As posted to C.O.L.A.
ANNOUNCEMENT RFC ================ G E R P The GNU Enterprise Resource Planning System =========================================== a.k.a. SAP-BAAN --------------- NOTE: This is a request for comments and to gauge the interest in the OSS community for this project. Comments should be sent to gerp@mantra.nl Dear Friends In my opinion most important reason that freeware has not become mainstream in corporate MIS is because there is simply no product that addresses corporate MIS needs in totality. The need to build one such product is crucial for the acceptance of high quality free copyleft software in the corporate MIS. We are keen on developing a GNU/GPL'd program that would provide MIS services for Enterprise Resource Planning (GERP!). This would be suited for small to medium scale companies and would be a package like SAP or BAAN for such installations. In the freeware community there is nothing like this available. However a mix-match of existing systems can come close to this but cannot provide the total functionality. We believe that a complete solution like this can be built in a short time frame (5-6 months) by a core team of 6-7 members, which we expect will be increased by almost four to five times in a short period of time. We plan to create a piece of software that should eventually become more superior to and more widely adopted than any existing ERP package. One of our current client's is an engineering company and I have managed to convince them that such a product will be able to provide them the solution of automating their company (Administration, finance, materials, billing, planning, sales, support, purchase, logistics, business-intelligence, ITIL etc.). They are willing to fund our efforts in the beginning. However, the effort and manpower required to bring this to fruitition is much much more than what we can afford. Furthermore we would like to bring out this product with multilingual hooks with support for atleast English, Dutch, German, and French in the begining. We have a good architecture for this product, and have done a lot of background work. We will be using ALL the payment made to us by our client in funding this project, however, the funding provided by our current client is not sufficient to bring the product to completion. Most of our employees will be supporting this project. We have not signed the contract with the client, and want to wait till we have the reaction of the community. We are looking for companies and people with similar ideas, possible additional funding. Please send in your comments to: =============================== gerp@mantra.nl Thanks, Naresh Sharma, PhD. - -- Greetings, __ naresh@mantra.nl Naresh. __________/ F Ph: +31.40.2910125 c'____---__=_/ fax: +31.40.2910126 Dr. Ir. N. Sharma_____o_____o________ http://www.mantra.nl