[Vtigercrm-developers] Fwd: Re: Cooperation - part 1

[Vic Cekvenich]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	Re: [Vtigercrm-developers] Cooperation - part 1
Date: 	Tue, 29 Jul 2014 07:27:26 +0700
From: 	SIAM Translations <info at siam-translations.com>
Reply-To: 	vtigercrm-developers at lists.vtigercrm.com
To: 	vtigercrm-developers at lists.vtigercrm.com 
<vtigercrm-developers at lists.vtigercrm.com>



Waves are significant in my coffe cup!
What i wanna say is that was not boring at all :)

Andy

On Tuesday, July 29, 2014, Pabiszczak, Błażej <b.pabiszczak at opensaas.pl 
<mailto:b.pabiszczak at opensaas.pl>> wrote:

    *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
    <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','b.pabiszczak at opensaas.pl');>



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