[HN Gopher] Show HN: Openkoda - Open-source, private, Salesforce...
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Show HN: Openkoda - Open-source, private, Salesforce alternative
Author : mgl
Score : 198 points
Date : 2024-05-28 17:11 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| vantubbe wrote:
| How would this compare with something like goHighLevel?
| mgl wrote:
| Thanks for this question. I understand that goHighLevel is a
| closed marketing application platform, whilst Openkoda is an
| open-source enterprise application platform with pre-built
| application templates for a quick start in specific industries
| (now: insurance and realestate, more to come).
| tcdent wrote:
| Anybody have recommendations for similar projects written in
| Python?
|
| Curious to know the motivations for choosing Java in this case.
| creaktive wrote:
| Salesforce is customized in something called Apex, which is a
| dialect of Java. Would make migration/integration more
| convenient
| vips7L wrote:
| Its like Java 5 mashed with some C# and then they've added
| their own syntax changes on top for custom salesforce things.
| fire_lake wrote:
| Python is significantly more resource heavy than Java. This is
| not a notebook or quick script. What would Python offer here?
| evantbyrne wrote:
| Objectively, very little probably. Non-java shops tend to
| avoid it because java codebases have a reputation for being
| relatively complicated. Java is a great language though and
| it may very well be the best cultural fit for the type of org
| that _actually likes_ salesforce. They also seem to be
| publishing a docker image, so it shouldn't be difficult for
| non-java orgs to integrate.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| Python is more resource heavy than Java for CPU, but not for
| memory. I am pretty sure that Java is more resource heavy for
| memory.
|
| Also, Java programmers have the habit of using excessive
| abstractions that don't solve real problems.
| bfmalky wrote:
| I would guess java was chosen for its high quality libraries,
| efficient runtime and its static typing, which enables easy and
| safe refactoring.
| mgl wrote:
| Exactly this.
|
| We find modern Java to be ubiquitous, fast, and (still) super
| popular in enterprise environments.
| likeafox wrote:
| [Odoo is Python based](https://github.com/odoo/odoo) and the
| 'core' modules are open -
|
| Not providing any endorsement of the software nor can I say how
| the Odoo CRM/CMS compares to Salesforce. I've tried migrating a
| non Salesforce business to Odoo twice and haven't had success
| yet.
| jrklabs_com wrote:
| Yes, I haven't used this myself yet but I have been keeping my
| eye on this project for a while now, https://erpnext.com/ The
| Frappe framework that is the foundation of ERP Next can be used
| to extend the ERP platform or build standalone apps.
| greenchair wrote:
| probably because java owns the enterprise space.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Last commit is 2 months ago? Are you still building it?
| mgl wrote:
| Yes, absolutely - the next release is scheduled for June, our
| current development cycle (which may not be ideal) is based on
| internal builds and testing before public release. The main
| reason is that there are e.g. insurance companies out there and
| whilst well, it's still open-source, we would not like to break
| anything for them.
| ActionHank wrote:
| Curious what testing is covered that you don't have automated
| as part of the CI?
| mgl wrote:
| These are mainly either integration tests with hard-to-
| automate third-party platforms and tests in more complex
| multi-tenant deployment scenarios.
|
| There is also the Enterprise version which is developed in
| parallel with the open-source Core edition. Being a small
| team we just found it was easier to phase the release
| schedule.
| hellcow wrote:
| Could you merge consistently and just cut stable releases on
| a scheduled cadence?
| mgl wrote:
| Yes, that's a good point - actually we were discussing this
| option (again!) just last week as we are cautious of not-
| that-frequent public releases.
| Timshel wrote:
| Without it any contribution will probably be a pain to
| handle (and it's usually already not trivial to handle
| correctly ;).
| creaktive wrote:
| I was just complaining to my partner about the OG Salesforce... I
| feel extra inspired to check this out!
| mgl wrote:
| Thanks, I really appreciate your words!
|
| When talking to our users (and clients - as we customize
| Openkoda for enterprise companies building their bespoke
| applications as well) so many of them are tired of Salesforce
| being: a) slow, b) limited, c) expensive (probably in this
| order).
| llmblockchain wrote:
| In true enterprise fashion, they went with Java. Enterprise,
| confirmed.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| Honest question, what's wrong with Java? It's performant, has
| mature libraries, good documentation, and supported pretty much
| everywhere.
| promptingmetosi wrote:
| There's plenty I'd like to improve but it's honestly in a
| very good shape. There's a reason enterprise picks Java -
| it's battle tested and there are enough quality developers
| around. Frameworks like Spring for webdev are top notch.
