I hadn't noticed this when it happened, but ComPiere was recently forked, as Frank Scavo notes in a detailed, excellent analysis. The fork came from a group of freelance ComPiere consultants that were apparently worried about NEA-funded Compiere's intentions, both present and future, as Frank notes:
Understandable from their side, but also from Compiere's. At the end of the day, Compiere has to own the roadmap, code, etc. They're the ones that are going to be hammered by customers if something goes wrong. It's a tradeoff one makes when going commercial open source. (Btw, Janke demolishes the notion that ComPiere, Inc. will be crippling the community project to enhance the viability of his company.
- The speed at which ComPiere Inc. processes fixes and enhancements submitted by contributors and the refusal, in some cases, to even accept them.
- The refusal of ComPiere Inc. to provide Compiere version migration tools except in the sale of a support agreement.
- Rumors that ComPiere Inc. is planning to limit the functionality of its open source offering, to better position some future proprietary offering.
You can view the forked project here. It's called Adempiere. Lame name, but then, it's not supposed to be a marketable business. :-)
Posted by Matt Asay on October 18, 2006 08:47 AM
