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GNU Enterprise (GNUe) is a suite of tools and applications for solving the needs of the enterprise. From human resources, accounting, customer relationship management and project management to supply chain or e-commerce, GNUe can handle the needs of any business, large or small. If you are looking for a full-function ERP, GNUe is the package for you.
GNUe Enterprise's official packages cover the following areas:
Beyond applications, GNUe is a development framework and toolkit that enables enterprise information technology professionals to customise applications for their businesses. The GNUe platform boasts an open architecture and easy maintenance. It gives users a modular system and freedom from being stuck with a single-source vendor. Plus, users get consistency and the ability to tap into a network of best practices from other enterprises, saving valuable development time.
The GNUe tools include:
The project will also function as the coordinator for the various other projects and groups of people working in this area. Most of the coordination takes place through common mailing lists and IRC discussions, but the project can also support with a set of common resources, such as CVS space for development, FTP distribution points, web pages and more.
GNUe is a Free Software project with a corps of volunteer and paid developers around the world working on GNUe projects. This provides the added benefits of easy internationalization of applications. The project is working to provide a worldwide GNUe community, allowing everyone who is involved in the project access to other talented business information technology professionals.
GNUe supports multi-currency processing (including euro support) and multi-language interfaces.
GNUe is a work in progress. For the status of various packages, please view our FAQ.
GNU Enterprise is not a system for word processing, spreadsheets and the like. The Gnome Workshop is a meta-project for such software.
GNU Enterprise is released under the GPL license. For an example, please see the GPL license at http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html. The actual license covering GNU Enterprise is included in all GNU Enterprise distributions. For a description of why GPL and why free software see http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-free.html.
Open Architecture means you can choose which applications you wish to use; you don't have to install the entire package. Or, you can develop your own applications and integrate them. GNUe is built around open standards. It is also designed from the ground up as a modular system and utilizes the latest in object technology. Object technology means that parts of the overall system may be improved and capabilities added without monolithic or system wide changes. For example, you may chose to implement GNUe's Accounts Receivable but keep your existing Order Entry/Invoicing.
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is a comprehensive, integrated set of business solutions which helps your company gain a competitive edge by integrating all business processes and optimising the usage of the resources you have available.
GNU Enterprise has its own website, at http://www.gnuenterprise.org. This has up-to-date information on the project, and a forum for posting of articles and discussion about GNUe and other related projects.
An up-to-date list of available documentation is available here: http://www.gnuenterprise.org/doc/.
Docbook and Texinfo source to most of the above documentation available via cvs. Patches to documenation are gladly accepted - e-mail them to <info@gnue.org>.
There are four current mailing lists for the GNUe project. In decreasing order of probable interest/importance to the newcomer to GNUe, they are:
An announcements-only mailing list for the project. Subscribe to this list or view the archives at: http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnue-announce.
The main mailing list for the project. Subscribe to this list or view the archives at: http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnue.
The developers' mailing list for the project. Unlikely to be of interest except to active GNUe Developers. Subscribe to this list or view the archives at: http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnue-dev.
A mailing list with CVS commit messages for the project. Unlikely to be of interest except to active GNUe Developers who regularly access the codebase via CVS. Subscribe to this list or view the archives at: http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/commit-gnue.
In addition, from January 2000 to November 2001, there were a large number (16) of specific lists for particular parts of the GNUe project. These have now all been merged into the main gnue@gnu.org list above, but the archives for these old lists are still available.
A good deal of development and design has been taking place on IRC. Where developers torture one another with ludicrous design ideas. The irc server is located at irc.openprojects.net port 6667 channel #gnuenterprise.
Note that the 'open' in openprojects.net refers to openness in terms of the projects (most of which have their full development processes accessible) and not 'open source software' (a more ambigious term than free software, that can cover different varieties of free and non-free software).
We are toying with putting up an HTML chat client. For those not fortunate enough to sit in IRC during development time irc logs are available. Today's log is at: http://www.gnuenterprise.org/irc-logs/gnue-public.log and previous logs are at: http://www.gnuenterprise.org/irc-logs/.
Kernel Cousins is a weekly summary of the discussions on the #gnuenterprise IRC channel and the main GNUe mailing lists. It is a useful resource for anyone who wants to keep in touch with ongoing developments in the project, but who doesn't have the time or inclination to read the full irc logs and mailing list archives.
The latest issue of GNUe Kernel Cousins is at http://kt.zork.net/GNUe/latest.html. Older issues are archived at http://kt.zork.net/GNUe/back-issues.html. There is a topic index at http://kt.zork.net/GNUe/topics.html.
An up-to-date list of the latest official releases, in a variety of formats, is available on the website at: http://www.gnuenterprise.org/download.php.
Nightly snapshots of the GNUe code base are now available at: http://www.gnuenterprise.org/downloads/snapshots/. These are primarily useful for developers who wish to test the current CVS base but cannot use the cvs tools (e.g., people behind a firewall). These snapshots are made at approximately midnight (Central timezone) each night. Snapshots are kept for 5 nights before being deleted. Snapshots are available in both *.tar.gz and other formats.
NOTE: These are CVS snapshots and, as such, may or may not run as expected.
If you plan to follow GNUe development and are familiar with CVS, you are much better off using cvs. For information about accessing our CVS tree, see the next section.
Anonymous cvs access to the GNU Enterprise CVS repository is available. For more information on how to access our cvs tree, see: http://www.gnuenterprise.org/sections.php?op=viewarticle&artid=2 .
You can also access the GNUe cvs via the web at: http://subversions.gnu.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/gnue/.
There are several ways in which you can support this project. The most obvious is to take part of the discussions we have and to contribute free software that we need. If you're a technical writer, you can also help us write documentation for the system once it is in production and if you're an artist, you can help by creating graphics for the project.
If you're representing a company, you can pay someone in your staff to work on some of the software that we need and release it as free software, or you can pay someone else to work on free software. You can also order documentation, cd-rom's and more from the Free Software Foundation to help support the development of more free software.
Feel free to contact us if you want to discuss how you can help or wish to offer us your services.
If you have questions or wish to help please send an email to <info@gnue.org>.
The current coordinators for the project are James Thompson <jamest@gnue.org> and Derek Neighbors <derek@gnue.org>.
Please send FSF & GNU inquiries & questions to gnu@gnu.org. There are also other ways to contact the FSF.
Please send comments on these web pages to webmasters@gnu.org, send other questions to gnu@gnu.org.
Copyright (C) 1999,2000,2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc.,b 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111, USA
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.
Updated: 04 Feb 2002 psu