6 ms·

I am the founder of Odoo: ask me anything. Happy to see Odoo on HN.

by pinky07 9mo ago

number6 9mo ago
How close is Odoo to the Django Stack? In my mind, since both are python, I always thought it was some kind of Django fork,l. I bet I am wrong. So how came Odoo into being?
- pinky07 9mo ago
  It's not a fork of Django, even thought the stack has similarities: Python, ORM on top of Postgresql, Modules. We use werkzeug (it's been a long time I checked Django, not sure they are on it too), but the rest of the stack is Odoo's own framework: ORM, Templating (QWeb), API, etc. But it's not comparable to Django: - Odoo is built for management application: think CRM, Accounting, Project Management, ... a strong backend - Django is often used as a framework, Odoo for end-users apps (even though our framework is super advanced) - Odoo has a CMS (website builder) too but with a focus on being end-user friendly, like Wix, or Squarespace but for businesses (eCommerce, Jobs, Events, ...) - the javascript client of Odoo is huge whereas Django is minimal - Odoo has it's own ORM optimized for speed and complexity of an ERP - templating engine based on XML rather than inline python instructions Here is a 2 minutes overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbso3NVz3p8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbso3NVz3p8
  - abysmal 9mo ago
    If you were building Odoo for the first time today would you still choose python? Would you use it the same way?
ttoinou 9mo ago
By having every services inside one tool, what are the new possibilities that Odoo can do easily that is hard to do with others suite of tools (where you’d need to connect together multiple independent services) ?
- pinky07 9mo ago
  Just an example: when I send an email marketing campaign with Odoo, I have all the stats attached: the usual # clicks, open rate, ... but also # Leads, # Orders, Revenues. Because Odoo as it all: - You send an email with link tracker (Email Marketing App) - The visitor goes on website (Website App) - He fills a form that creates an opportunity (CRM App) - 4 weeks later a sales make a quotation (Sales App) - After Delivery (Inventory App) - We send the invoice to the customer that books revenue (Accounting App) So, you get the revenue for every email sent. Imagine that power for everything. (eg. stock is common between eCommerce, CRM, POS - Wommunication on whatsapp, SMS, chat, emails are centralized for helpdesk, ...) But the main advantage is convenience. Once you use Odoo, everytime you have a need, you can install an app in one click that fully integrates with your stack. No need for developers to integrate, to call vendor to buy software, ... The complexity of an IT stack grows with the square of the number of software components it contains. Most Odoo clients run everything on Odoo, eliminating the need for integrations and significantly reducing overall complexity. Odoo SA (my company) has 6700 employees: we only use 2 software to run everything: Odoo and Google Workplace.
  - jna_sh 9mo ago
    > has 6700 employees I noticed this on your site recently whilst evaluating Odoo for a use case, and I’m glad I get the opportunity to ask…why? That seems an astronomical amount for this product. This isn’t a criticism, I am just genuinely curious about the business.
    - pinky07 9mo ago
      Imagine we develop: Shopify + Wix + Quickbooks (accounting in 140 countries) + Netsuite + Asana + Discord + SAP + DocuSign + Payroll + ... 30 other apps. On the service side, we onboard 14.000 new clients per month. (need a lot of sales too for that). Projects varies from a 5 users company (4 hours of service), to 5000 users. (1 year implementation for a team of 5) The spread in people is more or less: 30% developers, 30% consultants, 30% sales. In addition to our 6700 employees, we also have a large partner network: 200k FTE working on Odoo (selling, developing, doing services). They developed 50k apps, and onboard tens of thousands of companies per month.
luoc 9mo ago
Last time I worked with Odoo (v15/v16, enterprise, self hosted) we had to send a dump of the production database over to you to be migrated to the new version and then it was sent back. The upgrade path for third-party and custom addons was not defined. And since it is Odoo, everything is in that database: from employee's time tracking to customer support chats, from stock info to accounting data, from e-mail addresses to password hashes. I found this inacceptable but at that point we had no choice. What's the state here?
- pinky07 9mo ago
  You can crypt the data before sending to the upgrade platform. Before it was an external script, and since Odoo 16 you can use the `oboo-bin obfuscate` command, before running the upgrade script. See `./odoo-bin obfuscate --help` to check how to crypt your custom data and uncrypt after upgrade. It's not perfect (crypt specific columns rather than full DB) but, unfortunatelly, to operate our upgrade service, we need access to the database. Upgrades are complex and requires testing, fine tuning scripts to your specific use cases, etc. The other alternative is to not use our services, but do it yourself using upgrade scripts from the community: https://github.com/OCA/OpenUpgrade https://github.com/OCA/OpenUpgrade
  - mavvvricks 9mo ago
    Small partner here who absolutely love Odoo for what it is and you can make it to be. But - I can't wrap my head around why an on-prem customer cannot be allowed to run the upgrade scripts on-prem. I have almost lost customers to it, and it's a super big headache delaying the upgrade process for both political and technical reasons. Having tried to discuss the options and reasons with both Odoo support and employees at OXP has been an almost Kafkaesque experience. Please explain to me like I am 5 years old.
    - pinky07 9mo ago
      2 reasons: 1/ Upgrade are super complex: requires a service, not just a script 2/ We used it to monetize Odoo Enterprise Upgrade: Even after 1000+ upgrades, we still run into issues regularly as every environment is different (set of modules, customizations, community apps, ...). So we need to test the database, and fix scripts when necessary. If we would just provide scripts, it would cost us a lot in support for issues... and a bad customer experience. At least, by having the control we can ensure a smooth customer experience; it just works - and you don't see everything we do behind. (most of the time) Monetization: The open core business model is hard, when your goal is to do a maximum open source. Our main competitor being Odoo Community, we charge 5x less than competitors for a better software. (25€ vs 180€) So, we had to pick a few apps and services to monetize Odoo Enterprise, like the accounting app, or the upgrade service. Fortunetally, there is OpenUpgrade (scripts from the community) so that there is no lock-in on the upgrade. (you spend time with open-upgrade or go to Enterprise and we do it)
abysmal 9mo ago
Are there ways being open source has contributed to Odoo's success beyond the obvious stuff like extensibility and ability to self-host? Especially in a category like ERP that has a big integrator and reseller ecosystem.
- pinky07 8mo ago
  Open Source is more a development model than a business model. It helps to evolve faster, but it's not a value for the end-user. Today, we have way more free trials on the saas, than download of the open source version. Our clients (entrepreneurs, CFO, logistic, HR ...) don't care that we are open source: they just want the best product, at a good price. But it helped us grow our partner network of IT companies. For them, open source is a real value.

