iDempiere enthusiasts share many examples of how iDempiere changed people’s lives for the better. Here we present you our hero of the month for his contributions during the month of May.

Tell us a little bit about your childhood and where you grew up.

I was born and lived in a city near Grenoble. It is about 100km from Lyon, where the last World Conference took place. It is a really nice place, surrounded by mountains. An ideal place for people who love skiing, hiking, etc.

How and why did you get involved with iDempiere?

I was hired as a consultant in 2007 to create the French Accounting module on Compiere. But it was complicated to work without rolling up my sleeves, so I started to learn SQL and looked at the code. In 2011, TGI decided to migrate their legacy software for adjusters to a web interface and we choose ADempiere.

That’s when the fork took place and when I got in touch with Red1 and Carlos, starting to create patches for iDempiere. The timing was perfect – we needed to add lots of functionality – and it was a win-win relationship.

Is there something that makes you passionate about open source in general and iDempiere in particular?

I’m also using Piwigo to manage my photo gallery. I deeply think that OS can change (a little) the world, giving freedom to people and organizations.

What does your typical day look like?

There is no typical day, there are always surprises 🙂

But some coding, exchanges with colleagues or customers, forum reading, children coming unexpectedly while attending meetings…

If you have your customers for whom you implement or customize iDempiere, what are they like and what do they typically want?

I like to present iDempiere as a great toolbox, and each customer/user can take what he wants/needs.

At the end, I think customers really like 2 things: ability to adapt any window on the fly and the report engine.

How does it feel to win a Hero of the month title?

I’m proud and honoured that other people from the community thought to nominate me.

What would you like to say to other community members? Any advice or suggestions?

I would like members of the community to be less shy and participate more actively in forums, bug fixes, improvements, …

I think there is an ‘active team’ and lots of passive people who just take and not give back. That’s not the ‘spirit’ of the project, which I like to describe as “Give and Take” (a title of a book).