| Unless you've got a very specific reason to pick something
| else (python or rust or whatever) Java is the safe bet (along
| with c# but Java is an order of magnitude bigger I think).
|
| It's just people taking memes seriously. Java is great and
| continuously improving.
| xuancanh wrote:
| It's not just a meme. The developer experience in Java is
| worse compared to some other popular programming languages
| like JavaScript, Go, Python, etc. The language is a bit
| verbose, and the compiling speed is slow, hence the
| development speed is slower. Java developers tend to overly
| abstract things, so the code tends to be unnecessarily
| complicated. The JVM also has a high memory footprint, the
| startup speed is slow, and it requires warming up the JIT.
| Some popular libraries and frameworks overuse reflection
| and annotation, they are nice to use but are nightmares to
| debug when issues happen. This is why GraalVM and Kotlin
| have been gaining popularity recently, as they aim to
| address several issues with the JVM and Java. The biggest
| strengths of Java are its ecosystem and community.
| peanut-walrus wrote:
| The developer experience when trying to maintain a Python
| codebase the size of an average enterprise Java codebase
| is pretty...abysmal.
| zo1 wrote:
| A python codebase never gets to the size of a Java one
| for the equivalent functionality. There's a reason the
| other ongoing mocking of Java is about its abundance of
| IAbstractGeneratorFactoryFactory classes.
| neonsunset wrote:
| Should have been C# with ASP.NET Core and EF Core instead.
| Hibernate is extremely dreadful to work with and no one in
| their sane mind should even have the gall to ask users to
| touch it when better options exist. Spring Boot also
| performs very poorly against ASP.NET Core.
| llmblockchain wrote:
| There's nothing wrong with Java. It's old and boring, but
| most good tech is.
| moooo99 wrote:
| There is nothing inherently wrong with Java, people just love
| to joke about it. To some extent, justifiably so. Not
| necessarily because of the language, more because of the
| common patterns in established there
| rodgerd wrote:
| Also the kinds of people who know how to solve the kinds of
| problems that this sort of software deals with are likely to
| be Java programmers.
|
| The biggest strike against Java at this point (IMO) is that
| you don't know what Oracle are going to do to make your life
| harder in the future.
| tootie wrote:
| Is this meant to be a drop-in replacement for Salesforce or just
| another CRM? There's a built-in advantage to choosing the tool
| that everybody uses and that's compatibility. If you look at 1000
| data integration or marketing automation tools on the market,
| 1000 of them will have OOTB integration with Salesforce as a
| selling feature. Just to be realistic, building a better CRM
| won't be enough to replace Salesforce.
| mateus1 wrote:
| Nothing can be a drop-in replacement for Salesforce as it is
| designed almost exclusively to lock-in customers.
| citizenpaul wrote:
| Salesforce is a case study in how rich dark patterns can make
| you.
| mgl wrote:
| Salesforce nowadays is more a universal, business application
| platform. Closed, proprietary, with user-based pricing model.
| grepLeigh wrote:
| Salesforce's biggest value proposition is the partner ecosystem,
| which Salesforce has cultivated for like 20+ years. Some platform
| companies (Shopify comes to mind) cannibalize their plugin
| ecosystem by adding similar functionality to the core platform,
| but Salesforce deliberately avoids competing with
| software/services in the partner ecosystem. It's such a safe bet
| to build on top of Salesforce, because there's basically 0
| platform risk and the technology is ubiquitous.
|
| What's your approach to plugins, add-ons, and service partners?
| echelon wrote:
| > Some platform companies (Shopify comes to mind) cannibalize
| their plugin ecosystem by adding similar functionality to the
| core platform, but Salesforce deliberately avoids competing
| with software/services in the partner ecosystem
|
| When do you compete, and when do you cultivate?
|
| Are some business sectors better at one versus the other?
| eddythompson80 wrote:
| Also insert the standard HN comment of "I can't believe it's
| [CURRENT_YEAR] and this functionality isn't part of the core
| platform itself"
| mgl wrote:
| We actively look for service/technology partners, so if you
| want to build an application or extension on top of Openkoda
| for you or your clients we would be more than happy.
|
| Openkoda Core is released under MIT license, so we have no
| means to stop you!
