From the Alfresco blog:

CMIS is the proposed standard for content management interoperability. You can learn more about it on the Alfreso wiki. In short, this standard would allow developers to write applications that run against any CMIS-compliant content management system. It has been likened to SQL but for content management.

The other area of interest is the continued integration to other well known open source products such Joomla (Content Management) OpenOffice.org (Office Suite) and MediaWiki (Wiki software used by many companies including Wikipedia and Alfresco)

Joomla the very popular Content Management system for building websites will be able to access the back end repository of Alfresco for enterprise document management allowing Joomla users to control large amounts of content efficiently while still be able to collaborate on their Joomla website. Details of the Joomla Module for Alfresco can be found here.

From version 2.1 Alfresco has concentrated on Integration to the Microsoft Office suite which is understandable given its current market dominance and Alfresco’s implementation of the Microsoft Sharepoint Protocol meant even tighter integration. This had unfortunately left OpenOffice.org behind for a while. But with the release of the Openoffice.org plugin for Alfresco similar functionality is now available. Functionality as follows:

• Easy Installation
• Browse the Alfresco repositary
• Extensive search
• Access document properties and metadata
• Access to Alfresco workflow
• Access to ‘MyAlfesco’

See example screenshot:

As with a lot of open source software Alfresco has also not been slow to use social media for marketing and communication. As well as the required blog(s) Alfresco has a podcast, a Facebook Group and are on Twitter (OK they were a little slow on Twitter as they are @alfresco1 as someone else bagged @alfresco).

There is now even integration between Alfresco and Facebook. Jeff Potts has put a video showing this integration on youtube:

Other useful links

CMIS Definition on Wikipedia
Alfresco Facebook Group
Alfresco on Twitter
Alfresco Podcast
Alfresco Wiki
Alfresco Download
Joomla Module for Alfresco
Alfresco on FLOSBUS

Notes
Alfresco Labs is open source software under the GPL License v2

It’s a clear and concise white paper looking at the history of open source accounting software through to how it fits into modern business solutions and what some the benefits can be. Definitely worth a read if you at all interested in this area.

Every day it seams a new version of someones favourite software is released somegreatphotosoftware version 5.5.5 or thebestmusicplayer version 1,1,01. Little excitement is seen around the world except by the group fanboys and girls of that product waiting for the latest and greatest, checking the new features list for whistles and bells like children crossing off their Christmas present list (and equally frustrated when the one special present/feature is not delivered as expected).

But every now and again new versions of software come along that can affect many people and that can take a product mainstream. The best example of this was probably Windows 95 and both Word and Excel both had landmark versions that saw them over the ‘tipping point. (there are many reasons for the Word and Excel success including price and distribution but both products required to be at a level of maturity and usability for popular widespread adoption).

For many followers of software the upcoming release of OpenOffice.org 3.0 is possibly just such a release and there is a belief that this could be the tipping point for OpenOffice.org leading to worldwide adoption from schools and colleges to homes users and businesses of all sizes.

At this point it is worth explaining what OpenOffice.org is. Without a large marketing budget Openoffice.org is not the most well known. Openoffice.org (sometimes known as ooo the .org is always shown as someone else owns the trademark to ‘open office’) from Sun Microsystems is an open source equivalent suite of products to Microsoft Office or other office suites (yes there are few others still left). Where Microsoft has Word Openoffice.org has Writer where Microsoft has Excel OpenOffice.org has Calc. For many these two programs cover 95% of their software use but Openoffice.org also has equivalent presentation programs and a database. It does not include an email and calendering application although there are many alternatives to Outlook but does offer programs for drawing and mathematical formulae.

For the ‘iPhone generation’ this is not a release full of the latest whiz bang features and cutting edge innovation (c’mon this is office software) but the final product appears a more complete office suite that could have all the functionality for the majority of users. OpenOffice.org has been the office suite of choice for most Linux distributions for some time and a version for Windows has had a reasonable adoption but up until now there has not be a native Apple Mac version, yes you could install it with some messing around or you could even use a Mac modified version called NeoOffice. Now finally with the release of version 3.0 there is a full Mac version (intel only not power pc) and it should not go unnoticed that the most popular software purchased for Mac’s is Microsft Office. Until the recent release of iWork for the Mac there was no popular complete office suite apart from Microsoft Office. With so many new and young users of Mac’s OpenOffice.org have a real opportunity, after spending a lot their money on the hardware not everybody wants to spend more money on Microsoft Licenses.

The other compelling reason to look at OpenOffice.org is formats. OpenOffice.org 2.x could read and produce .doc, .xls and other proprietary Microsoft formats and this should be improved in in version 3.0 plus the addition of being able to read .docx, .xlsx and .pptx (which is more than Microsoft office 2003 user can do as standard) Openoffice 3 will not be able to produce in these ooxml formats but in my opinion that is a good thing. One of the greatest benefits of using open source software is also adopting open formats the default format forOpenOffice.org is ODF (OpenDocument Format) each program has its own ODF format Writer has .odt. Calc has .ods etc. With the release of Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 2 Microsoft’s own office suite will support ODF. This means that an OpenOffice.org user will be able to exchange documents, edits and updates with a Microsoft Office user all using an open standard format, this really is a great step forward. Of course there are many other products that support ODF, not just the two mentioned, from web applications such as Google Docs and Zoho to office suites including IBM Lotus Symphony and WordPerfect Office.

With full cross platform support, fully open source, really useful open formats supported by the major players and a Firefox-like extensions-ecosystem has OpenOffice.org’s time come? Only time will tell. I hope so.

Hot on the heels of Compiere’s recent new release the ever popular Openbravo has released version 2.4 promising improvements in the user interface. Openbravo is already a very pretty web based product but any improvements to usability of the web interface can only benefit users and help adoption. Keyboard operations and shortcuts have been introduced so now the product can be used mouseless if preferred.

