Contributors

Hello all,

First I would like to thank all community members for voicing their perspectives around the current situation with the oca/bank-payment project. Your commitment to OCA’s long-term success and open collaboration is deeply appreciated.

Reviewing the discussion for a Board Member perspective I feel there are some important notes that need to be made here.

I will not comment on any technical details, nor will I discuss any views on individual attitudes or merits. As a board member, the most important perspective here is on governance integrity, project ownership, and community trust.

Clarifying on project governance, I believe the OCA Board agrees with me if I say the following:

1. Respect for PSC Authority The OCA Board reaffirms the Project Steering Committee’s (PSC) responsibility and decision-making authority within the scope of their projects. This is foundational to our community governance model and must be preserved.

2. Transparency and Neutrality of the Board The Board’s role is not to impose technical decisions but to facilitate alignment, mediate conflicts when escalated, and uphold governance structures. We acknowledge that people involved in PSCs can also be Board members, but they are not acting in that capacity, and it does not grant them any particular privileges in those PSCs.

3. Forks and Innovation Channels While forks are a natural part of open-source ecosystems, “endorsed” forks under the OCA umbrella must be handled transparently, with consensus from relevant PSCs and clear processes.

In face of the above, and on some comments on the email thread, I need to set the record straight:

• Let me reaffirm that it is NOT up to the OCA Board to make decisions on the direction of oca/bank-payment project, or any other project governed by a PSC for the matter.

• It is solely up to the Banking PSC to make the decisions on the evolution of the project, and how to handle diverging options.

• The Board can intervene to facilitate alignment, but the decisions ultimately need to come from the PSC.

Perhaps the PSC needs to meet to clarify the decisions made and the plan for the main and fork repos. A joint written statement can help ensure a shared understanding of those commitments, and avoid misunderstandings. The OCA Board is here to help facilitate this, and our Executive Director, Virginie, can help to ensure total independence on this facilitation.

Thank you Daniel

On 25/06/2025 08:58, Jorge Elena Poblet wrote:

Dear all,

I would like to express my opinion on this matter and propose a perspective that focuses on broader value, community cohesion, and long-term sustainability.

While I recognize that Alexis' code is technically sound, we must also evaluate it in terms of value proposition to the OCA and its ecosystem. In my view, the added value does not outweigh the negative consequences of a fragmented community. The creation of a fork (especially one that causes division) undermines our collective efforts not only in terms of development but also in our market competitiveness as implementation partners offering open-source solutions.

We are not just competing on code quality. We are competing in a global market where alignment, collaboration, and unity are crucial. A divided community weakens our position, and this discord will inevitably impact other critical areas such as sponsorships, memberships, and contributor engagement.

If the OCA board allowed this situation to unfold (or worse, endorsed it) then I firmly believe the OCA board has a responsibility to fix it. That means actively engaging with the involved parties, reestablishing governance boundaries, and restoring trust and unity within the community. We look to the board not only for leadership but also for accountability in upholding the values and processes that bind us.

This is no longer just about a particular module or technical choice. It's about governance, trust, and direction. The cost of internal fragmentation is far higher than the perceived benefits of a controversial code improvement, no matter how well-crafted.

We urgently need to redirect our energy and focus toward strengthening our community, improving our collective output, and reinforcing our presence in the Odoo ecosystem. This is how we compete, how we grow, and how we stay relevant. Let’s not allow internal conflict to derail that mission.

Best regards,

On Wed, Jun 25, 2025 at 8:37 AM Stuart J Mackintosh <notifications@odoo-community.org> wrote:

As well as working with Odoo since 2006 and open Source since 10 years before, I lead a US Open Source foundation. I am an avid supporter of OSC and grateful to all of the contributors.

Normally an observer here, I felt compelled to support Graeme's point that once a governance structure is set up such as PSC, it holds the decision until the PSC is disbanded or leadership is changed. So above any technical argument, governance takes precedence.

The Foundation I lead is the Perl Foundation, well known for the acronym TIMTOWTDI (There Is More Than one Way To Do It) and this holds true in many areas and allows for experiments and empirical improvements, creating the opportunity for constructive arguments. However when on the user face of a successful mature project, there should be one recognised solution - forks etc should all be welcome, however PSC must have authority to recognise what is the official distribution. Once this rule is broken, it becomes very hard to ensure consistency and worst case, leads to core contributors to burn out and exit.

It has been valuable reading the technical exchange on this matter, and concerning to read that there may have been a breach of governance.

Best wishes,

Stuart.

On 24/06/2025 23:12, Graeme Gellatly wrote:

This seems a case of the OCA board overstepping its bounds, and prima facie, appears quite conflicted to boot. When a board can unilaterally override a project leader, this is a problem and it is this behaviour that will lead to senior contributor abandonment. Especially when that project leader has clearly shown a path forward and board members have a vested interest in the alternative. Without this interest a fork was probably avoided altogether (and the new issues this is already creating), and eventually agreement reached, but if it was ultimately deemed necessary, it would have occurred outside the OCA and ultimately converged at some future point.

Pedro and I have had disagreements over the years, and long may they continue. But I was never so churlish to think that just because I thought something was better I could unilaterally sidestep a project leader.  Beyond adhering to basic principles of open source governance and mediating, insofar as it does not affect the OCA Project as a whole, this is not a board decision. By its own constitution, such power is vested in the PSC. The board can choose to remove a PSC, but not unilaterally override its decision and historically when such disputes reached the board that was often the consideration. This is Open Source dynamics forever under the "authority follows responsibility" principle.

In this, I can only back him 100%. As the clear leader of this particular project under the responsibility principle, whether you agree with him or not, it is a PSC decision and ultimately the project leader. If years of contribution and merit can be discarded by fiat, then it isn't really open source anymore is it? I ask myself which repo will be next. Certainly for me, if the OCA wishes to abandon these principles, it is not for the better.

On Sat, Jun 21, 2025 at 9:47 PM Pedro M. Baeza <notifications@odoo-community.org> wrote:

There are a lot of people that strongly disagrees with the creation of this fork, that is something with no precedence in OCA, and offered to merge the improvements into the main branch, with the only exception of the point 1 "Adoption of the native object account.payment.method.line as "Payment Method" (replaces the OCA object account.payment.mode)", postponing the decision to version 19 to check with Odoo SA if they expand the usage of that fields, because the so called "native model" is not for that purpose, and the changes that have been made for adopting it as so is deforming even more the standard, but it was miserable ignored. You can see in the same thread the technical reasons to not use such data model, but also the ethical and practical ones, as the fork started on version 16, ignoring all the improvements and bugfixes done meanwhile in 17 (or now announced in this thread as new things, while they were there for a long time thanks to multiple contributors), and also not respecting such contributions attribution, which is one of the main principles of the open source.

I'm deeply disappointed by both the attitude of the people involved, including some board members, and the arbitration done by the OCA itself, and I'm personally commiting to bring the improvements mentioned here that are still pending (obviously, respecting the attribution) to the main OCA/bank-payment branch, so please take all of this into account when you decide which one to use.

Regards.

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