“Why don’t you write about Channel Development?”, asked me the other day our CEO. “I probably should”, I thought. It was not the first time someone had asked me the very same question. Some potential partners, community members and other software vendors had done so in the past. They were wondering why such an interesting topic was missing in Openbravo planet. The reason: I just simply did not have enough quality time to talk/write about it (you know, time constraints related to any start-up).

I personally joined Openbravo back in December 2006 to lead partner network expansion throughout the world. At that stage, we just had a few “friendly partners”. There was no partner program but a “friendly pack” offer only. Then, the purpose was to make sure that both Openbravo ERP as well as some of the professional services we had thought of were ready for the partners to be able to develop a successful business practice around our solution.

Today, our partner network is constituted by more than 65 partners covering more than 50 countries, and growing. We have a unique 100% quality based partner program in place (which by the way, is about to be revamped and significantly improved) and a professional edition - Openbravo Network is its name - which should significantly help everyone in the business to scale revenues and build a very profitable business practice while providing a much more attractive value proposition to end-clients (e.g. providing bug fixing guarantees around the leading web-based Open Source ERP solution).

And last but not least, team now is larger (and much more international by the way), which provides me with enough confidence so we (not only I but all the team) can launch this new initiative: “Channel Development: experiences and thoughts” blog. It is not only going to be about Channel Development but also about our Partner Network, one of the most important assets that any company in the space might have... along with the product and people of course.

After an interesting experience with the Wikipedia, Openbravo is finally included in the Internet's encyclopedia for good. We have learned about obscure terms (at least for the uninitiated) such as "unsalt", "WP:COI", "WP:NN" "WP:AFDP".

It is clear that these complex rules have generated an extraordinarily amazing pool of high-quality content. Not an easy task to be achieved by a group of volunteers.

However, after this experience, I would like to suggest Wikipedia to include some beginner manuals or HOWTO guides. To name a few: How can you include your company on the Wikipedia? Do's and don't for a casual contributor; How to dispute/reverse an unfair decision?.

I also think there are some take aways for Openbravo as a community. When you are immersed in the dynamics of the community, you can forget there are beginners who are trying to make sense of it. Some of these will become the core members of the future, and you can not alienate them or they will never participate in the game. Building a successful community is about ensuring there is something in it for everyone, regardless of the level of skills or knowdledge they have.

Please, let us know if we are not doing so!

Last week Openbravo released the first version of Openbravo POS under its new name. You can read all the details of the new version in the press release published.

We are very happy with this release and we achieved all the objectives expected. We included nice features like having the localization files in an external folder to allow to add new localizations as a plug-in without having to recompile, new Substance look and feel themes, etc. We also fixed most of the bugs reported in the Sourceforge project pages. You can read the full release notes in the Openbravo wiki. We are also very grateful for the response of the community to this new release. Today Openbravo POS is one of the top 25th projects in Sourceforge and we expect to stay there for a long time. This is something that gives us a lot of energy to continue working hard.

Now we are working in the roadmap for the next release. This roadmap will be published in the wiki pages as soon as it is finished. In the next release we plan to continue with the same objectives and focus in the localization issues of Openbravo POS, to complement Openbravo ERP and to include new features and stability to Openbravo POS. In one sentence, to give to our partners and our community a competitive product in the Point of Sale software arena and, in association with Openbravo ERP, the best open source software suite for SME.

Year 2007 has been a tremendous year for Openbravo. During this year we focused our community efforts on adopting the best processes and methodologies for Openbravo ERP development.

Our communication and transparency has been greatly enhanced including: publishing and updating our roadmaps, setting up IRC channels and having regular chat meetings, start using mailing lists or the blogging and Planet efforts. Another accomplishment has been in the documentation area. Openbravo ERP started as a home grown solution for enterprises and its documentation was modest. Openbravo community have been working hard on extending the Openbravo documentation. Still many efforts are necessary but a good progression is made every week.

During year 2008 we plan to focus on providing a better infrastructure for people developing Openbravo ERP and POS, and also, for people working on Openbravo related projects, like plugins, verticals or localizations.

Let me give you some highlights of our planned services:

• A better Wiki. Building on top of our Wiki we plan to add more exciting functionality: enable users to rate articles, activate the discussion pages to allow people to comment on already existing articles, a better category system, better integration with other Openbravo news sources using RSS.
• New forums. This is has been a long request from our community: to have a better and more powerful forum system.
• New bug tracking system. Our current bug tracking system at SourceForge has many limitations. We have been evaluating different solutions we would make a decision soon.
  
