'Possible' Review and Interview of OpenMFG

[Segedunum]

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Sorry for cross-posting, but I thought it appropriate for this to get on to 
KDE Enterprize as well (sorry for the Z - I'm old fashioned). Note, I'm not 
committing to this yet, and it may take weeks or months, but it is something 
I'd like to do.

On Fri, 2 Jul 2004 01:18:01, Fabrice Mous wrote:
> Review the application, maybe even do an interview and we get it published
> on enterprise.kde.org and announce it on dot.kde.org.

Well, I'm very interested in companies like OpenMFG (not just because it is 
Qt-based and they have Tux on their home page) for several reasons.

The first is that they are using the concept of an 'open source' community to 
lower costs and allow people to customize in a bigger way than any 100% rigid 
proprietary solution ever could (this is just one of the reasons for huge ERP 
failures in the 90s). No it isn't free (look at it - it is an 
ERP/MRP/Enterprize solution for goodeness sake!) nor could it ever possibly 
be, but it just shows what is actually going on in the world today and how 
people are thinking. This is a workable business model. There is, 
potentially, incredible demand from the businesses they are targetting, and 
KDE and Linux could accelerate that demand in a very mutual way. It's the way 
forward.

But, the biggest reason is that beyond the hype of Linux on the desktop, lower 
costs, usability and the 'inevitability' of it all, people are going to ask 
"Well, what are people actually doing with it? What can I run on it?" Of 
course, that is a vicious circle, which is why small steps and people 
actually doing things such as this is so important. People like to hype 
several thousand seat deployments like Largo and Extremadura, but the three, 
seven and ten desktop deployments you see on Enterprize KDE are so important. 
Why? Because people are using KDE to get stuff done - that's the essential 
truth - and it's a pretty incredible realization.

So yes, I want to see if I can do some sort of review of OpenMFG, the software 
and, most importantly, the business model they have. An interview would be 
nice, which may happen because I think I'd have to speak with them in some 
way anyway. I'll also try and get someone in who knows more about enterprize 
ERP/MRP systems than I ever could.

I'll try and 'tentatively' see what time I can set aside over the few weeks, 
and see what I can do. This will be a major review and/or interview as it's a 
bit more than just an application, and won't happen overnight, but it'll be 
worth it.

Cheers,

David

PS. Also, I'm terribly selfish, and I'd like to see some proper screenshots of 
OpenMFG's software running within a KDE environment if possible! They only 
have Windows there at the moment and one or two poor Linux looking ones.
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