Including aeroo

[eLBati]

Following up the discussions at OCA/hr#17 (comment) and odoo ML, I open this issue to decide whether to include aeroo modules under the OCA umbrella, or to move modules like hr_payroll_register_report outside of the OCA.

[pedrobaeza]

I think Aeroo can be included into OCA if @sraps is OK about that and signs the CLA. Aeroo covers one need that none of the current reporting engines do: allow fast design by non-tech user. For me, it has served as a cheap way of having custom design reports in OpenERP, because they have it on DOC or XLS.

[jjscarafia]

• 1 for aeroo included into OCA

Ing. Juan José Scarafía
(+54 9 341)153 278039
skype: jjscarafia
twitter: @jjscarafia https://twitter.com/jjscarafia
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www.ingadhoc.com

2014-09-12 11:10 GMT-03:00 Pedro M. Baeza notifications@github.com:

I think Aeroo can be included into OCA if @sraps
https://github.com/sraps is OK about that and signs the CLA. Aeroo
covers one need that none of the current reporting engines do: allow fast
design by non-tech user. For me, it has served as a cheap way of having
custom design reports in OpenERP, because they have it on DOC or XLS.

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub
#1 (comment).

[sraps]

Well in practice I have several questions and they are not directly Aeroo related, for instance I have other projects as well, so as other's do as well. Passing away just one project without any particular reason, solved nothing. :

1. What in practice Aeroo (read any project) could give to OCA?
2. What in practice OCA can give to Aeroo (read any project)?
3. What in practice and by whom is being done to finance the development, communication, promotion of the project....?
4. How these efforts would be better than now, in particular?
5. What is the OCA role and goal in maintaining it's own Odoo branch?
6. Does OCA differentiate between project and product?
7. How does OCA sees itself to solving main problem of FOSS, creating the product then monetization of it? Producing +/- quality code in great amounts is allready solved, isn't it?

IMHO the last one is the most important question of all. At the moment I have no answers to a single one of them.

[dreispt]

Great questions, and the answers should be compiled in a FAQ next to a "How to contribute" guideline.

[hbrunn]

1. The code + permissions as outlined here: http://odoo-community.org/page/website.cla
2. Faster bug fixes, more input, more reviews, less maintenance on your own because the burden is shared
3. Nothing at the moment. It's a non-profit organization that members participate in voluntarily
4. Hopefully there are less never merged fixes than here: https://code.launchpad.net/aeroo/+activereviews, some of them very crucial ones. I must admit that I currently don't even bother to PR into your branch because of previous experience, and use this one for 8.0 improvements: https://github.com/jamotion/aeroo
5. The original idea is outlined here: https://lists.launchpad.net/openerp-community/msg02197.html tldr: Bug fixes only, support end of live time versions
6. can't answer that
7. same here

About 6 and 7: I personally don't think the OCA should be concerned with that, that's up to the businesses themselves. 1-5 tell you why it's still a good idea to join forces.

[sraps]

In general practice things happen like this if everything is ovned and managed by general public without anyone specific in charge:

• nothing is ever built from scratch by general public - every effort is being started by someone specific;
• nothing is ever developed to a higher level by general public - every effort is being executed by someone specific;
• things can be financed by general public - in fact many of great efforts are being financed by public;
• in a long term patch design is never sustainable - someone have to feel responsible for that, if noone does feel responsible noone in particular ever does care;
• problem with FOSS and general public is that everyone takes everything for granted, that's is so humane, one takes the branch where someone have done the job beforehand;
• general implementer are more likely to pay for total solution with FOSS, 0.001% wants to finance backoffice tools that made it possible;

That is why many of FOSS projects are in essence geek tools, workable still are not turnkey solutions. In my oppinion OCA should focus on maintaining and developing environment of FOSS ERP systems (which are totally different business model than mugware) so that every player feels comfortable, not only the central or end users.

Look at any other associations out there, most of them fight for better environment for those involved, none of them fight for better product. In contrast OCA stands for perfectioning product (introduce standards) and trying to push costs down (which is already not so high). Do I (I am speaking for myself) need this? No, I do not put anything of that in a first place.

