more than about 100 users,
which is about the total user base of most GPL general-purpose
business/accounting applications.

Somewhere there is a model that results in high quality,
highly usable business software getting built, that is
sufficiently timely and contemporary to keep up with,
and interoperate with, the commercial software juggernaut.

After Sun is gone we might miss them. I don't have a
real big problem with Java.  It has critical mass of developers
and many excellent products, open source and (gasp) commercial.
The e-bus. standards community such as ebXML and much of
the OMG and OAG etc. etc. lives in the Java platform. That matters.

There is no need to badmouth Java.  Microsoft is the enemy,
not Java.  Java is about the only thing between us and the
deep blue sea right now.  If you want extensibility, and reach,
there is going to be very little choice outside of dot-net and
Java

If something like Compiere comes along, and in the opinions
of ERP experts, it has good object design, GNUE should be
studying and understanding it, and enthusiastically interoperating
with it, converging with it.  Contributing code. building critical mass.

Todd