I am the founder of Odoo: ask me anything. Happy to see Odoo on HN.

by pinky07 9mo ago

I am the founder of Odoo: ask me anything. Happy to see Odoo on HN.

How close is Odoo to the Django Stack? In my mind, since both are python, I always thought it was some kind of Django fork,l. I bet I am wrong. So how came Odoo into being?

pinky07 9mo ago
It's not a fork of Django, even thought the stack has similarities: Python, ORM on top of Postgresql, Modules. We use werkzeug (it's been a long time I checked Django, not sure they are on it too), but the rest of the stack is Odoo's own framework: ORM, Templating (QWeb), API, etc. But it's not comparable to Django: - Odoo is built for management application: think CRM, Accounting, Project Management, ... a strong backend - Django is often used as a framework, Odoo for end-users apps (even though our framework is super advanced) - Odoo has a CMS (website builder) too but with a focus on being end-user friendly, like Wix, or Squarespace but for businesses (eCommerce, Jobs, Events, ...) - the javascript client of Odoo is huge whereas Django is minimal - Odoo has it's own ORM optimized for speed and complexity of an ERP - templating engine based on XML rather than inline python instructions Here is a 2 minutes overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbso3NVz3p8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbso3NVz3p8
- abysmal 9mo ago
  If you were building Odoo for the first time today would you still choose python? Would you use it the same way?

ttoinou 9mo ago

By having every services inside one tool, what are the new possibilities that Odoo can do easily that is hard to do with others suite of tools (where you’d need to connect together multiple independent services) ?

