Official implementors idea

This Wiki is read-only for reference purposes to avoid broken links.

Objectives

1. Make ADempiere the best ERP solution,stable,flexible,functional,fast.
2. Make ADempiere business friendly, strong business base, trusted by any company.
3. Make ADempiere releases and functionality complete and constant.
4. Continue to make ADempiere Bazaar the best choice for an ERP solution.
5. Provide stable resources to PMC work.
6. Encourage contributors to fully support Adempiere.

• Official Implementors rules

Idea Mindmap

File: media:Official_Implementors.mm

Example cases

The best way to understand this idea is by reading some Example Cases, some are base on situations i have seen in Adempiere community that can be benefited by this idea, others just come from my imagination. All this situations only try to be examples, not to be exact or totally true, and come from the memory so if anyone want to change them, feel free to do it.

Case1: New architectural improvement to make Adempiere modular, OSGI

One of Adempiere best developers after some research decides to improve the architecture to make it modular, so Adempiere can grow better and be more flexible. He propose this new functionality in the contributions list and starts the development of it, adding code to svn and documentation for the wiki. As this functionality is architectural and not focus on any costumer or market, there is no sponsors for it, but the Official Implementors find it key for Adempiere future and decide to prioritize it. PMC-WORK-TEAM focus on help this developer with his development,implementation,testing and after a month of hard work this important improvement is fully complete, ready for the next release. The original developer during this time can focus more on improve the design.

Result:

1. The original contributor feel constant and full support from the Adempiere community and improve his contribution.
2. All the community with no exception benefit from this important improvement.

Case2: Manufacturing company looks for a new ERP

One manufacturing company is looking for a new ERP with MRP functionality to manage three of his factories, during his research and thanks to the viral marketing Adempiere is doing by being the only opensource ERP that is stable, have complete functionality and nice interface, he finds Adempiere.com and see there are a list of Official Implementors that Adempiere certify can implement it in his company, after some more research he choose one implementor that meet all his requirements, when working on the project he finds out there is some functionality for his manufacturing requirements that is not in Adempiere, after more research he contact with the original contributor to the MRP functionality so he sponsor him to develop it and contribute it back to the community.

This new manufacturing functionality is voted and added to the contribution list and some other implementors find it useful so they prioritize it so the PMC-WORK-TEAM complete it to meet a fully integration with Adempiere and can be use as an standard.

Result:

1. The manufacturing company have an state of the art ERP with the functionality he needs, at the best cost and with a professional implementation and development.
2. One Official Implementor find a costumer that have the confidence Adempiere is a business friendly solution.
3. The original MRP contributor is sponsor to improve it and new functionality.
4. The hole community have an standard, stable, tested, full new functionality.

Case3: Important bug with costing methods

During the quality testing or during the costumer use of Adempiere, we find out there is an important bug that affects all community users and not allow Business trust our opensource ERP as the methods to calculate costs are not working well and not give truthful information in accounting. To solve this bug involve the change of a lot of code from the core, and takes time and expertise. The Adempiere Citizens vote to include this Bug in the contribution list to find sponsors that can solve it, but as the functionality is in the core not specific and quite complex, no sponsors are find for it. Official Implementors find it key for Adempiere to be useful for their costumers and instead of try to solve them for themselves they prioritize it and PMC-WORK-TEAM organize and work on it fully focus, solving it in less than 3 weeks, ready for the next release, where several costing methods work in all situations.

Result:

1. All the community benefit from this bug solving.
2. Adempiere is known for being and ERP you can trust and rely your company data on.

Case4: IBM is interested in Adempiere

Thanks to the work of all the community Adempiere becomes the best opensource ERP and standard for any company willing to change his ERP. This is notice by a big company as IBM, that decides to use Adempiere for some of his costumers. He becomes an Official Implementor, contributes some code and functionality and funds the community with 1M$. This gives bigger companies a benefit to use Adempiere and IBM as his implementor. IBM have clear from the beginning that they can't buy Adempiere or make it a one-company opensource project.

Result:

1. The community gets more sponsorship and resources to grow.
2. Adempiere have access to bigger costumers.
3. IBM can offer the best opensource ERP to his costumers, that is stable and committed to the community.
4. Adempiere remains an independent, multi-business,multinational community.

