rushabh

Open source does not come with any warranty. You are welcome to spend your time and fix what you feel is broken, or pay someone for it.

ERPNext has a large and active community with thousands of active installs, and bugs are constantly being fixed and enhancements being pushed.

Unfortunately an ERP system needs time and effort to configure correctly, and what you consider bugs, might just be things that you need your accountant to tell you about.

Author here. This is wrong information. Not sure where you are getting this from.

Also as I mentioned above, docker installs are actively supported.

https://github.com/frappe/frappe_docker

There are standard docker images available [0]. Not sure why you would you virtual images when there is an easy install script and a docker.

While I agree it’s a complex beast (it’s an ERP system), there is a large community [1] and active forum.

Also if you are happy paying $300/month for a proprietary product, why would you expect the same for $0 from an open source product?

[0] https://github.com/frappe/frappe_docker

[1] https://discuss.erpnext.com

The amount of founder/CEO backlash on this thread is eye opening. The OP said many things, among which he talked about the effort required to put in to be a master in your craft.

No one is forced to work for such a company. There are many low/mid paying comfortable jobs you can do that suit your personality.

The reality is that drive and effort. How you redistribute rewards is another thing.

The article does not say you need to work long hours. It only says 5 hours does not cut it.

While they are very much in the neo-liberal Anglo-American bent, they still provide the most eclectic and readable collection of global stories in one format.

The ideal mid-way frameworks offer both, a library of patterns that work for internal applications that are almost no-code, and ability to write code where business logic is required. There are some things that are still best expressed as code. I am not sure if a truly "no-code" framework is possible for real-world applications.

We have built Frappe Framework [1] as a platform to re-use code for our massively complex application (ERPNext with 900+ models). While it does not have a drag-and-drop UI builder, object creation and migration is fully automated via configuration. The key reason why this works as low-code is:

1. Automated UI generation (via metadata)

2. Automated database management (schema and migrations)

3. Abstracted functionality that can run on any object (like permission rules, workflows, assignments, file attachments, PDF generation etc)

The configurations are stored as JSON files that can be used for source code management [2]. Frappe Framework is still under the radar, but of late we have seen many teams using it massively for internal tooling.

[1] https://frappeframework.com/

[2] https://github.com/frappe/erpnext/tree/develop/erpnext/selli...

I think most people forget that when you (or anyone) puts something out there in the public domain, there is no obligation / entitlement on either sides.

The user is not obliged to make a payment to the creator, nor is the creator obliged to respond to every need (question/bug report/contribution)

Any warranty or service request must come with some form of contract between the user and creator.

We as a community must help in people understand this. Open source is not a contract. No one is entitled to anything.

The biggest problem with Google is that they became so successful in search and ads. It confuses the hell out of the company who their real customer is.

What if instead of monetizing via ads, they had gone with premium accounts with personal search history and enterprise search products? That would have forced them to innovate on their core expertise and kept them empathetic to the end user. Right now, all they care is about usage stats.

Also Google never had a good design ethic right from the beginning. Early products like Chat, Groups were badly designed and very inconsistent. They cared more about scale and performance at that point.

The Google we see today is probably because of those early decisions made on the backs of runaway ad revenue. I hope the management has a change of heart, because I can see other companies chipping away at Google otherwise.

Checkout Frappe Datatables (https://frappe.io/datatable) (MIT License) it has most of what you need.

Thanks for the feedback. Will take it and improve it. You can also file the bugs at https://github.com/frappe/books

Made by the amazing team at Timeless https://timeless.co/

We are just under $1M annual revenue, so not really making a lot of money, but not to bad either. Since we are bootstrapped, so no really pressure to grow exponentially. From very early days we had paying customers (just enough to support a lean team). Our major growth has come in the last 2 years, where our team size grew from <15 to >40.

So we are based in India so salaries tend not to inflate too much. We also pick raw talent and nurture them (and also pay above market), so it just about works!

Having said that, I think the market for products like ERPNext (our flagship) is huge, in the tens of billions. Looking at our current traction, we really hope we can make the product good enough for enterprises to switch to this. I see a huge potential revenue in support, assurance, consulting when it comes to it. So its a waiting game.

Thanks for the feedback. We don't have specific plans as of now, but do add your request on GitHub (https://github.com/frappe/books/issues) and be part of the community!

Yes, mostly a modern user experience. Also the web stack is much more accessible there are many developers who are already familiar with it.

We have been doing ERPNext for 10 years now and a lot of what we did with Frappe Books is based on that learning.

No this is a fresh implementation and completely in Javascript. ERPNext is a client-server application based on Python.

There were a couple of itches we were trying to scratch. First we realized that a lot of people were looking for a good free accounting application and ERPNext was just too heavy. Also we realized that cloud is a bottleneck. Most SMB owners can't manage a cloud or write a simple Shell command.

