Privet. A big greeting of peace and joy to your first bazaar conference for Open Source ERP based on ADempiere. As you all know, this project is the result of a community fight to ensure that freedom of sourcecode in the Compiere project is continued for its unstoppable growth. And that was about 5 years ago and this intention is now proven. The software did grow and it is becoming not only better but cleaner and more stable than any other software in ERP that we know.
The project keeps getting the top 3 most active ranking in SourceForge.net. It keeps getting contributions. It also keep getting flames. It is thus quite a misunderstood project. Many people keep asking why is this project not properly institutionalised with a good head office like SAP and proper sales people like those long legged girls you find if you call PriceWaterhouse or IBM?
There are good things and bad things about such a project. Many people have written that going open source is a great thing because you can always download for free. Even though Richard Stallman, the father of FSF always reminded us that Free here does not mean Free Beer but Freedom as in Free Speech, but for effective reasons, been available for download means Free Beer. You can have the product here. You don't really pay anything. Yes, you may have to pay a teacher to teach you how to use it, but then many of you can teach yourselves. Look at me. I taught myself.
But been open source allows me to teach myself much faster because i can refer freely to so many other resources and thus the whole Internet become a great teacher and eco-system which we thrive. So what does this leave the other form of open source such as 'open core' or 'commercial open source'? A good example is our own parent project Compiere and the other sibling, Open Bravo. They are financed by a third party, unlike ADempiere. Thus they have to repay those loans and benefits. That is why you find them actually closed now. You have to pay just to get certain code. Of cource they still give you free stuff but they keep the really better codes as commercial offerings. That will ensure their eventual decay as such code won't enjoy the attention and debugging and review that it should with the other lesser code.
For us, all our good code are out there. Those who put them out are famous. They have become branded and known to more people than they could have in their lifetimes if they did not give out their code. So they are rewarded in return. For me myself, is a good example. I wrote tutorials at first. Just the simple stuff which no one contributed on how to really start debugging Compiere in 2004. Through my www.red1.org i uploaded as fast as i found the secrets of the code development process. Well, the rest is history. People know me so much that they asked me to be the community leader, of which till now, i regard it as a defacto role of serving and continuing the story and passion of sharing.
I resigned from the formal role because formality is not really needed for that role to be effective. You too can play that role and you must. Leaders of example and passion are always needed. You will be respected and you have to remain humble to keep earning the respect. You will also be rewarded in many ways. I am sure Aleksandr Ryabikov can tell you since i have known him quite a long time in the forums and in some emails.
When you upload code, you ensure not just branding and first mover positioning but you also learn back faster from how users are using your code. You also get it better maintained by others as some will give back and thus saving you more time to maintain it. Thus you sustain yourself better in the long run, and that is the most important factor for survival.
I have known Russia for many of its famous stories and one of which i cannot forget is the way it survive through sustaining the winters of wars. It is like its own Russian Chess quality. It offers gambits to gain a position. It plays for time to be in existence. Similarly those are the secrets of this bazaar. It will survive ad infinitum as long as
the best code are out there and someone will keep on giving.
This bazaar and sourcecode has taught me so much and earn me income since 2004. I feel i must give back. And i know some of you will also give back. And so far we didn't need many to give back. Only a few has been enough. You see that our top people are few but it makes a lot of difference. Imagine if more of us are involved, we can help the world and earn more karma for ourselves.
May you have a great conference. May you make new friends here. May you share back more than you get from it. May you be blessed with peace and prosperity. I wish the Russian Conference and Community great success and future.
Sincerely yours
red1