All of the new features are listed at the Openbravo wiki here and overall it looks a good solid release, as ever increasing functionality with new reports and items such as purchase requests, which to to be fair you should expect in any ERP product.

A couple of new features caught my eye, the first was multi-accounting schemas – the ability to have more that one chart of accounts so you can report on the same data for multiple international requirements, currencies or management purposes will be very useful to many organisations.

The second noteworthy feature is the Heartbeat. This function, which will be on by default, will send a signal back to Openbravo with key information regarding installation and usage. Initially this sounds very un-open source but usage data like this is of great use to the whole Openbravo community and also the Heartbeat can be turned off. It should also be mentioned that nearly all modern software has functions similar to this heartbeat but usually there is no information provided to the user about the communication and no option to turn it off.

Another great aspect of Openbravo and open source software in general is listing all the bug fixes on the wiki.

Compiere the open source ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software has released its latest version 3.1. Version 3.1 is a major release that, according to Compiere, adds more than 400 functional, technical and business analysis enhancements. For full details of the release see the Compiere website.

Competition from other open source ERP software such as Openbravo and Adempiere appear to have a a positive effect on the development of Compiere. With recent funding of $6 million from venture capitalists hopefully development will continue at this pace benefitting the whole open source ERP community.

Jitterbit say this new version includes:

• A completely revamped fully graphical Integration Process Designer
• “Rapid Fire” Web Services Enhancements
• Reusable Customizable Scripts that allow you to extend Jitterbit to meet your specific integration needs
• Limitless Integration: New levels of scalablity with Data Chunking & Parallel Processing

As well as integration for open source solutions like Openbravo ERP and SugarCRM Jitterbit also offers Integration for many proprietary products such as SAP, Oracle and Microsoft Dynamics. Full details can be found on the Jitterbit website here.

OpenERP has a server and client install for Windows. Mac and Linux variations. The main Linux distributions have OpenERP in their repositories ready for an easy install. The latest version of Ubuntu (8.04) has version 4.2 still called TinyERP. For Windows there is client, server and all-in-one installers. Mac install is from source so may be a little more complicated see here.

OpenERP is a modular system and has modules for

Accounting and Financials
CRM
Human Resources
Inventory (Stock)
Manufacturing
Purchase and procurement
Sales and Marketing

As well as the standard client there is a web application which looks like this

As with many open source ERP software (OpenBravo and Compiere) OpenERP uses a PostgresQL database

Summary

Current Version
4.2.3
eTiny 1.0.1.1

Platform

Installation – Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, OpenSolaris
Database PostgreSQL

License

GPL

Well known Users/Case Studies
see http://openerp.com/success-stories.html

Useful links
OpenERP Site
OpenERP Wiki
TinyERP Virtual Appliance Server

Christophe Simonis – OpenERP Developers Blog
Relevant Blog – BeezNest Open Source Specialists

LedgerSMB is web based Open Source Accounting Software. LedgerSMB is a fork of the popular SQL-Ledger which was described by FLOSBUS here. The Fork came about after a disagreement over security and further more detailed information is available on the internet including here.

LedgerSMB has quite a few aims but initially they have looked to address the security issue and to generally tidy up the code. In the longer term the LedgerSMB team plan to rewrite the original code module by module. A roadmap is available on their website here.

Many users and partners of SQL-Ledger have now moved on to LedgerSMB. Although today the functionality between the two is comparable the future many be more secure for users with Ledgersmb.

As mentioned as of today functionality is vert similar to SQL-Ledger. As well as all of the functionality you would expect from an accounting system including all of the main ledgers LedgerSMB also has POS (Point of sale) time cards and HR (employee records).

LedgerSMB can deal with multi-currency accounting and exchange rates for mult-companies and multi users. There are multiple language translations available and LedgerSMB and be configured to deal with different countries tax regimes.

Summary

Current version 1.2.15 (August 2008)

Platform
Installation Mac, Windows, Linux (Debian) and FreeBSD
All GUI Browsers

Database

PostgreSQL 8.1 or 8.2 receommended (8.3 is not yet supported)

Other Requirements

Web server (Apache,
thttpd 2.22+,
boa, AOL server)

Perl 5+

Well known Users/Case Studies

Not aware of any published

Propiertory Accounts Software Competitors

Quickbooks, Sage Line 50

Useful Links
Site http://www.ledgersmb.org/
Documentation http://www.ledgersmb.org/manual
Forum http://www.nabble.com/Ledger-SMB-f21334.html

Many, but not all, open source solutions have a far more open and collaborative approach to documentation recently highlighted by Compiere’s launch of their wiki.

The definition of a wiki aptly taken from Wikipedia, which of course is the most well know wiki, is as follows:

“A wiki is a collection of web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content, using a simplified markup language.Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites and to power community websites.”

Wiki Wednesday’s is a group of people who are interested in Wiki’s and social media. The next London meeting is on 13th August details here.

A have put a list of links to some of the most well know FLOSS business software wiki’s below but of course there are many more.

• SugarCRM Wiki – Main Page
  (tags: sugarcrm wiki opensource)
• Main Page – AlfrescoWiki
  (tags: alfresco cms opensource wiki ecm)
• Welcome to Openbravo Community – Openbravo wiki
  (tags: openbravo erp opensource wiki)
• Community Space – Compiere Community – Compiere Wiki
  (tags: erp compiere wiki opensource)
• OpenERP (Formerly TinyERP) Wiki
  (tags: wiki erp opensource openerp tinyerp)

There is no shortage of open source wiki software and MediaWiki is the software used and developed for Wikipedia is open source under the GPL. Of the above wiki’s SugarCRM, Alfresco and Openbravo all use Wikimedia.