As to build up the best enterprise management software ever developed, we need a perfect organisation between all OpenERP's actors. So that we can benefit and leverage the contributions and feedbacks from the community, the market knowledge and creation from partners and the quality control and vision of an editor.
To efficiently organise teams of developers, the whole production process of OpenERP if managed through the open source development portal LaunchPad.
Efficient CommunicationThe main communication system we use is the forum. The forum is integrated to our user and developer mailinglists so that you can use the forum with the web interface or discuss by email. Messages from both channels will appear in the forum and in the mailing list.
In addition to the community forum, we use the official planet for announces related to OpenERP and OpenObject. The planet is an aggregate of personal blogs of the main contributors (called commiters) on the project.
Good DocumentationsHaving a complete and clear documentation is one of our bigger priorities. But to achieve a quality documentation, we can not rely on contributions from the community nor on manuals from developers.
So we set up a complete edition process for publishing books where:
- Professional publishers work in collaboration with the authors for the quality, the maintaining and the distribution of the books.
- Each contributor can become an author of one of several chapters and get paid for this,
- Translators are also paid with author rights.
Books are sold in bookstores in different countries and languages, this allow us to remunerate the full edition chain through author rights. This help us to motivate authors and translators to write more chapters, and improve existing ones. We had to find a good middle point between selling through bookstore to remunerate authors and publishing online to get a free version. So, most of our books (depending on the contract we have with the editor), are published online some months after their official publication.
Books writing is our main documentation process. In addition to this, we use a community wiki for all others documentations that are not directly related to the software. For our main knowledge management system, we use Launchpad Answers, where you can ask questions or reply answers.
Translations of The SoftwareTo Describe...
Code ContributionsOur distributed repository management system, based on bazaar on launchpad, allows every one to branch our official version, develop his own features, and propose a merge or patches that will be reviewed and applied in the main OpenObject branch.
A team of commiters (selected amongst the best developers on the project, on a meritocracy basis) has the right to review and accept contributions for the official branch. Then, the quality team is responsible to review accepted branches by commiters, check according to guidelines, and apply them in the official version of OpenERP.
By allowing commiters from everywhere to contribute, our objectives is to achieve a 3 days average delay between the detection of a bug and his fix and check in the Official Repository.
Check the correct process to propose improvements here.
Publish a Module
You can publish new modules directly from OpenERP, using the module_publisher module. First you have to create an account on OpenERP.com, then install the module_publisher module. From the list of modules in OpenERP, you can click on right action: "Publish Module".
You can also upload your module manually in the website using our submission form.
Experts Teams
As to help developers and contributors to take the right decision when improving OpenERP, we set up experts teams for different management domains. Only people that have a strong experience in OpenERP and the related domain can apply as an expert. We have teams of accountants, manufacturing experts, technical experts, services management experts, ...
Developers can contact our experts when they need feedback on particular features to be developed. Please contact our experts only for new developments related questions. They don't provide help on current features. Most of our experts have very high positions in the company they work for, so they don't have time to spent providing help or support.
Bug TrackerOur public bug tracker on launchad has been built to allow every one to propose bugs or fixes and get them applied in a very short delay. We also focused our system to provide good feedbacks to requestors on the different proposals and works achieved.
Releases Management
The development of OpenERP follows two distinct branches: a stable one for production environment and a development one that integrates all new features. We release one new major version per year. You can get more information in our releasing process.
Real life meetingsSometimes it's good to meet ourselves. We plan to organise two community days per year. This is the occasion to synchronize works being made and objectives between the community, the partners and the editor.
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