New on LowEndTalk? Please Register and read our Community Rules.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
Comments
Hey @jhadley, looks great man!
Good job
If it only allows for viewing the source code and not for redistribution (under for example an OSI-approved license) it's probably not a good idea to call it "open-source".
The site doesn't use the phrase 'open source' anyway.
Free trial is up. Demo will most likely be tomorrow as I still need to get my server upgraded and make a few changes to make it suitable in a demo environment.
Like the trend a while back in the US with toys with names like iToy or eToy that were neither electronic nor related to the internet...
But you used it:
Do you have the trial?
Trial is on the website
Can't login
Do you mean the demo? Still working on that. The trial is what you download and try free on your own server.
Am I the only one who finds it strange that you would sell a billing system using another billing system (and one that can be configured to do the exact same yours is being pitched to do)? doesn't exactly make you think the system you are selling is that good.
All seems very rushed - with making a quick buck as priority.
OpenBill doesn't have software licensing functionality. Rather than reinvent the wheel I used WHMCS.
FYI the priority was for me to dump Harvest myself. The licence sales are secondary.
Surely you'd develop your own licensing system if you were serious about your product? It's not very hard to to accomplish and would give people more confidence in your product.
As I said before, it's a way to make a quick buck and nothing more - I feel sorry for anyone who invests in the product when you decide you are bored and want to try something new.
No need to reinvent the wheel IMHO. Not sure what your problem is - the fact is I have developed something neat and am making it available cheaply. It's not a massive 'investment' and I think you're overanalysing this whole situation.
Got some questions:
Can we set the currency of the invoices?
Can we modify the templates for the invoices and eventually translate them as you said you would work on that a week or two ago.
Currency is set globally to whatever you like.
You can translate the invoices easily.
Template can't be changed easily at the moment, but I'll work on that.
You can translate the invoices easily.
Template can't be changed easily at the moment, but I'll work on that.
I care about translation only, so it is all good. I will sign up tommorow to check it out.
Glad to hear it
Actually, it is. You're not just investing the licensing cost - you're investing basically every aspect of what you have; time, money, and energy. If you decide to ditch the project for whatever reason, and don't own up to your promise to release the full source freely (hey, it isn't contractually guaranteed, so there is no guarantee that it will happen), a serious amount of people will be locked in entirely to a piece of discontinued software.
Moving to another billing system will cost time, energy, money, and most importantly, customer trust. Customers won't be happy when the familiar interface changes all of a sudden.
@joepie91 Barring the fact that there is a level of trust that comes with purchasing pretty much anything, I'm aware of that, and as I said before it is those sorts of fears that inspired me to actually write this system. Think about how much worse it'd be if (and I have seen a few that already have) one of the hosted solutions folded up - at least with this I can release the source code in a couple of clicks (and have no reason not to if I can't maintain the software), and the database is laid out nicely so that everything is easy to extract if necessary.
Not exactly - a billing system is vital for a business, much like a VPS panel for a VPS hosting business. Many other things aren't as vital.
To my knowledge, they would be forced to release data to users by law in a variety of jurisdictions. That is not the case with the source code here.
You don't have one now, but who knows what happens in the future? If you are absolutely sure that you have no reason not to release the source, then add it as a clause in the purchase contract/EULA. That way there is a contractual guarantee.
Where is the database structure documentation?
I still maintain you're being overly cynical but nonetheless, the EULA does incorporate some client rights and probably more than a lot of solutions, for example:
12 months following the Effective Date, without material error (and if the
Software does not so operate, the Licensor will, for no additional charge,
either: (i) carry out any work necessary in order to ensure that the
Software operates without material error during this period; or (ii) provide
the Licensee or arrange for the provision to the Licensee of alternative
software performing substantially the same function as the Software);
Honestly, anyone who's competent should be able to figure it. It's a simple structure. In addition, the next version will feature an API which can be used to extract data en masse.
I tend to be critical and account for worst-case scenarios... consider it free consulting!
That would only apply in the case the software doesn't work though, it doesn't cover discontinuation of the development. The software can 'work', but still be unmaintained.
While clean code can often be interpreted without comments, database structures are often a lot more abstract, and it can be tricky to understand the relationships between tables without documentation (unless you made the structure yourself, because you designed it in a way that makes sense to you).
That sounds like a fair solution to the problem, assuming this API will be complete (as in, reliably allowing access to all data in the database that one would want to export).
You really need to fix that typeahead as it looks nasty when watching the video.
I've actually decided that assuming I get a few takers, I'll be redoing the entire client and admin interfaces and making the whole thing look "nice", which will mean a move away from Bootstrap and its dodgy typeahead
Would you consider running the early adopters discount into next month?
It will finish when the next version is released, as the entire UI is being redone and a lot of cool new features added, justifying a higher price.
@jhadley Wanted to show a client and it looks like the demo is broken. Is there a working version anywhere?
Hi Dom
There is a demo of the first version here:
https://www.openbill.co.uk/demo/adm/login.php
-BUT-
I got a lot of feedback (but not many sales) from the first version, so I have decided to rework OpenBill from the ground up and do a relaunch, so I would rather you looked at the work in progress and held on a little for the relaunch:
There are some screenshots here:
http://www.openbill.co.uk/forum/forum/main-forum/upcoming-releases
The new version is about a month away from completion and includes a nice new look, better security, a ticket system, searching, sorting and pagination, and a lot more..