Dr. Jean-Paul Smets-Solanes is the main developer of the ERP5 project. Besides his assignment as CEO of Nexedi SARL, he is the author of numerous articles and conferences on the economy of Free Software and the economy of software patents. He is also in charge of the EuroLinux as Alliance and Vice-President of the French Speaking Linux and Free Software Association.

ERP5 is a project with the aim to develop of Free ERP Software and to create a common knowledge base on ERP technologies and methodologies. ERP5 is currently under development for Coramy, a leading apparel company in France with 3 factories in multiple sites. This presentation will introduce the core ERP5 technologies and innovations. In a first part, the ERP5 object model will be introduced. ERP5 is based on a new object model of corporate management which allows to represent any management processes with only 5 fundamental classes: Nodes, Resources, Movements, Path and Items. ERP5 implements advanced ERP features through this model including "multis" (ex. multi-currency) as well "metas" (ex. meta-resource). In a second part, the ERP5 implementation technologie will be introduced. ERP5 is implemented with the Zope object database and application server. ERP5 extends Zope with a new relational Catalog engine, an active object messaging bus and an object synchronisation framework. In a third part, the case of Coramy will be presented in detail. Expected implementation is planned for August 2002. Most components will be still demonstrated in July. As a conclusion, the economic rationale for sponsoring a GPL ERP software by a leading industrial will be explained.