[TriLUG] demoing F/OSS innovation(s)

[Brian Henning]

I second this idea!  I am right now developing a POS-ish front-end for our
salesmen to do away with one of the paper stages of our sales process, and
thereby integrating our current accounting solution (QuickBooks) with our
credit-card processing provider.  I would love to transition this company
completely away from QuickBooks eventually, and Bob has nailed a lot of my
concerns in that the QB solution already provides fairly stable integration
with UPS software, as well as being a full-featured bookkeeping suite.  I'd
love to see a F/OSS solution that effectively covers all the bases.
I wouldn't mind being on a development team for such a beast, either, for
whatever little use my meager skills would be..

Cheers,
~B

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <rwshep2000.2725323 at bloglines.com>
To: <trilug at trilug.org>
Sent: Tuesday, August 31, 2004 4:00 PM
Subject: Re: [TriLUG] demoing F/OSS innovation(s)


> I personally would be excited to see a general demonstration of how a mom
> & pop business could be run purely on Linux.  Even if it means including
custom
> code. I don't mean email and OpenOffice.  I mean, an integrated enterprise
> solution.  Does anyone in the group do this kind of work?
>
> Maybe:
>
> Core
> Accounting Software (Sql Ledger? GnuCash?)
> Point-of-Sale
> Customer Relationship
> Management
> Time and Materials Data Collection
> Project Planning and Tracking
>
> Inventory
> UPS / FedEx Shipping Tools
>
> You know, the rudimentary sorts
> of problems you face in small businesses, and don't have the money to
spend
> on big closed-source solutions.
>
> Maybe this isn't sexy, but I personally
> would love to see it.  I struggle with how to do these things with F/OSS.
>
>
> Bob Shepherd
>
> --- Triangle Linux Users Group discussion list <trilug at trilug.org
> wrote:
> For a while now, I've felt the need to suggest we do
> > something
> to showcase innovation from the F/OSS world.
> > This is only a kind vague
> idea at the moment, so bear
> > with me if this doesn't seem to make sense.
>
> >
> > First of all, there is always a lot of talk from
> > detractors of F/OSS
> that all free / open source
> > software just copies (poorly) commercial software.
>
> > They'll usually use something like OpenOffice.org as
> > an "example" and
> say that it's just a poor clone of
> > MS Office.
> >
> > Second, does anybody
> remember the Lulu Tech Circus
> > a few years ago? And specifically, do you
> recall
> > Bob Young's comments at the Tri-LUG meeting later?
> > He said something
> (I can't quote exactly, because
> > I wasn't there, but I got the gist of it
> from
> > later discussion) to the effect that he was disappointed
> > in the
> User's Groups who were present, and that they
> > didn't do anything "exciting"
> enough. Er, something roughly
> > like that.
> >
> > Anyway, I was thinking
> that it would be great if we
> > could do a show / demo / event of some sort,
> where we
> > A. show off some of the innovative stuff from the F/OSS world
>
> > and
> > B. try to put together some real "whiz bang" demos of the
> > technology.
>  Something with a real "wow" factor. IOW, something
> > more than just a box
> sitting around running Linux and OpenOffice.
> >
> > Possibly something like
> this could either replace one event
> > that would normally be an installfest?
> Or maybe it could
> > be done in conjunction with an installfest? Or I guess
> it
> > could just stand alone (if there's any interest in doing anything
> >
> at all).
> >
> > Anyway, to seed the discussion, let me pose the question:
> What are
> > some areas where F/OSS *is* innovative, compared to proprietary
>
> > software? Or at least, what are some areas where it's better as
> > opposed
> to just being a clone? What are some things that can be
> > done with F/OSS
> which can't (or at least not easily) be done with
> > proprietary software?
> Oh, and let me add that I'm thinking in terms
> > of things you can *show*
> people.  So while the Linux kernel may have
> > lots of advantages over, say
> WinXP, most of those advantages are not
> > easy to demonstrate (at least I
> don't think they are. Somebody please
> > prove me wrong).
> >
> >
> > TTYL,
>
> >
> > Phil
> > -- 
> > Vote Badnarik for President 2004
> > www.badnarik.org
>
> >
> > FREE AMERICA
> > Vote Libertarian
> > www.lp.org
> > -- 
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