The only way to truly build decentralized solution was Desktop. Also we realized this was a big gap in FOSS offerings.

This is just the first version, we do plan to add inventory and other capabilities overtime.

Thank you! It is single threaded. Since it is a file based system (sqlite), so you can put it on your favorite cloud backup.

Started as a solo developer, spent 10+ years to grow it into a small business with 40 employees.

The hardest lesson for me was that at the crux of it, business is all about scarcity. There is no other magic out there. A great question to ask yourself is: How many people want what I sell and how many people are already serving it.

Business is about being in the right market with the right product, and then differentiating against all other players in the market. Once you figure this out, you will solve most of the operational problems.

That article has been written by a growth hacker not an epidemiologist, and it does not start with that disclaimer. Please consider not spreading it.

ERPNext is a full featured Open Source ERP (GPL V3, not open core) with reasonable traction. https://github.com/frappe/erpnext Disclaimer: check my bio

ERPNext (GPL V3, https://github.com/frappe/erpnext) is being deployed by many large companies as we speak. India's largest Stock Broker Zerodha (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4B6nfq1UR3Y) and biggest Listed Company (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnoWwSBDQlI) are actively using ERPNext.

ERPNext is not open core like Odoo.

Disclaimer: I am the founder of ERPNext

Posted GitHub since it’s HN. Docs available at https://erpnext.com/docs/user/manual/en

You should also checkout ERPNext (https://github.com/frappe/erpnext). Its another free and open source ERP (GNU GPL v3) which is not open core. ERPNext is also built as a monolith, so you get maximum features out of the box instead of relying on 100s of extensions to fulfill your requirements. All since there is no "enterprise" version, there is no chance of features dropping out like accounting and payroll.

ERPNext has reasonable traction too (~5k+ stars on GitHub, 12k+ forum members) and is used by some very large enterprises.

Disclaimer: I am the founder of ERPNext

There are multiple paths to success. “Solve a problem” irrespective of the size of potential market, is also a great path to building great Startups.

Experiences in India will vary dramatically based on which state you live in. If you are rural Kerla, a state with 50M people in South India, you are likely to get some of the best quality healthcare are very affordable rates.

It’s hard to generalise anything about India which is incredibly huge and diverse.

Frappe Accounting is an electron based app exactly for this (GPL v3). We have pushed an alpha version and would love to find collaborators. Out of the box you can setup chart of accounts, make bills, payments, get basic accounting reports.

https://github.com/frappe/accounting

https://frappe.io/accounting

Anyone willing to collaborate, please drop me a mail.

"When companies came to us, seeing our success, and asked for special working relationship in order to collaborate on code, demanding preferential treatment that would place them above our users, we told them no. This happened numerous times over the years, and only recently again, this time with Amazon. Some have aligned and became wonderful partners to us and the community. Others, sadly, didn't follow through. We have a commitment that we will treat a single developer contributing to our products the same as others. There is no preference, and we will reject any ask to have one. Our answer has always been a constant: send a pull request, like everybody else does. The quality will speak for itself."

The way this is written, it seems like there was a difference of opinion in terms of the product architecture, and not a purely commercial decision by Amazon. I would think it would make commercial sense for the team at Elastic to align with Amazon than the other way round. On the other hand Amazon claims that Elastic was moving away towards proprietary code [1].

Overall, being in open source for a decade, I am against this trend in dual licensing (which I fear is pushed by Venture Capitalists). People forget that the fact that you have freedom and zero friction, is what makes open source awesome. There are other ways to make money, like building a kick-ass consulting practice around the open source offering.

[1] https://opendistro.github.io/for-elasticsearch/faq.html

When you publish open source, this is what you sign up for. As a publisher of open source software, I think "open core" does a huge disservice to the community as it feels deceptive. While there is no denying that creators needs to be paid, communities thrive on freedom and openness, and dual licensing takes that away.

Companies that publish open source must realize that they cannot make money from the "software". Open source gives companies a brand, that they can then leverage to do other services like support, consulting, hosting, merchandise, events, etc.

There was a time when service companies wanted to move into products because of high margins and artificial scarcity, but enough open source will ensure that software licensing is not a sustainable model to seek rent, and product companies must also move to services to be able to grow and sustain.

I work in open source, which is also kind of in a similar problem. A way to think of open source is that its a utility, like the highway system. The people who make money from highways are the car companies.

I think a similar challenge exists with journalism. Writing and publishing has become so cheap and I can easily fill my time with reading reasonably good content on free blogs or Medium that paying a tiny publication may not be a good idea. (I already subscribe to newspapers and Economist)

If you have exclusive content, then you can charge for it. https://the-ken.com/ is a good example of a small publication that has done well as it focuses on a niche, early adopter community.