ERP is HIGHLY COMPLEX

When Compiere first debut as FOSS ERP (for those uninitiated it is Free and Open Source Software for Enterprise Resources Planning) around circa 2000 AD, many including me jumped into it not knowing that all that scripture is not code. Having sourcecode to a full fledge ERP System is only 10% of the journey. 

90% of an ERP System is the complexity of business organisation and processes itself. It is not about the number of tables that you now know has to exist in an ERP, but the sheer number of tables going off into a seeming indescribable mess with functions that seems to reach for the sky.

An ERP System is by definition integrated and that means on table joining to another joining to another, well i could go on, but for example:

C_Order join to C_OrderLine join to C_BPartner join to C_Location join to C_PaymentTerms join to M_Product, ok enough!

Perhaps the good side of having FOSS is that you can examine all this up close and tinkle with it. But the sheer size of it (around 1.9 gigabytes of code and scripts for ADempiere) can put you back say 23 years to unravel where the spaghetti begins or ends, and that may not really tell you which is an end or beginning.

That is perhaps why Jorg Janke, Compiere's owner must have sniggered when he decided to unload it all into cyberspace under SourceForge (for those again of the ignorant kind, SourceForge.net is a free repository for most of the world's FOSS projects). Having the Bible in one hand and the Messiah on the other does not deliver the Kingdom of God at hand.

You still need experts and gurus, and that is why they do not seem to die out or lose out in the speakers' circuits. If Linux maturity and global advancements are insufficient to turn your office completely Microsoft Windows free, then what more to expect from turning your whole or partial business operations such as inventory and order handling on an FOSS tap that does not easily turn right.

Don't get me wrong about FOSS now. Even proprietary software such as SAP, Oracle, Accepta, JD Edwards, and Baans possess the same demons. ERP is just 90% non-software stuff.

If you decide to go down the FOSS road, take my advice. Stick to one that is community based and not those that are plying the FOSS gospel for gold rather than glory. ADempiere is the gospel and glory whereas Compiere and OpenBravo are now just for the pot of gold.

Commercial interests take advantage of the FOSS chicks and lay out elaborate licensing and packaged traps that sooner or later you have to pay somewhere somehow at the expense of delayed bug fixes or releases. It is a zero sum game. They wish to earn more than they put in.

Here at ADempiere we already thanked the Lord Compiere the first day it was born. We made our money the hard way, that is by selling time based services and no more. All further is disastrous excessive self-defeating greed.