Case5: Incomplete Fixed assets contribution

One community member works in a new functionality for his costumer, base on an incomplete Adempiere functionality as Fixed assets. He improve it and make it fully functional for his costumer. As his time is limited he just contribute the code to the svn and leave a note in the forums. Some community members notice it and add it to the contribution list as they find it useful. After several months it goes to the top in priority for the Official Implementors and the PMC-WORK-TEAM research it, document it, complete it, test it and add it to the next release a fully Fixed assets module that is useful for most companies.

Result:

1. The community have a new functionality where there was not expertise before.
2. The original contributor have to update to latest Adempiere release if want to use the best Fixes asset solution.
3. The original contributor can have new costumers for his functionality thanks to his expertise, base on Adempiere latest release.
4. Official Implementors staff working in PMC-WORK-TEAM get more expertise from this work.

Case6: Xyz company decide to become an Official Implementor of Adempiere

Xyz company have been cooperating with Adempiere community for several years, use the ERP for some of his small costumers, but find the community is not constant and business friendly, so most of his work is use the most stable release he find from Adempiere,implement it in his costumers, and solve the bugs for them in his own repository, but this make his costumers unhappy as there are always new bugs even in simple functionality and not trust Xyz company and Adempiere ERP. After the Official Implementor idea is approved by Adempiere Citizens, they decide to become one of them, as they see the community more business friendly and committed to make an stable Adempiere. This way they can only focus on create value for their costumers, keep them happy and get more costumers.

So he apply for become an Adempiere Official Implementor(AOI), completes every month the economic contribution and sponsor one of his developer with more than 1 year of experience with Adempiere to work half time for the PMC-WORK-TEAM. As there are several other companies apply to become AOI at the beginning, the Adempiere Citizens vote them base on their past work and contributions in the community so they have a higher position in any promotion,webpage,etc... The AOIs are display in Adempiere homepage, where the Xyz company will display his logo in a preferential position linked to a wiki page where he can display his links, locations, abilities, markets,etc....

Result:

1. Xyz company not need to spend money and resources in maintain his own Adempiere version.
2. Adempiere have regular stable, testes releases that makes it the ERP to use for most companies.
3. All the community grow and benefit with a better ERP and more income.
4. Official Implementors get more costumers as they show their continuous ability and commitment to give good value and solutions base on Adempiere.

Process

1. 1 week to improve the idea mindmap
2. 1 week to write and improve the Adempiere Official Implementors rules
3. Vote by the Adempiere Citizens
4. If approved, start to implement it, call for candidates.

Listing of Implementors That Could Commit Resources

(List in progress in accordance to PMC Architecture Meeting April 14th) (Please link your names to your user pages and list your contributions and future commitments to earn karma points in progress)

1. Carlos Ruiz, Layda Salas, Global QSS.
2. Low Heng Sin, Joel Stangeland, Joel Hoffman, Idalica Inc.
3. Mark, Norbert, Tobias, metas GmbH
4. Ivan Calderon, Sunny, XianCaro
5. Kai Schaeffer, Karsten Thiemann, Schaeffer AG
6. Trifon, Thomas Kresser, Catura AG
7. Victor, e-Evolution
8. Teo Sarca
9. Cristina Ghita, Arhipac
10. Tony Snook
11. Paul Bowden, Steve Sackett, Jacken Chan, Adaxa
12. Jörg Viola, ObjectCode
13. Colin Rooney
14. Mario Calderon, Susanne Calderon, Systemhaus Westfalia
15. Jireh Arciaga
16. Michael Judd, Akuna
17. Moyses
18. Dirk Niemeyer, Action42
19. Armen Rizal, Goodwill Consulting
20. Daniel Tamm, Notima AB
21. Bayu Cahya
22. Peanut Blake
23. red1
24. Silvano, Freepath
25. Sysnova (sponsor of several Adempiere developments like webui and costing)
26. Ramiro Vergara, Alberto Abudinen, Fabian Aguilar, OFB Consulting Ltda
27. Alejandro Falcone, Openbiz
28. dellph
29. Angelo Dabalà, SVT & Nectosoft

Proposal to rank implementors

As of the time of writing this proposal there are 33 individuals listed (and mentioned 14 companies).

