Monday 4 February 2013

KwaMoja/webERP and me, the facts!

As with anything I publish, anybody (except the viagara  salesmen) can comment on my blog. I make a public commitment that I will not attempt to forge or censor any posts, as goes on in all the communication channels on webERP. If Phil Daintree wishes to dispute anything in this blog he is free to do so. If I am wrong I will alter my post. I trust in the common sense and intelligence of people to read the facts and to make up their own minds.

This is a post that I didn't really want to have to spend time writing. It is unfair that attention should be taken away from the hard work the guys on KwaMoja have put in, and this is why I have tried to remain silent on the matter. Also I want to concentrate on the code which is far more fun, and far more productive. However it has been brought to my attention that there is much misinformation on this subject that is being propagated on the web by people with their own agendas to push. So, for those reasons I feel I have to put right the facts regarding me, KwaMoja, and webERP.

KwaMoja grew from a series of lectures I gave at a community college in Kenya last year. As part of the course work I set the students to work on some modifications for webERP. Two of the students expressed an interest in continuing this work and doing their own version for Kenya. I had also about that time had an email from an Indian gentleman wanting to know if I wanted to do a fork. I put him in touch with my two students and that is how KwaMoja began. One of my reasons for setting up my company in Africa was always to help African programmers, so I was pleased to help them, and I have donated some code to them. I also leant them some money to purchase the domain name (after their .org domain name was taken by somebody trying to make mischief) and for hosting, which has since been repaid. However this doesn't diminish my commitment to webERP which is a project to which I have given thousands of hours and spent thousands of pounds in promoting over the years. Indeed a look at the recent commits here https://sourceforge.net/p/web-erp/code/commit_browser shows I am still a very active committer to webERP.

One of the things I love most about open source is being able to discuss interesting ideas with like minded people. Technical discussions are a very interesting way of reinforcing your views on a subject. It is a shame that these have been virtually banned on webERP and a pleasure to work with people on KwaMoja who are interested in discussions.

The short answer for those who don't want to read all the stuff above is that I am very committed to both KwaMoja and webERP and intend to keep donating my time and my code to both projects.

1 comment:

  1. This was short lived really, however it ain't over, good work Tim...

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