Graabein asks:
"I'm part of an effort to startup a VoIP provider. We've decided to use Open Source Software wherever possible. Production is not a problem, we can handle the VoIP network itself, POTS termination, web sites, email systems, all the usual stuff. The business side of things is another matter entirely. We need to be able to handle Customer Relationship data, manage subscriptions, handle invoicing and accounts, have a web shop of sorts, online billing, credit card transactions, and more. Whatever system we use has to be able to handle national standards for accounting, or at least be possible to modify to do so. We've looked at Compiere, but our business types are not impressed. Neither am I, for that matter. Requiring an Oracle license is one thing (database independence is 'in development', but it has been for a long time, with no discernable progress), not working properly with Mozilla is another (you need IE to use it fully in HTML mode). What other options are there?"
"Our business types are full of suggestions for supposedly excellent and well suited systems, however they all have in common that they require Windows on the client. If we choose one of those systems our OSS policy is pretty much moot and OSS has been relegated to (some) servers in the computer room and that's about it. I don't mind running these business functions on a Windows server if that is the best system for the job, but having to run Windows on every client in order to access the data is simply not acceptable.
We want Linux and OpenOffice on every desktop. We want to be able to access customer data from a variety of clients, even including Windows. The same goes for Accounting data, HR data, QA data, you name it. Do we have to write our own system from scratch? I'm not sure that is very realistic."
Slashdot Mirror
Every time someone asks a question like this, you guys start spouting off software titles no one has ever heard of that you found in a search. What legitimate, recognizable companies are using only OS to run their business??
Have any of you actually used these programs? If you had, you would know that none of them individually or all together do what the guy was asking for:
"We want Linux and OpenOffice on every desktop. We want to be able to access customer data from a variety of clients, even including Windows. The same goes for Accounting data, HR data, QA data, you name it."
Good luck pal. A combination of crap that is integrated by a shoestring might do all these things, but they won't do it very well.
You can run your little "consulting" or lawnmower business or keep recipes with OS all you want, but just try it with a real business when SIGNIFICANT CAPITAL is involved.
Try not being able to make Payroll some time because your buggy Open Source apps blow up and you can't get anyone to fix it fast enough. No thanks.
Bottom line is that fanboy crowing about attempts at open source business software are a joke. Open Source Order Entry, Accounting, HR, Inventory, etc. titles pale in comparison to whats out there for Windows. There is no contest. Web servers? Sure. Firewalls? You bet. But business software? Nope.
The legitimate business world does not want the risk associated with dealing with one-man software outfits that "posture" as if they were a legitimate business. Nor do we want some fly-by-night piece of s--t that some teenagers wrote one night on a whim and decided to try to sell it before they drop it after graduation. We don't want to wait for emails from some bozo in Germany if we have an emergency with our systems.
Take your buggy (and frequently abandoned) "projects" and trade them with each other.
Me, I'll go the safe route and still be in business when you're back working at Best Buy.
WTF is with all the attempted lessons on business management doing in an article where the author specifically asked for OSS solutions to a particular business issue for a particular business model!!!?!
You folks are no better than spammers clogging up the discussions with your attempts to steer the asker "straight" with your lame ass advice to pony up to commercial vendors!
Its like some guy asked which Pepsi machine to use for his new coin-op business and was crapflooded with a bunch of folks who love Coke. IOW, poster wasn't asking for help with the Business Model, hello!?!
Maybe the model of pasting Made with OSS on the product will be no more effective than Harley's Made in USA, but let them try their business model and give them the advice they asked for rather than carpflood the discussion with borderline SPAM about commercial products.