To rank the contributors Jörg Viola made a proposal (and CarlosRuiz is seconding and expanding it here) to make the same contributors to rank each other, this way:

• We assign 100 karma points to each one of the 33 individuals mentioned here
• Each person send an e-mail to a tabulation-collecting address distributing the 100 points to the others (nobody can assign karma points to him/her-self)
• The 100 points must be distributed according to the feeling of each person about which contributor has contributed more - or according to the feeling of which contribution is better. There is no absolute need to explain or sustain the distribution of points of each person, is a personal decision.
• Voting is exclusively base on public community contributions, other help or contributions that are private or out of the community need to be excluded from the voting feeling.
• People can assign karma points to individuals not listed here (we could forgot somebody that has contributed a lot)
• After the 100 points are distributed somebody tabulates the results (CarlosRuiz has offered to do this work) and publish the initial ranking of contributors
• After the ranking is done we schedule a meeting with the top ranked contributors to discuss the next steps about incentives and future commitment of contributors

Proposal to keep this working:

• Periodically (initially it could be monthly or bi-monthly) we assign 10 points to each contributor to distribute between the people in community that has contributed more in such period
• The ranked list is published and after an individual (or company) achieve a number of points (to define) it will enter to the official contributor list

IDEAS about Incentives for Official Implementors

It is proposed by Carlos Ruiz to first rank the implementors contributing mostly, and then conduct a meeting between the top ranked and they propose the incentives that hopefully will encourage non-contributors to become comtributors.

NOTE: Items in black have been accepted, items in red require further discussion.

1. Allowed advertising in our sites. Others are not allowed free advertising
2. Organize sponsor/contributor page with levels of commitment (platinum, gold, silver, bronze) like this
3. Design Adempiere wiki homepage to make it more business friendly:
   1. Clearly advertise OI's as in the example.
   2. Clearly display Adempiere functionality, advantages as the best opensource ERP alternative.
   3. Clearly display Adempiere business expertise, long term commitment of it's OI.
4. Early access to security warnings and fixes
5. Priority work on bugs reported by OIs
6. Sharing information between OIs about customization work being done on implementations
7. Regular (closed) OI meeting for joining efforts on enhancements
8. Weighted VOICE and weighted VOTE according to merits - make ADempiere a meritocracy of contributors, replacing the current democracy of lurkers
9. Advertisement with Adempiere brand
10. Prioritize PMC work
11. Application About page advertisement as OI's of Adempiere
12. Certify as Official Implementors by Adempiere
13. Use of Adempiere brand and IP, no other can use Adempiere logo in their webpages as an example, other than Power by Adempiere logo.
14. All contributions done by OI's are listed in OI advertisement page that link to the wiki, trackers,etc...
15. In all community pages only contributor developer name is allow, no company advertisement.

IDEAS to provide resources to PMC work

1. What resources OI's can continuously provide?
2. Developer work
3. Other work, document, consulting,etc...
4. Money
5. Servers

How OI's can vote to prioritize PMC work?

1. OI's vote at the same level
2. The vote create a ranking with the projects with higher priority
3. The voting is done at the start of every Release

What are the minimum resources Integrators need to provide to become OI's?

1. Minimun resources provided.
   1. 250 USD/ month
   2. Half time developer(coder, consultant,etc...) with at least 1 year Adempiere experience.
2. Continuous commitment to Adempiere community.
3. Continuous work with PMC
4. Legal structure as LTD.

Rules to end being an OC

1. End of continuous commitment

OC's levels

1. Platinum, those with more than 100 ranking
2. Gold, those with more than 70 ranking
3. Silver, those with more than 40 ranking
4. Bronze, those with ranking remaining

OC's commitment to Adempiere community

1. IP Contract signing
2. Legal structure

References

• Foundation Project
• Official Implementors rules
• Adempiere as a New Business Model Idea
• Adempiere Community structure clarify
• The ADempiere Foundation Sponsorship Program
• The ADempiere Foundation
• Foundation FAQs
• The ADempiere Foundation Development Program
• ADempiere Best Practices
• Sponsorship rules
• Implementation Best Practice