https://media.opendigital.info/videos/watch/0af1fbec-d51b-4d90-8658-ef78d4f967f2 Joël Grand-Guillaume, OCA board member and long-time contributor from Camp2Camp, shares the founding story of the Odoo Community Association and reflects on two decades of building a business around open source. Recorded at Odoo Experience 2025, the conversation covers how Camp2Camp reaches project steering committees to represent their customers, the OSGeo-inspired idea that became the OCA, the fortuitous timing of its creation alongside Odoo's open core shift, regrets over lost connections with Asia, and Joël's dream of a fully packaged OCA distribution as a strong community alternative. Topics covered: Starting with Odoo (then tiny ERP) in 2006 while working in the geospatial division of Camp2Camp, Falling in love with open source through its human connection and community orientation, Evaluating alternatives including Compiere and AdempI before choosing tiny ERP, Camp2Camp's 20-year commitment to open source, Business model: reaching project steering committees to represent customers and drive project direction, Investing in committers as the foundation of long-term customer support, How customers win by having their voice in open source projects while Camp2Camp sustains the product, The license shift from tiny ERP through OpenERP to Odoo, and reduced collaboration in that era, Taking inspiration from OSGeo - a geospatial open source foundation - as the model for OCA, The insight: a neutral entity removes reluctance to contribute to "someone else's project", Proposing the idea to major contributors and forming the association, Fortuitous timing: OCA bylaws signed in the same year as the open core business model shift, Choosing a not-for-profit structure in Switzerland for trust, stability, and shared governance, Achieving the original vision: thousands of contributors, ending duplicated effort, Next challenge: scaling from small groups to worldwide outreach, The underrepresentation of Asia - including 100,000 people in Indonesia running their own OCA-equivalent, Regret over losing Eric, an Asian board member who died during his mandate, and the network gap it left, Advice for new open source communities: start with local chapters rather than centralisation, Why local chapters communicate value better than a distant international entity, Final wish: an OCA distribution - a standalone, packaged community alternative building on OpenUpgrade, "Make a new major together" as the motto for the next phase Tue, 21 Apr 2026 18:45:14 GMT https://validator.w3.org/feed/docs/rss2.html PeerTube - https://media.opendigital.info https://media.opendigital.info/lazy-static/avatars/1c76e474-a93d-4a23-aec7-b854de60eea7.png https://media.opendigital.info/videos/watch/0af1fbec-d51b-4d90-8658-ef78d4f967f2 All rights reserved, unless otherwise specified in the terms specified at https://media.opendigital.info/about and potential licenses granted by each content's rightholder.