[Vtigercrm-developers] Fwd: Cooperation - part 1

[Vic Cekvenich]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	[Vtigercrm-developers] Cooperation - part 1
Date: 	Mon, 28 Jul 2014 21:43:26 +0200
From: 	Pabiszczak, Błażej <b.pabiszczak at opensaas.pl>
Reply-To: 	vtigercrm-developers at lists.vtigercrm.com
To: 	vtigercrm-developers at lists.vtigercrm.com



*Introduction (boring, you can skip it ;)*
*
*
OpenSaaS has dealt with the implementations of Vtiger software for five 
years. I, as the owner of the company, have seven years of experience 
with it. We maintain an active contact with the community in Poland and 
we are eager to help others, often behind official channels.

Cooperation with Vtiger has always been complicated. Our first obstacle 
was the English language that is used in the software. Then, our second 
obstacle was the fact that the producer perceived us as “necessary evil” 
and/or “competitors”.

OpenSaaS has been implementing Vtiger 6 (from the first alpha versions) 
since a year, because it is a huge step in comprehending business 
applications, even at the expense of stability that our company 
corrected during tests at the end customer.

We placed our hopes on the producer thinking that if something that was 
released in 6.0 version was unstable, it will be corrected in 6.1 
version. We reported over 100 errors during six months (a lot of them 
beyond trac.vtiger.com <http://trac.vtiger.com>). Additionally, we did 
not report hundreds of other errors since they seemed so obvious that it 
would not make any sense.

*Cooperation (also boring and you can skip it ;o)*
*
*
It is surprising, how difficult a contact with the producer can be, even 
though the considerable majority of reported errors regarded the 
development of their application. I will divide it into subsections in 
order to make it more transparent:

1. Modules
As one of the largest Vtiger software producers in the world, we reposed 
our trust in the producer. Unfortunately, in spite of many attempts to 
communicate we gave up, and what induced us to do so was:
an attempt to publish modules for 5.4 version took many months (to no 
effect, in spite of sending many emails and reminders) - our concerns 
were completely ignored by Vtiger
difficulties regarding the modification of system files (unfortunately, 
there was no possibility for 5.4. version to create modules differently, 
the exception were modules of “hello world” type)
When after two years, we managed to reach a compromise and the producer 
promised to find the time and publish modules, it turned out that they 
started to reject the colour of fonts or, in more extreme cases, odd 
visual elements. It would be acceptable, if the producer themselves 
fulfilled these assumptions at least in 10% in their modules.
Although our modules have been installed on hundreds of servers, the 
producer did not want to accept them and crated more problems. This 
problem concerned a very simple module and we had dozens of other 
modules for publication that were far more complicated than that.

That is why we gave up the publication of modules for Vtiger.

2. Reporting errors
We do not understand why the producer ignored many of errors that we 
reported. After six months of reporting and ignoring them by the 
designer, we finally stopped adding them to trac.vtiger.com 
<http://trac.vtiger.com>

A lot of errors that we reported stayed either unresolved (although they 
were marked as solved) or was completely ignored. For us trac, turned 
out to be impractical.

Many times we suggested ready-made solutions for problems but they were 
always ignored. Even our numerous requests for adding one line of code 
to files of the engine were impossible to be fulfilled by the producer.

We cannot cooperate this way.

3. Partnership
Partnership would probably exist if we paid the producer. However, our 
values are somewhere else and they have never been appreciated.

*Priorities*
*
*
I am going to omit certain problems, such as community that does not 
exist, documentation that is missing or the fact that users of the 
software are often ignored. Now, Vtiger is becoming more and more 
commercialised. I could provide many examples but it is not my aim.

An end customer, who the producer wants to acquire, is the biggest 
problem. Currently, small companies and individuals are the most 
important customers for Vtiger. Their main objective is to develop their 
cloud that constitutes their part of profits. Obviously, the producer 
decides on its own in which direction they would like to develop, but it 
created a lot of problems:

Quantity, not quality
The producer aspires to create an average product that is delivered to 
an end customer without prior testing. There have been a lot of minor 
functionalities created in order to make it possible to compare the 
product with other software, such as SugarCRM or Sales Force. In fact, 
there are created defective semi-finished products that are not 
acceptable for the regular customer.

What has been done with the modules:
Trouble Ticket
Calendar
Google Sync
Mail Manager
Reports
implies that the producer does not respect end users. I am not going to 
describe problems with these modules (and many others) because who used 
them knows what I am writing about.

I regard deleting part of the functionalities from 6.0 version and not 
restoring them by eight months as an act of ignorance.

Although we sent ready-made solutions for migration errors from 5.4 
version to 6.0 version to vtiger-list, they were not corrected for 
months and I will leave it with no comments.


Shop
What the producer does with the shop is the indicative of software 
commercialisation and the preference of own solutions over the solutions 
of partners as well as it is also the sign of ignoring the needs of 
communities.

Performance
Nobody, who have not tried to do the following things, will understand 
this problem:
import millions of data,
implement the software in companies larger than 100 users.
It is incredible what Vtiger did in the calendar in Vtiger 6 (it is only 
one of many examples). During the past few months, we have introduced 
the software in a few very large companies, we have spent a lot of time 
on improving the logistics in generating the calendar. The basic 
functionality of the software is useless without a few days spent on 
amendments in the code.

Although everyone makes mistakes, that situation made us think. If we 
take existing errors in Vtiger into consideration, we will come into the 
conclusion that the producer has not introduced their product in any 
large company. Any big implementations would require cooperation with 
partners such as OpenSaaS and many days of work to optimise the current 
code and introduce patches.

If I were wrong, that would mean that the producer does not introduce 
any patches to Vtiger community version.

*Summary*
*
*
We think that current direction of the development of the software is 
detrimental to the community. The further cooperation in this direction 
is not possible for us. Only radical changes can rebuild our trust.


Z poważaniem / Regards
Błażej Pabiszczak
M: +48.884999123
E: b.pabiszczak at opensaas.pl <mailto:b.pabiszczak at opensaas.pl>
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