OpenERP

This ERP is quite extensive with its functionality and very mature in its architecture. The greatest feature of this ERP is the way the interface layer and the database layer are separated, allowing you to use xml to modify the interface fields and workflow processes. Great stuff...

Even if the license of the product is GPL, the read access to the source control repository is only for partners (paying at leas 2000 EUR/year).

Also for many modules the source code is not available at all to not paying customers - And if I'm right this is a clear VIOLATION of the GPL license.

Also even the software is quite stable the project seams to have a quite small community contributions, maybe just because of the products 'special' business model.

Hey Sorin Sbarnea,

cool down, this for sure has been an issue before (that's why I tossed them too at that time) but since Q1 of 2008 they open up their SVN and now their Bazaar on Launchpad, see:
http://openerp.com/launchpadlaunchpad-access.html
So no issue at all here anymore. Moreover, you can see on Launchpad that they are integrating a lot of third party contributions done on parallel branches. They can merge up to 30 branches a day, some coming from totally independent third parties sharing a common interest in pushing the product forward.

By the way, there were no GPL violation at all even before that. Indeed, the Linux disto was always the original Python source code (the same that in the Windows disto BTW) since 2005, so at least on the Linux distro, the executable WAS the source. Still true today; welcome to Python.

Finally I agree on one thing, that ERP is very good, check version 5 and you'll understand what I mean. There are already some books, other are coming. Community quickly catching up all over the world, real success stories and real third party happy integrators. OpenERP especially shines when it comes to ease of customization. I couldn't find any open source mature ERP so well designed. Overall it's worth a double check.

Raphaël Valyi.