OpenERP Solves Open Source's Vexing Problem: Making Money
我對這篇文章做的摘要：
- "To succeed as an open source software publisher, you need to reach the critical mass of customers and partners, and you need a mature product," Pinckaers said. "Most of the open source ERP publishers, such as Compiere and Openbravo, who raised funds too early, are nearly dead.
- "We always took projects that let us make the product evolve as a complete ERP package," he said. "We refused a lot of projects simply because they were too customer-specific."
- "I tried several sources of revenue before arriving at the current model, which is very strong but difficult to put in place because it requires a mature product and a strong partner network,"
- Pinckaers channeled more than 50 percent of OpenERP's revenues into research and development to build a mature ERP product. Meanwhile, he was setting up customer communities and channel partners around the world. Channel partners get 90 percent of the revenue from all their implementation projects.
- OpenERP built a strong community by taking modifications customers submitted through the community, certifying them, and then rolling them out as new modules for its core application. The customer's reward is that their customized versions are automatically upgraded when a new version of the core product is rolled out.