At the moment problem is dog-eat-dog environment while we are supposed to work in technolgy business, but in fact are selling man-hours at lower possible cost. That is why most implementers of Odoo execute policy - rapid deployment (stated 3 months per project !!!), and run. Of course they are fixing some bugs in a way, but 1/1000 gives anything back, not even the ideas or technologies. Only few of the developers "eat their own dogfood".

I see no particular practical reason passing Aeroo to OCA:

• I see no reason it'd help me develop Aeroo;
• it see no way it'd help me or make possible developing new projects (efforts shall bring options, not more work, just to pay bills);
• it even are not capable of incepting and developing new projects from the ground on public basis, as it's not OCA purpose at the moment;

Concluding, I hope, I could push the movement towards solving real problems - selling the technologies, not patch-man-hours on other's developments, so that everyone involved benefits from the technology not only salesman or end users. And the reward would be really mature product not the patch blanket as it's now.

https://www.google.com/search?q=patch+blanket&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=iIIaVPrqF6WGywOKkYLoAg&ved=0CBwQsAQ&biw=1920&bih=959

[sraps]

http://odoo-community.org/page/website.faq

Does the Association need money?
The association is now soliciting organizational sponsorships. You can make a donation here. However, contributions of time for committee work, development, documentation, testing, user support, and advocacy are the preferred forms of contribution from individuals.

In essence this means:

1. no we don't need money;
2. we're fed up with the daily support and bugfixing and testing and we welcome volunteers (!!!), no skills required;
3. we need volunteers for user support - it means, we do not charge money for user support. Users are not our source of funding.

Sorry for my sarcasm.

[rvalyi]

@sraps, I think there is a point a missing point: without OCA, without an organized community, I'm pretty sure things can become pretty worse quite soon (brutal re-licensing, surprise roadmap, obsolescence by design etc...).

On the other hand, I also think that OCA will need to provide a fair visibility to module authors. Not unleashed advertisement but serious yet explicit visibility of the work done, possibly including HTML links. By doing so, implementation businesses could certainly get a benefit of image, specially in the high end implementations, that could sometimes replace in part marketing expense of any kind. That is you would get your business value. In fact, if on the contrary OCA dilute authors visibility and incentive users to think it's all for granted, then yes, OCA would instead destroy business value.

This isn't sorted out, but I personally wish we deal with these topics with the right amount of balance. May be some big guys of OCA are big enough to afford this to be just a give away. But we should not forget that if OCA goes with no business model at all, it will not attract many guys like you and it will not resist long against the power of money that will make whole different plans for the product.

my 2 cts

[pedrobaeza]

@sraps, are you aware that we don't need your permission to start an OCA fork of Aeroo (obviously respecting work attribution)? And we will do it if you don't want to join efforts, because as you know this tool is very useful, but I and a lot of people like me don't want to contribute to a personal branch having the possibility to make it under the umbrella of an organization that has also some quality tools and a critical mass that assures the continuity of the project (which you don't).

Sorry if I sound rude, but this is my opinion after collaborating with pre-OCA and now OCA for about 2 years.

Regards.

[sraps]

@rvalyi

• Brutal re-licensing have happened before, we've all faced it;
• Surprise roadmap - focus and scope of Odoo have changed since v8;
• Obsolescence, with 1.5 y (which is nonsense by design) of life-cycle we are running from somebody I guess;
• totally agree on the rest;
• I would add project high jacking.

@pedrobaeza

• are you aware that we don't need your permission to start an OCA fork of Aeroo (obviously respecting work attribution)?

Yes, I am, and that is best and still the worst idea being done every day. There is a huge difference in forking for your personal (in-company) use and forking well promoted software out of interest of polishing one's own image, like you are offering with Aeroo and OCA. If Aeroo is forked by OCA, be aware - at the moment OCA have done nothing so that Aeroo could be further developed, not to mention the efforts invested to promote Aeroo facing Odoo's constant ignorance for the REAL community investing big money in quality software.

