Open ERP plugins - Open source business model - does it work or not

Today I wanted to spend a bit of time on the extensions - plug-ins of Open ERP. I wanted to check Outlook - and Excel.

Integrating e-mails in the ERP makes sense for the CRM part. Reporting etc with Excel makes also sense...

I like to insist that these plug-ins are commonly demonstrated and advertised by Tiny. This is my number one source of frustration...

However searching for them on their web site... nearly nothing - nada - rien !

Finally I found using Google : http://openobject.com/wiki/index.php/Open_Report:Others_Plugins

Well, that page leads to pages that do not exist.

However a hint is given. These have been developed by Axelor - www.axelor.com. Axelor is the developer of the web client of Open ERP. A nice piece of software, their web site however is the paradise of the 404 error.

Here there is no indication of a way to buy or download these plug-ins. the Open ERP forum is filled with messages of people searching the addons software.

With the common reply message from the moderator, pointing to the 404 page of Axelor...

So, I sent an-email to Axelor asking information about these plugins.

Beyond the practical aspect, I see here a major difficulty for the Open ERP model.

The open source approach has a lot of positive aspects however in some cases it prevents the development of finished affordable products.

• Suppliers are waitting for the customer willing to pay some functionnality.
• Customers are waitting in the hope somebody else will pay for them.

Between the virtuous open world of cooperation and the static 'je te tiens tu me tiens par la barbichette' -(sorry I don't know the name of that kids game in english - the first one to laugh loose the point... ). The gap is really small. This is attested in my opinion by the small amount (1 project) of modules developed under the concept of shared funding by Tiny.

On that subject I regret that Open ERP is not following the path of the Joomla community where small extensions are available at a very affordable price...

May be is this because the Joomla plug-in model requires less integration or may be because the user base is bigger, may be simply said Joomla users are so happy to find a solution for their web sites for a few dollars that they don't spend time argumenting on the price or the open-source, free aspect.

Anyway I am waiting for Chris Anderson 'Free' its new book about free business models with attention and some scepticism... Because there is nothing free like a free lunch !