When?
Many companies already use or have heard of the ERP system Odoo. However, not many people know the exact date when the first official release of this system was released. Apparently, the reason is that the company's founder, Fabien Pinckaers, did not announce publicly before and has not provided accurate information about this milestone for the Odoo community. Recently, Fabien published a post on his LinkedIn page where he noted that Odoo is celebrating its 20th birthday in 2024.
Source: https://linuxfr.org (translated from French into English by Google)
Over its evolution, the system went by several names before it became known as Odoo, as we know it today. The first publicly known name was Tiny EPR. It was under this brand that the first release of the system was published on July 6, 2004.
Name Changes
Tiny ERP
Under the name TinyERP, the system was developed until 2008, when the next name change took place. To show its commitment to open source software, the name was changed to Open ERP.
OpenERP
The rapid growth in popularity of the system began in 2014, when another name change was made. This year OpenERP was renamed to Odoo, and since then, the system has had the name we are all used to.
Odoo
Fabien was often asked about the current name of the system: "Why Odoo?". He provided various versions and explanations for the origin of this word, but perhaps the most interesting version is the one described in the Odoo block in the article "OpenERP becomes Odoo". According to it, Fabien's team analyzed the names of the most financially successful Internet companies and saw a tendency that the value of a company is much higher if its name includes more letters "O". We don't know if this is true or not. But we can definitely see that a significant increase in the popularity of the Odoo system occurred just after this renaming.
Popularity
All of these name changes are well reflected in the popularity of Web search queries, if you look at these trends from 2004 to the present.
Source: Google Trends
The decline in the popularity of the previous name is replaced by the growth of the new one, but the trend towards a steady increase in the system popularity as a whole is very clear.
What's next
It was definitely a long way from the first release to the popularity and recognition that the system has at the moment. But the story of the Odoo system continues, Odoo S.A. delights its fans with new releases every year. Now that the exact date that can be considered the system's birthday has been identified, we can celebrate this day together with all the system's supporters in the world.
July 6th is Odoo's birthday, a day when we can thank Fabien Pinckaers, his team, all members of the global and local Odoo communities, and those who contribute to the development of this amazing system.
Happy Birthday Odoo, 20 years is just the beginning!