Will Compiere Remain an Open Source Product?

Shortly after joining Compiere as the new CEO, people began asking me about my plans for Compiere and whether we would be evolving from an open source business model to become a proprietary product. The answer is absolutely not! I joined Compiere because I believe that Compiere can be a successful commercial open source company and because I was excited about the Compiere technology, product and community. Open source is an important part of Compiere’s business model and is a key differentiator over proprietary ERP/CRM products. With more than 1.1 million downloads of our software, we have become by far the most popular open source ERP project. I look forward to working with our customers and partners to create an even more active, vibrant community around our technology.

I spent most of last weekend at the Open Source Think Tank 2007 event meeting with other open source leaders, industry experts, and enterprise CIOs. At this event, I spent quite a bit of time listening to CIO’s describe what they are looking for from open source companies as well as discussing different approaches and business models with fellow CEO’s. There is a lot of experimentation in the commercial open source arena, but what is clear is that collectively we are able to deliver far greater value to the market than traditional, proprietary vendors.

Compiere has a few different areas of focus for 2007 including an increased focus on our open source community, expanding our partner program to include development partners, support for an open source database and other open source technologies, improved user interfaces, additional support offerings, and more. We think that 2007 will be a big year for Compiere and our extended community!

Comments

[Jade Tremblay]

Our company is looking to evaluate compiere's solution. This post "comfort me"... Compiere will remain open source.

I would like to ear about what compiere will do regarding the community fork Adempiere? How do you plan to "unite" the community?

Regards,

Jade

Together we are stronger, that's it!

[Dawn Foster]

Jade,

Compiere is focused on building the best product possible and focused on doing whatever we can to improve our relationship with the community. We certainly hope that customers and other users of Compiere (including those currently participating in Adempiere) will choose to work closely with Compiere by participating in our community.

Regards,
Dawn