pinky07 9mo ago
Just an example: when I send an email marketing campaign with Odoo, I have all the stats attached: the usual # clicks, open rate, ... but also # Leads, # Orders, Revenues. Because Odoo as it all: - You send an email with link tracker (Email Marketing App) - The visitor goes on website (Website App) - He fills a form that creates an opportunity (CRM App) - 4 weeks later a sales make a quotation (Sales App) - After Delivery (Inventory App) - We send the invoice to the customer that books revenue (Accounting App) So, you get the revenue for every email sent. Imagine that power for everything. (eg. stock is common between eCommerce, CRM, POS - Wommunication on whatsapp, SMS, chat, emails are centralized for helpdesk, ...) But the main advantage is convenience. Once you use Odoo, everytime you have a need, you can install an app in one click that fully integrates with your stack. No need for developers to integrate, to call vendor to buy software, ... The complexity of an IT stack grows with the square of the number of software components it contains. Most Odoo clients run everything on Odoo, eliminating the need for integrations and significantly reducing overall complexity. Odoo SA (my company) has 6700 employees: we only use 2 software to run everything: Odoo and Google Workplace.
- jna_sh 9mo ago
  > has 6700 employees I noticed this on your site recently whilst evaluating Odoo for a use case, and I’m glad I get the opportunity to ask…why? That seems an astronomical amount for this product. This isn’t a criticism, I am just genuinely curious about the business.
  - pinky07 9mo ago
    Imagine we develop: Shopify + Wix + Quickbooks (accounting in 140 countries) + Netsuite + Asana + Discord + SAP + DocuSign + Payroll + ... 30 other apps. On the service side, we onboard 14.000 new clients per month. (need a lot of sales too for that). Projects varies from a 5 users company (4 hours of service), to 5000 users. (1 year implementation for a team of 5) The spread in people is more or less: 30% developers, 30% consultants, 30% sales. In addition to our 6700 employees, we also have a large partner network: 200k FTE working on Odoo (selling, developing, doing services). They developed 50k apps, and onboard tens of thousands of companies per month.

luoc 9mo ago

Last time I worked with Odoo (v15/v16, enterprise, self hosted) we had to send a dump of the production database over to you to be migrated to the new version and then it was sent back. The upgrade path for third-party and custom addons was not defined. And since it is Odoo, everything is in that database: from employee's time tracking to customer support chats, from stock info to accounting data, from e-mail addresses to password hashes. I found this inacceptable but at that point we had no choice. What's the state here?

pinky07 9mo ago
You can crypt the data before sending to the upgrade platform. Before it was an external script, and since Odoo 16 you can use the `oboo-bin obfuscate` command, before running the upgrade script. See `./odoo-bin obfuscate --help` to check how to crypt your custom data and uncrypt after upgrade. It's not perfect (crypt specific columns rather than full DB) but, unfortunatelly, to operate our upgrade service, we need access to the database. Upgrades are complex and requires testing, fine tuning scripts to your specific use cases, etc. The other alternative is to not use our services, but do it yourself using upgrade scripts from the community: https://github.com/OCA/OpenUpgrade https://github.com/OCA/OpenUpgrade
- mavvvricks 9mo ago
  Small partner here who absolutely love Odoo for what it is and you can make it to be. But - I can't wrap my head around why an on-prem customer cannot be allowed to run the upgrade scripts on-prem. I have almost lost customers to it, and it's a super big headache delaying the upgrade process for both political and technical reasons. Having tried to discuss the options and reasons with both Odoo support and employees at OXP has been an almost Kafkaesque experience. Please explain to me like I am 5 years old.
  - pinky07 9mo ago
    2 reasons: 1/ Upgrade are super complex: requires a service, not just a script 2/ We used it to monetize Odoo Enterprise Upgrade: Even after 1000+ upgrades, we still run into issues regularly as every environment is different (set of modules, customizations, community apps, ...). So we need to test the database, and fix scripts when necessary. If we would just provide scripts, it would cost us a lot in support for issues... and a bad customer experience. At least, by having the control we can ensure a smooth customer experience; it just works - and you don't see everything we do behind. (most of the time) Monetization: The open core business model is hard, when your goal is to do a maximum open source. Our main competitor being Odoo Community, we charge 5x less than competitors for a better software. (25€ vs 180€) So, we had to pick a few apps and services to monetize Odoo Enterprise, like the accounting app, or the upgrade service. Fortunetally, there is OpenUpgrade (scripts from the community) so that there is no lock-in on the upgrade. (you spend time with open-upgrade or go to Enterprise and we do it)

abysmal 9mo ago

Are there ways being open source has contributed to Odoo's success beyond the obvious stuff like extensibility and ability to self-host? Especially in a category like ERP that has a big integrator and reseller ecosystem.

pinky07 8mo ago
Open Source is more a development model than a business model. It helps to evolve faster, but it's not a value for the end-user. Today, we have way more free trials on the saas, than download of the open source version. Our clients (entrepreneurs, CFO, logistic, HR ...) don't care that we are open source: they just want the best product, at a good price. But it helped us grow our partner network of IT companies. For them, open source is a real value.