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Should chat with the folks at
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40469773, your system
| could be a potential integration target.
| finnh wrote:
| I am not sure I'd agree with that - at one point Salesforce
| tried to buy my company, which was a best-of-the-AppExchange
| partner, and their justification for their (very) low offer was
| "that's what it would cost us to copy you". We sold the company
| 2 years later for 10x their offer, without a ton in the way of
| new revenue (our AppExchange ranking mysteriously tanked after
| we turned down their offer).
| htrp wrote:
| > AppExchange ranking mysteriously tanked after we turned
| down their offer
|
| This alone would be worth a blog post (assuming you don't
| have any non disparagements with CRM)
| finnh wrote:
| This was over a decade ago, so happily not something I'm
| feeling too sharply nowadays. It all worked out better in
| the end.
| cooperadymas wrote:
| > but Salesforce deliberately avoids competing with
| software/services in the partner ecosystem
|
| It helps that Salesforce takes a huge slice from sales in the
| AppExchange.
|
| This isn't entirely true, though. Salesforce does, at times,
| position itself against its own ecosystem. Their recent attempt
| at devops, no matter how feeble it is, directly competes
| against major players like Copado and Gearset. Mulesoft and
| some other ventures over the years should have theoretically
| relegated a huge multitude of sync apps to irrelevancy, if
| Salesforce had been able to execute better on them. They
| launched a payment system a couple of years ago that competes
| with some other top marketplace options. There are dozens of
| examples like this.
| righthand wrote:
| So a CRM that replicates Salesforce APIs? Sales people don't want
| a Salesforce FOSS version, that's why they green light
| salesforce. It's about trend not practical software. Only dev
| teams that have been implementing Salesforce for 5 years want a
| FOSS version.
| mgl wrote:
| Salesforce is a generic application platform today, and this is
| how see it. Openkoda is not a drop-in replacement for
| Salesforce CRM, it is a useful replacement when you want to
| build your core business application a) retaining full source
| code ownership and ability to get any Java/JS team to work on
| it and run anywhere you want, b) without becoming dependent on
| technology and commercial limitations of working with big S.
| imachine1980_ wrote:
| >Salesforce is a generic application platform today
|
| Not is standard. You need to train your costumer in this
| interface you can simply contract employees who knows
| Salesforce.
| nathantotten wrote:
| People don't build applications on Salesforce because it's a
| generic platform, they build on it because they need to
| integrate with the sales/crm process/data/etc.
|
| Edit: To be clear, I'm not saying your idea isn't good. There
| is tons of room for this stuff, but be careful in assuming
| the reason devs use Salesforce platform is because of the
| features. It's usually not.
|
| Source: I ran dev tools at Salesforce.
| megadal wrote:
| Well, there is Odoo. Which is pretty much exactly what OpenKoda
| is (FOSS ERP).
|
| Odoo is doing quite well. It made Fabien Panckaers the youngest
| billionaire in Belgium.
| mgl wrote:
| Yes, I think you could compare Openkoda with Odoo, but
| well... we are nowhere near being billionaires ;)
| megadal wrote:
| Assuming you are apart of the team, I'm sure you know Odoo
| is 20 years old. So, I can't see why in time there couldn't
| be real competition.
|
| OpenKoda and Odoo actually have sparked interesting
| questions for me about what an Open source ERP market would
| look like.
|
| One conclusion I came to is as opposed to vendor lock-in as
| most ERP/CRM products try to enforce, it would actually be
| better to go the opposite direction (high compatibility
| with existing alternatives).
|
| That said, have you guys considered allowing imports from
| Odoo into OpenKoda or other deep integrations?
|
| In theory, I feel like you can run Odoo apps _in_ OpenKoda,
| or even vice versa. The experience would be suboptimal but
| being split between two ERP systems is too.
| mgl wrote:
| We meet a lot of companies who are not happy with
| software solutions which are hard to modify.
|
| It's not even about the cost, but about the limitations
| and poor development velocity.
|
| These companies strive to build something innovative,
| they just find these closed platforms really cumbersome
| and slow to deliver.
|
| When you start investing millions of dollars into a
| bespoke solution you really want to truly own it at some
| point. And this is impossible with closed and proprietary
| application platforms.
| tomrod wrote:
| Odoo's quest for monetization from open source has been a bit
| off-putting. I stopped using it a few quarters back due to
| that. Community and Enterprise are becoming too disjointed.
| megadal wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback. I've never used Odoo or OpenKoda,
| just read a lot about both and was impressed.
|
| Sad to hear about Odoo's disjointed approach to enterprise
| monetization.
|
| Hopefully OpenKoda takes note.
| mgl wrote:
| Point taken.
| api wrote:
| What would be a better approach?
| acaloiar wrote:
| I can't speak specifically for Odoo's quest for
| monetization because I'm not a user; it very well may not
| be a healthy one. But in general I think FOSS monetization
| should be celebrated. Successful open source software
| businesses are generally good for everyone except for
| closed source software businesses.
