Tree.io – Open Source Business Management Software

[borplk]

Every time I come across these projects I think an easy to use web fronted for Docker would be amazingly useful.

Anyone could install it once and from then you just switch Docker containers in and out to try different projects, etc... and don't have to do the bulk of the server preparation that 99% of people don't know how to do properly or just can't bother with.

It will bring this amazing wealth of self-hosted projects to the every day user.

If it becomes popular projects will start providing Docker containers.

A registry can also be made so that you can search and install them without hassle right from the UI.

Or the command line, "docker-get install tree.io"

Take my idea and run with it! Run!

[shykes]

Docker already includes a registry :)

"docker pull borplk/tres.io"?

You can search at http://index.docker.io

[sciurus]

What you're proposing are virtual appliances, a virtual machine image "intended to eliminate the installation, configuration and maintenance costs associated with running complex stacks of software" (to quote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_appliance). It's not uncommon to see commercial software distributed this way, and I've seen some open source projects do it as well. There are multiple existing attempts to build a "registry", such as https://www.vmware.com/latam/appliances/ and http://www.turnkeylinux.org/

[zimbatm]

I talked to Solomon during DotScale 2013 and submitted that the index could be transformed into an app-store. He didn't seemed opposed to the idea but said they want to focus on making the base stable. Just saying the idea is out there.

Apart from the app-store what's missing is more container metadata with an embedded security model and maybe signed binaries. The server-side also need a UI that is higher-level than the existing Docker UI [1] project. There's also some work missing on state handling.

[1]: https://github.com/crosbymichael/dockerui

[hardwaresofton]

I think the model might be a little bit misguided (having everything in one place is not necessarily a good thing, specialization and all) -- but open source and awesome? I'm down with that

[drone]

Agreed, although there are more capable ERP systems out there of varying degrees of openness, I've found many of them suffer from one serious core flaw (for my needs):

Failure to integrate effectively with Quickbooks or QBO (the latter being more likely for most ERP-like systems these days). I understand that some businesses need fewer advanced financial features, but every promise of "integrated one-stop back-end" has left me with having to have multiple processes for the same task.

I wish more of these projects would integrate with common, effective, players in specialized areas rather than trying to "be everything to everyone" - a good ERP system these days would really be glue between the powerhouses moreso than replacements.

Alas, this project looks to be struggling - no blog posts since 2011, and minimal activity over 2013 in github.

[X4]

Tree.io is simple, which allows for customization and specialization. :)

I think you mistake all-in-one with complexity and non-adaptability. Centralization makes software vulnerable, that's right, but not this type of in-house centralization. Correct me if I am wrong.

Even the best and most loosely coupled component-based software has one problem, it needs to be connected (glued if badly written) to other systems to make it useful. What this evolves to is a complex network of interlinked components. Similar to organic systems nature has invented. Ironic, that we humans create similarly working components that we're made out of.

[treeio]

For those who doesn't want to have their data in the hands of a third party it makes sense having everything in one system, and because it's open source you can easily extend it if need be.

[Killah911]

This is really awesome. The only thing that keeps me from using it right away is that it doesn't seem to have much activity. Anyone have the DL on the creators of the project and if they're maybe monetizing by doing support etc?

Would love to use this, just worried about getting stuck up the creek without a paddle. Many forum questions appear to have been lingering there for months without a response.

[exceptione]

It looks to be a feature-rich tool. Does anyone know why development has stopped 9 months ago? At least, I conclude so from the github commit history.

[glibgil]

Always use the graph to see what is happening across all branches and tags. https://github.com/treeio/treeio/network

[zdw]

I'm stunned that nobody has made one of these that's CLI based and scriptable...

[drmr]

Org mode?

http://orgmode.org/

[clarkm]

Did this used to be called Giteso? Did it just get renamed to Tree.io or it a completely different product?

I'm only asking because the bottom of http://tree.io/en/jobs mentions it. :)

[radicalbyte]

http://wayback.archive.org/web/20110228035141/http://tree.io...

> © 2011 Giteso Ltd. All rights reserved. > Registered in England. Company No. 07416236

[treeio]

Tree.io used to be called Hardtree and our company Giteso, we renamed both to Tree.io

[ziggamon]

Name seemed familiar, and in deed their blog has posts from 2011 when they were a SaaS. Anyone know what happened, did it simply fail and they open sourced it or is there something else in play here?

Cool project either way though :)

[JohnLBevan]

My guess is enterprises were scared of going the SaaS route; partly as this model is still relatively new, but mainly because companies like to keep their data in house (or at least need the option to easily get hold of a regular backup / with some way to quickly restore it should the vendor go under).

[eranation]

Any idea how they plan to make money? (it's MIT licensed) support? / hosting? or is it not for profit?

[siddboots]

I think consulting.

[JesseObrien]

Can anyone get the install process to actually work? I got to 'python manage.py installdb' and it failed because that command doesn't exist in manage.py. I tried a bunch of the other commands from manage.py help as well and still nothing.

[mjhagen]

I had to install MySQL-python, but now I'm stuck on a foreign key conflict when importing the initial data.json file.

    IntegrityError: (1452, 'Cannot add or update a child row: a foreign key constraint fails (`treeiodb`.`core_user`, CONSTRAINT `user_id_refs_id_4bf8d20` FOREIGN KEY (`user_id`) REFERENCES `auth_user` (`id`))')

[Joeboy]

It sounds as if maybe your pythonpath isn't set up correctly. Try

export PYTHONPATH=$PYTHONPATH:/path/to/treeio:/path/to/

(ie add the project path and its parent to PYTHONPATH), then try manage.py installdb again.

NB This is guesswork based on prior django experience, I haven't actually tried installing it.

[maikhoepfel]

It's a Django project, so the command might be "syncdb" instead. If that doesn't do the trick, they'll have installed a custom management command that doesn't seem to get picked up. Grep the source code for installdb then.

[X4]

Here's a video introducing it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORKhxzwO43k&list=UUBWJQIUhDQz...

[etchalon]

That's a.) incredible that it's open source (thanks!) but b.) truly a terrible UI.

[sleepyhead]

Like all open source applications. I use OSS exclusively for development. I think the only OSS GUI app I use is Sequel Pro (which is actually quite good).

[obituary_latte]

Am I reading it wrong or do the website and repo licenses not match?

[rbanffy]

The site says "free open source" and the repo has a BSD-ish license in it. Where did you find the conflicting info?

[Bjoern]

This reminds me of TeamBox (version 3 is also opensource).

[pbreit]

I'm not sure "ambitious" is even the right word to describe such a project. A demo would be nice. I'm guessing the project has 0 real users (download <> user).

[X4]

I measured that +53 Stars have appeared on Github right after posting the link. It received 38 points until now, that means more people have interest in the software than people are upvoing on HN. That's really good to know, I feel sympathy with people who opensource their efforts to help the people of the world. (328 Stars pre HN)