We have heard a lot about free open source software and development of software by volunteers . But we have little knowledge about it's working . How the development works . How the bug fixing is done . How the version control is done . How does the volunteers contribute their enhancement back to the original software. How does one maintain the source codes.What are user's experiences with respect to innovation/technology levels as compared to those of proprietory ones . How does one rate the success of Linux , apache , php , mysql , postgre vis a vis other contemprary commercial products in terms of increasing infulence and in terms of technology innovation .

The inputs and experiences of those familiar with this kind of software will be very much appreciated.

Hi Hitesh,

From my own experience there are two kinds of worlds for Linux and Open Source products and solutions:

- the one for personal use at home
- the one for business applications

Since BaanBoard is primarily focused on the second one I will talk to that.

The main driver for businesses to utilize Linux and Open Source products is because they bring the software costs down for buying licenses and maintenance. In other words the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).
In our Western economies where growth of sales is slow many companies have to become very creative in cutting (IT) costs.
One way to do this is to purchase and implement Linux and Open Source products.

Many IT managers still have doubts about Linux and Open Source because as soon as they hear about this they immediately think about amateurs, hobbyists and volunteers building and modifying source code in their spare time.
However, slowly I have seen more and more CIO's and IT managers believe Linux and Open Source is a viable option for their company as long as the products delivered will be supported by a professional organization and as long as the ERP vendor (in our case SSA Global) has build up a relationship with one of these organizations and also supports the Linux and Open Source products of these professional organizations.

In the case of SSA Global they support the following Linux and Open Source products at the moment:

- SUSE Linux as the Operating System for Triton 3.1 up to LN 6.1
- MySQL5.0 Enterprise Edition as the database for LN6.1

SSA Global's roadmap for the future is to also officially support:

- MySQL5.0 Enterprise Edition as the database for BAAN IV
- Mozilla Firefox as the web browser for WebTop

SUSE Linux is built and supported by Novell, a worldwide player in the IT industry and MySQL5.0 Enterprise Edition by MySQL AB from Sweden.

I have already experienced other Open Source products coming into the BAAN market like a Supply Chain solution and a web store.
These were solutions customized and implemented by a BAAN partner who then also took care of the maintenance.
From a cost savings perspective these products were very inexpensive compared to their "commercial" competitors and offered basically the same functionality.
Under the GPL these BAAN partners have to provide their changes in the code back to the Open Source community.
You can regard Open Source solutions I just gave as an example as pure customizations but then with a 80% lower TCO compared to 'other contemprary commercial products'.

You have to understand that right now the Linux and Open Source markets in The Netherlands for SAP and Oracle e-Business Suite have a growth rate of 8% per month and it is inevitable we will see the same in the BAAN market as well.

On February 7th 2006 Hewlett-Packard will kick off their annual Linux and Open Source Roadshow EMEA near Utrecht in The Netherlands.
On their web site http://www.hplinuxroadshow.com/ you can find more information about all the events in the different countries and the use of Linux and Open Source products and solutions in a business environment.

I hope my contribution can be of some help to you.

With kind regards,

Edwin van der Borg
www.qtris.com & www.qtris.nl
BAAN2Linux: Dare to Compare!

SSA Global's roadmap for the future is to also officially support:

[... snip ...]
- Mozilla Firefox as the web browser for WebTop

Minor correction; Mozilla Firefox is already supported by SSA for use with webtop.

Hi Phil,

Minor correction; Mozilla Firefox is already supported by SSA for use with webtop.

That is only good news then!

Regards,

Edwin

Edwin ,

Sorry for a delayed response .

Thanks for the elaborate and quite informative writeup on open source. It has really helped me in understanding the broad mechanisms.

We too have developed a data mining tool and benefitted a lot from it . It has been designed to be able to be used by any Baan user .

It is similar to export plain Excel and Excel pivot table from report preview available in MySAP. The difference here is whenever an authorised user runs the report for authorized company , he/she gets the excel output / pivot table as designed and in MySAP report preview user can right click and export the report to excel. Xlreporter of SAP business one too works on same principles. Additionally with ERPJewels , u get the selection parameters available in the session/tables which user can associate in Baan ERP later on 'what the analyses results mean '. Information can be pushed also from baan using job management.

Further this tool is developed on Baan4c4 , however it can work on all versions from triton 3.1 to ERP Ln with little modifications. Though there may be minor variations in each versions , power of dynamic SQL (useful for extracting data from any table), dynamic expression (very useful for getting calculated items) , native reporting (useful for extracting data from any report) , data dictionary functions (for understading user language rather than developer language), powerful 4GL functions ( beneficial for ad hoc User-defined functions ) remains by and large the same across all versions .

The tool has around 80 + 4GL / 3GL sessions and 4 vb based clients. It can further be enhanced to provide more functionalities as DTS to incrementally update the cubes in OLAP databases like Oracle / SQL server and olap database browser itself can allow the cube browsing . Further ready availability of user friendly names (like field description , domain description, labels etc) will reduce the need to have separate duplicate umbrella structure for user friendly names and will move the analyses creations and generation from technical staff to end users .

So the idea is that the tool is preserved and developed and at the same time people across all versions benefits.

We are currently working on to prepare basic framework whereby enhancements to the tool can be tracked and made. Wish to get suggestions / experiences if any from some real experienced FOSS developers on this in the meantime .