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Baan IVc/V - The First Open-Source ERP?
SlickJim asks: "Baan, up until recently a major name in the Enterprise Resource Planning [ERP] Market, is in trouble -- last time I checked market capitalization was down from a high around $8 billion to something around $0.5 billion.
as shown in this company profile. Possibly it will be bought out by one of the usual "strip 'em milk 'em" suspects -- CA, Geac or some other big business software vendor. A buyer would have to make an enormous investment, in technology and marketing, to restore confidence in the product. This investment would probably wipe out any likelihood of making a profit by selling licenses. So what would happen if Baan released the code for their ERP platform under an Open Source licence?"
First, I believe an large UK software house announced an agreement in principle to purchase Baan about three weeks ago, so they won't be independent for much longer.
More importantly, "historically" (by which I mean in the 1970's and 1980's) ERP software (then usually called MRP II) was actually very close to the open source model. In that: (i) you received source code with your purchase (ii) you were free to modify the source code in any way you so desired, with the level of support from the vendor for your modified code varying depending on how complex your modification was and how much you were willing to pay (iii) vendors would capture thier clients' mods and often roll them back into the base product (iv) for some products, there was an active process of exchanging mod code among customers independent of the vendor.
(iv) is perhaps most interesting. Some vendors actively encouraged and supported the distribution of mods, some looked the other way, and a few tried to license or discourage communication among clients. A few vendors, such as ASK, actually encouraged their customers to communicate among themselves and form independent advocacy organizations.
Today the situation seems to be more restricted. A few vendors still distribute source code, but usually under fairly tight licensing restrictions. Most low- and mid-range vendors are only distributing executables now. High end is another story, but those contracts are all negotiated on an individual basis.
sPh
They won't be. Why? They get most of the source already.
No company is very alike and all their software must be customized. Companies like SAP and Solomon (I don't know about BAAN) Basically provide the source and allow for rewrites and tweaking to fit certain business models. Now most companies don't have people who can read it so it doesn't matter anyway. But in its own way it is open. When we deal with Solomon we have our own people writing modules along with Solomon people. This makes for a happier experience all the way around I will tell you :).
Marc