Comments on: At SCaLE 7x In Los Angeles, Part 2 http://mobodojo.com/2009/02/23/at-scale-7x-in-los-angeles-part-2/ Because its hard to spell. Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:21:27 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Ned Lilly http://mobodojo.com/2009/02/23/at-scale-7x-in-los-angeles-part-2/comment-page-1/#comment-2791 Ned Lilly Tue, 24 Feb 2009 19:40:02 +0000 http://mobodojo.com/?p=1195#comment-2791 Colin, I'm afraid you're mistaken. Maybe other vendors have "muddied the waters" in the past by throwing abandoned older products over the open source wall in the pursuit of marketing magic - but we've taken the exact opposite tact. There are three Editions of xTuple ERP, all of which share the same code base - in fact, the GUI client is exactly the same. The core offering is the free, open source, PostBooks Edition. The two commercial products (Standard and Manufacturing Editions) add additional, more complex functionality to the PostgreSQL database schema (tables, procedures, functions, triggers, etc.) You can see a functional comparison at www.xtuple.com/comparison, and you can download the full source code (client and server) for the core PostBooks Edition at www.sf.net/projects/postbooks. Commercial customers (and all our partners) have full access to that source code as well, and we have had great success with users - paid and unpaid - happily contributing to the ongoing development of the product. We've had numerous instances of commercial customers contributing or sponsoring work that goes straight into the free PostBooks core. Our bug tracker, message boards, full docs, and much more is available online totally free and unfettered at our community website (www.xtuple.org). We happily support free users to the best of our ability on the message boards, and I think overall we've done a fair job of working collaboratively with our community. And of course, we've released a major piece of sophisticated business software into the open source world, and made every effort to build a sustainable business model for our company and the tens of thousands of people who depend on our software every day (most of whom don't pay us a dime). What part of that do you have a problem with? Ned Lilly CEO, xTuple Colin, I’m afraid you’re mistaken. Maybe other vendors have “muddied the waters” in the past by throwing abandoned older products over the open source wall in the pursuit of marketing magic – but we’ve taken the exact opposite tact.

There are three Editions of xTuple ERP, all of which share the same code base – in fact, the GUI client is exactly the same. The core offering is the free, open source, PostBooks Edition. The two commercial products (Standard and Manufacturing Editions) add additional, more complex functionality to the PostgreSQL database schema (tables, procedures, functions, triggers, etc.) You can see a functional comparison at http://www.xtuple.com/comparison, and you can download the full source code (client and server) for the core PostBooks Edition at http://www.sf.net/projects/postbooks.

Commercial customers (and all our partners) have full access to that source code as well, and we have had great success with users – paid and unpaid – happily contributing to the ongoing development of the product. We’ve had numerous instances of commercial customers contributing or sponsoring work that goes straight into the free PostBooks core.

Our bug tracker, message boards, full docs, and much more is available online totally free and unfettered at our community website (www.xtuple.org). We happily support free users to the best of our ability on the message boards, and I think overall we’ve done a fair job of working collaboratively with our community. And of course, we’ve released a major piece of sophisticated business software into the open source world, and made every effort to build a sustainable business model for our company and the tens of thousands of people who depend on our software every day (most of whom don’t pay us a dime).

What part of that do you have a problem with?

Ned Lilly
CEO, xTuple

]]> By: Colin Rooney http://mobodojo.com/2009/02/23/at-scale-7x-in-los-angeles-part-2/comment-page-1/#comment-2789 Colin Rooney Tue, 24 Feb 2009 10:42:46 +0000 http://mobodojo.com/?p=1195#comment-2789 xTuple ERP is not open source! They do muddy the waters by offering an open source product called Postbooks but their ERP is closed and comes with a price tag. Sadly Open Source has become a very useful marketing tag for commercial software companies that sell proprietary products that before now they would have struggled to get potential customers to look at it. xTuple ERP is not open source! They do muddy the waters by offering an open source product called Postbooks but their ERP is closed and comes with a price tag. Sadly Open Source has become a very useful marketing tag for commercial software companies that sell proprietary products that before now they would have struggled to get potential customers to look at it.

]]>