• And we will do it if you don't want to join efforts, because as you know this tool is very useful, but I and a lot of people like me don't want to contribute to a personal branch having the possibility to make it under the umbrella of an organization that has also some quality tools and a critical mass that assures the continuity of the project (which you don't).

I guess OCA shall prove that critical mass, otherwise it looks more like aggressive threatening. I see just OCA saying "pass up or die". Let's face reality, OCA needs projects like Aeroo, the same as Aeroo needs REAL community involvement (not the show of public power) and financing if it's a community project for the community. Otherwise it's just a patchware and will die.

I'll make it clear, Aeroo can and shall be used by general public, but it is neither the result of it, nor developed or promoted by charitable efforts - moreover, ERPs are not made by charities.

If OCA does not find a way to enforce win-win situation, I see it as some repository for easier and ignorant use by the end no-customer. So that some bigshot can save $$$ not buying expensive proprietary ERP for their multi million enterprise. Yes every enterprises really using ERPs are spending at least hundreds of thousands on software, now it is spent mainly on the software it can not take for granted, for free.

I need association to change this de-facto rule, not to take over Aeroo.

[StefanRijnhart]

Well, that escalated quickly. To get back to the original question: should OCA adopt the Aeroo project? One of the principles of the OCA is to prevent double work. So if Alistek wants to keep maintaining Aeroo by themselves, OCA should not interfere as this would lead to double work. But as with Odoo itself, community contributed bugfixes for sometimes very serious problems have been left for too long on the Aeroo project. So although I'd rather work with Alistek on an OCA Aeroo project, if that is not possible then my suggestion would be to start an Aeroo backports project, along the same principles as the Odoo backports.

[sraps]

@StefanRijnhart Please read the @rvalyi comments.

OCA does not fix problems of Aeroo's further development. I admit that there is a space for improvement in Aeroo maintenance, but this is due to the fact that there is mass of users of Aeroo and tiny fraction of contributors of Aeroo. And now all the user and implementer mass acknowledges using Odoo, none of them even bother being aware using Aeroo for generating their daily invoices. OCA does not even put this problem in their scope.

This sounds like - give me engine for free, I swear to maintain it well, but maintenance is just part of the life-cycle, you know. Passing Aeroo to OCA saves the day for another ignorant user.

[sraps]

Moreover, there's not even clear who's in charge of OCA, is it a board or a single executive? Somebody responsible, tell me if OCA even wants to maintain Aeroo, dedicate some resources to it? Not even clear if it has such resources - just to maintain.

It is wrong by design: "Pass over and we'll figure out what to do then!"

At the moment I hear rather aggressive "pass up or die", nobody from OCA board have even bothered contacting me directly and discuss the offer, just some talks in github issues. So, unless something changes, I consider, it's just a bad joke.

[pedrobaeza]

@sraps, there is a board in OCA and I suppose they will comment about, but I as a contributor think: I'm not going to contribute to your project where no rules are defined, no quality tools and so on. That's why I'm saying I'm going to fork anyway and see if OCA accepts my "contribution". If not, we continue as is. If yes, people (a lot or very few), will choose surely OCA fork, not your repository, to contribute. Also OCB mechanism, as @StefanRijnhart says, can be another method of forking.

I want also a health ecosystem where all the involved people (integrators, developers, Odoo S. A.) can have a win-win situation, but this is another discussion that we already have in other projects. For instance, @Ajuaristi and me are doing a big MRP project. If you pretend to "block" Aeroo entrance in OCA for this discussion, I think this is the wrong way.

Regards.

Regards.

[sraps]

@pedrobaeza
At the moment I am a developer of Aeroo Reports and I am not implementer of it in any Odoo v8.

• For instance, @Ajuaristi and me are doing a big MRP project.

You are not telling me no news. Many people benefit from Aeroo Reports still few of them cared to give back just a credit that they are using Aeroo Reports.

At the moment OCA is a maintainer of their own branch of Odoo, and their own branches of bunch of other software. So what? How does it solves the daily problems of OEM developers? Do they coordinate any new development, that everybody would benefit?

So sorry, but OCA solves problems for end-user, not the developer. They get better software at virtually no cost.

Please, why do I, as a developer, need OCA?