As posted to C.O.L.A.
ANNOUNCEMENT RFC
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G E R P
The GNU Enterprise Resource Planning System
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a.k.a. SAP-BAAN
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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:
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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