|
| Is there something in particular that's flawed with Odoo's
| business?
| jamesbfb wrote:
| Hey! As a Odoo dev, it's really cool to see Odoo mentioned
| here. I was thinking the same thing regarding its
| similarities. I've always regarded Odoo as the "batteries
| included" ERP framework.
|
| Here in Australia, Odoo is finally starting to hit some
| strides. We're seeing more jobs in the market requesting Odoo
| experience, at our work we're onboarding more customers than
| we have before. All said, I'm definitely going to fire up
| OpenKoda and brush up on my Java :)
| j45 wrote:
| Maybe some plugins could work with both.
|
| Also custom integrations
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Looks cool, but honestly what companies need a Salesforce like
| too but can't afford Salesforce force ?
|
| I'm still have to host this thing somewhere, if I'm bootstraping
| a startup I might as well rely on Excel until I can afford
| Salesforce.
|
| I like the project though. Best of luck.
| mgl wrote:
| That's a great question and we have great answers from actual
| clients - the repeating pattern goes as follows:
|
| "We invested three years building this app, it's a booming
| success, but their user-based pricing is killing us"
|
| "We can't run complex queries"
|
| "It's too slow"
|
| "We feel our data is stuck there"
|
| "I want to own my code and my application"
|
| "Why do I need to use APEX where we use Java and JS everywhere
| else in the company"
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Okay so this isn't really for end users, it's not for Billy
| Bob's shop which needs to use Salesforce to track cupcake
| orders, but rather a vendor who would sell Salesforce like
| software to Billy Bob with some light customization on top.
|
| Understood, thank you for your answer and I wish you the best
| of luck!
| mgl wrote:
| Honestly, I don't think there are many (revenue speaking)
| Billy Bob's shops using Salesforce to track their cupcake
| orders out there.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Bad example, but generally this is more of a framework
| for building Sales tracking software vs a direct
| Salesforce competitor, right?
| rodgerd wrote:
| > Looks cool, but honestly what companies need a Salesforce
| like too but can't afford Salesforce force ?
|
| Consider the example of APRA-regulated entities (banks and
| super funds who do business in Australia, for example): APRA's
| CPS230, which describes the requirements for business
| continuity, requires that you not lock yourself into a single
| vendor for a variety of critical functions, which means you
| need to explain how you'll keep your bank running if the
| relationship with that vendor is severed.
|
| Depending on the function - for example, if it's considered
| "country-sustaining" or "bank-sustaining" - APRA may require
| you can do that in a matter of minutes through to hours. You
| may be very happy running Salesforce as your primary vendor -
| but if you want to be able to explain how you can run critical
| functions in the event of SF deleting your account a la Google,
| or a commercial breakdown, or whatever, having something that
| you could hydrate your data into, repoint your systems to their
| APIs, and keep basic functionality going is a very useful BCP
| to be able to demonstrate.
| mgl wrote:
| That's spot-on.
|
| We have a proposal review meeting with an Australian
| insurance company scheduled for this Thursday.
| snagglemouth wrote:
| You already posted a Show HN like 10 days ago. Why are you
| posting again?
| kstrauser wrote:
| More than that: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=openkoda
|
| @dang, this person's spamming us with marketing links.
| llsf wrote:
| Considering the tag line "Ready-to-use development platform that
| accelerates the process of building business applications and
| internal tools", I would think OpenKoda would compete with Retool
| more than Salesforce, no ?
| abraae wrote:
| Where can one find the breakdown of features on the free vs
| enterprise versions?
| nutrie wrote:
| Sadly, I doubt anybody's going to beat Salesforce and other crap
| such as Workday unless it's the same crap selling under a
| different name. Corporate people want their featurez.
| mgl wrote:
| The good news here is that they are many businesses out of
| there which a) need an enterprise solution (data protection,
| dedicated cloud, multi-tenancy), b) have complex data
| processing patterns (think: underwriting a property policy with
| cyclone/flood coverage), and c) don't have an unlimited budget.
|
| I would leave corporations to work with corporations if they
| are really happy working together, but the world is much
| greater than that (them!).
| mgl wrote:
| Thank you for such an overwhelming reception, we truly appreciate
| your comments and been sharing your feedback back and forth on
| our Slack channels today.
|
| If you have a strong enterprise use case, I would be super happy
| to schedule a quick Openkoda demo for you, including all the
| bells and whistles. Just share a short description and ping me
| at: mglomba@openkoda.com
|
| We are still actively watching this thread and will try to
| address as many questions as possible.
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