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hi, this is a little rhetoric question to
I will answer it myself below as far my understanding goes and hopefully somebody who knows this exactly can either correct me or confirm.
OpenERP is free software. Free as in freedom & free as in gratis
No matter how many users or databases you want to deploy are or what you want to manage with OpenERP you will not (and will never) have to pay license fees to anybody for the sheer usage of the software including all publicly available Modules.
If you need any kind of professional support (what most people & organization will need) or hosting services at any point you can find whomever is capable of providing such services and pay them for these services they provide to you.
Such a service provider could be:
So, the use of the software is free of charge at any time. Whatever you pay it will be a service provided for this Software. And if you need a service or not is up to your own choice.
OpenERP weighs in on this in "Open Source: Free as in Freedom, not free as in Free services" at http://v6.openerp.com/node/465
Statement: It will cost you a minimum of $ 15.000 to start or you have to invest this same amount or more in yourself or you are already a developer yourself by profession. See further one of the other answers.
@ Ray "Open Source: Free as in Freedom, not free as in Free services" good point. Actually that doesn't contradict what I stated, nut it is good to stress on that
@ton "...minimum of $ 15.000" not sure whether you can generalize such a number really. I guess it depends very much on your approach, how much functionality you will be using, how many people you need to get trained, etc., etc ...
You have to take care not to create false expectations. It has to be clear that "implementing OpenERP will always costs you something." The great thing with our full open source licence is that you can choose between spending time or money. So, it's not gratis, from the company point of view.
I would change your question or answer as it's wrong. "what's the cost of the licence? --> gratis but "what's the cost to use" --> not gratis because time is money for companies. It's like thinking that because you get the car for free, you use it for free. NO, you have to pay for the gasoil (maintenance), the insurance (bugfix guarantee, migration), learning to drive (partner services). If people think it's gratis, they may face a bad surprise one day or another. (it's like calling the insurance when you car is already broken --> this will costs you much more)
Nucleas Research did a TCO Case Study for 2 ERP systems for a biotechnology firm with 2600 employees comparing:
They calculated: JD Edwards Enterprise One on annual cost per user $ 1,250 SAP on annual cost per user $ 5,313
Some of my own calculations on the report:
Because OpenERP doesn't have licence cost I recalculated the above cost without licence cost and only including cost for staff and consulting:
Project cost made for implementation of the system:
My first four conclusion based on these simple figures:
http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/analystreports/enterprise-application/nucleus-sap-jde-162226.pdf
what would you say being the best way to actually bring down implementation costs? Gather knowledge by yourself as much as you can, finding a service provider with competitive pricing, or ...? Probably SaaS would be one way because you don't need to invest in Hardware. But some people might feel more comfortable to having their most crucial data close to their physical company and not in an anonymous datacenter
@gunnar It is all about priority on good decisions in implementation. Hardware, SaaS and Service Provider doesn't really make the difference.
This is referring to what is called Total Cost of Ownership TCO. It applies to IT domain. A lot has been written; see for instance (http://www.business-case-analysis.com/total-cost-of-ownership.html)]
not 100% clear whether that is a confirmation, a correction or an amendment to my answer. I think an amendment
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