• Single sign for all the community services enabling users to authenticate once and gain access to the resources of multiple community systems.
• Openbravo Forge. Starting with Openbravo ERP R2.4x series, to be released in June 2008, it would be more easy to develop and deploy plugins, verticals and extensions. The objective of Openbravo Forge is to provide hosting services for projects of Openbravo contributors and to boost collaboration between the different efforts. Services like forums, source control, bug tracking, news publishing or file downloads would be provided.
  

This is the direction that we are working and we hope that it would happen during 2008. We are focusing first on the new bug tracking system and Wiki and then in the rest of the services. We ask you please to be patient. Any feedback on these plans this is really appreciated.

Anyone willing to provide additional services or resources to help to build our community is more than welcome.

Openbravo is going to launch Openbravo POS 2.00 in few days. This is the first version of Openbravo POS under its new name and we are asking the community to help us validate its quality before release.

If you are willing and able this opportunity is for you! Notify us of your interest by sending an email to collaborate at openbravo dot com.

The process is going to be very similar to what we do for Openbravo ERP and the process we will follow is the same we used for Openbravo ERP R2.35. Specifically, here is what we are asking:

1. We will give you early access to the installer through a private FTP server. You will essentially receive the release at the same time as our QA team.
2. We will give you access to our QA portal, where you can see our test cases for the acceptance test. Please note this will be the first acceptance test for Openbravo POS.
   
3. We will assign you a set of test cases and we expect that you will install the application on your machine, run the test cases and report the outcome in the QA portal
   
4. We will not assign you any bug to verify as we will execute that task internally. Obviously you are free to verify specific bugs that you care about.
5. If you have any questions or doubts during the process, please contact at pablo dot sarobe at openbravo dot com (QA Team).
   

Acceptance testing should start on February, 18th and ideally should last 3 or 4 days.

Please remember that this is going to be an Acceptance Testing, not a full blown QA cycle. The purpose of Acceptance Testing is to validate that an already QA'ed release is good to go and that the last build didn't introduce any major regression (essentially: test the product as it is going to be shipped before your users do to avoid to be embarrassed later).

Because of that, we will stop the release only if one of the test cases fails with a significant bug. Nonetheless, we do expect you to log all issues you find, including small bugs, as we will fix those in future releases.

Openbravo POS 2.00 is the starting point of a product that we are investing a lot of effort to offer this great portfolio of open source applications for SME. There are important features included and a large list of bugs fixed. We look forward to your participation!

Last week, Openbravo POS has been officially launched as a new member of the Openbravo products family. It has its own product page at http://www.openbravo.com/product/pos/ and the name migration from Librepos is complete. That comes with a new project page in Sourceforge http://sourceforge.net/projects/openbravopos/ and a redirection from the older project pages. I expect that the old members of the Librepos community will not get lost and start working in the new project pages as soon as possible.

Also, I want to remind to the Openbravo community that we have great plans for Openbravo POS and we are working to execute them. The first step is to release the first version under its new name in mid February. Check the road map at http://wiki.openbravo.com/wiki/index.php/Openbravo_POS_roadmap. And a training course will be held in Barcelona in april, in English and Spanish.

First my apologies to all the readers for not having posted any messages since quite a long time already. My only, hopefully valid, excuse is the enormous workload we had to close the year 2007. Now, what can I say that has not been said by other bloggers, analysts and press in the last days?. Three short comments that have attracted my attention over this period:

1. I think we all will agree by now that Open Source has consolidated as one of the most important forces that today is changing the software industry. Just look at some of the transactions that the industry has had in the last weeks ranging from Zimbra, Xensource, MySQL or Trolltech. By the way … isn't it strange that with the latest news of Microsoft bidding to acquire Yahoo, Zimbra could become part of Microsoft? I am curious to see what will the implications would be.
2. Further, the initially successful Netsuite IPO has brought even more attention than there already was into our space: the world of ERPs. Specially proving that there is a huge opportunity for the company or companies that are able to deliver something new and compelling to midmarket companies.
3. Openbravo has had a marvelous 2007!. I would suggest that all of you read the round up press release that we just published today. We are proving that there is a better and more efficient model to satisfy the hundreds of thousands of traditionally under-served small and mid-sized companies around the globe.
   

2008 looks incredibly promising for Openbravo. I have no doubts that with our product, community and hard and good work we will continue to advance very rapidly. Bear with us my friends!

By the way, do you know that we have been presented with yet another award, this time in the Open Source Meets Business Conference?