But in our case, we can call ourselves Community Open Source (ADempiere) vs Commercial Open Source (Compiere and OpenBravo). So now this cat really got away. How did we come to using 'Open Source' in the first place? I think it has everything to do with how our brains are wired when it comes to name recognition. Such as Google instead of Yahoo!, Obama instead of McCain.
Open Source sounds sexy. Cool to pronounce and doesn't sound as cheap as 'Free' anything. But if we are to extend that name abit and call it Freedom, then we have a whole different sense to it. Freedom Fighters to just plain Freedom. It has a grand league ring to it.
But 'Free Software' is a bit quirky. It needs more of Richard Stallman to keep knocking at it. Take for instance Linux. He prefers to call it GNU-Linux, which hardly anyone i know says it that way. But i was corrected by friends that those CLI stuff such as 'ls' belongs to GNU. Now i didn't know that. Well i know now. But i would inadvertently not twist my tongue and still call it Linux and call Linus Torvalds a demigod.
And as for RMS, he is just the Masstarrrr.
Now coming back to Open Source. It is now proven when we hear alot of venture capital going into funding Open Source startups, and remembering the last bubble, there is going to be a mini bubble over this space. Take our ERP sub-space for instance. There are now 3 big players - one parent project (Compiere) and 2 forks (OpenBravo and ADempiere) where the later been the community one, not having any commercial entity or even a nice suit to wear during dinner parties. We have a lousy website, but some serious stuff going on at our trunk level.
We exposed spyware put in by Compiere, removed security holes, patch up countless bugs and extend the model's model. And we still have no staff. No one is paid by ADempiere. Its only resemblance of a headquarters is at ADempiere Deustchland e.V. where its registered as a Non-Profit organisation, temporary acting for the world project, just in case.
Our sister contending projects Compiere and OpenBravo already received millions in fundings and those have to be paid back. Thus switches have to be flipped back, bills paid, advertising done, pretty long legs waxed, licensings reworded and free-riders turned away.
How long can they go on? Until they go public? Not during this financial meltdown. But even if that didn't happen, how can they sell when there is this brother ADempiere hot on their heels with betterware and still free with no melanine powder?
Open Bravo has more than 70 mercenary soldiers that has to be paid monthly with yearly bonuses. ADempiere has none, but freedom fighters buried in all those caves all over the world. Some are fanatical enough never to come out from their fox holes. Particularly me.
More and more volunteer open source army marches into ADempiere rank each day without enticements of rank or resource. Patches sent, bugs fixed, testings reported and conversations go on without ordering latte.
ADempiere is the first in many things that the others copy. First in giving a Virtual Machine, first in free migration, first in Wikisite, first in IRC room, first in getting first SF rankings fastest time since inception.
For the next millenium ADempiere shall go on, and can never die. Simple, there is no office to seal, no labour to picket and no one to kill. For us here, it is not a ploy. We are serious freedom fighters.
2 comments:
Much as IT is disliked for acronyms, perhaps utilising the generic FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) is music to people's ears as well as respecting the Free part of Richard Stallman's original intent.
Yes you are right. I wrote to Richard Stallman about my previous OpenBravo article, and guess what? He hates it! Or so i think from his nicely thought out email reply, knowing that he must be too busy minding the Universe rather than answer my clumsy article.
He lambasted me for still using the word Open Source and Linux instead of GNU-Linux. That is why i am begining to write more FOSS into it.
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