[DISCUSSION] Future of "membership" module, removed of Odoo CE since v18.3

[arnaudlayec]

Hello all,

I am writing this issue to discuss and define a proposal to manage the fact that Odoo S.A. simply removed the "membership" module from Odoo Community Edition since v18.3, in favor of a "partnership" module which does not render the same functionalities.

Context

You may verify that in browsing Odoo v19.0 "addons" folder: https://github.com/odoo/odoo/tree/19.0/addons, the "membership" module does not exist anymore. "Membership" is not even in Enterprise edition, it has just been removed in
Also see this PR and commit:

• [REF] membership: better integrate with pricelist and crm odoo/odoo#197228
• odoo/odoo@787ee30

I'm also opening this issue in the context of work ordered by and realized for the OCA, which wants to improve its membership process in their recently-migrated v18.0 Odoo (call for quotation of September 2025, RFQ2). In the context of this work, we decided to rely on the membership module still available in v18.0, but which will not exist anymore in this format at next OCA's Odoo upgrade.

Proposal

I'm wondering about the role of the community and scenarios we can think of to move forward.
Without have a lot of background, I'm pointing out a few facts in my knowledge and possibilities for the OCA.
I think the PSC of vertical-association must be consulted.

Facts:

• "membership" module was old, and I understand not easily inheritable or fixable
• it is used by Odoo customers, not only the OCA (I know for a fact at least 1 big engineer school in Switzerland)
• the new module "partnership", presented as a replacement, is rather a module to manage corporate partners like https://www.odoo.com/partners

Possibilities (very simply):

1. write to Odoo S.A. to clarify the situation
2. fork "membership" in v18.2 and start maintaining a "membership_oca" starting v19.0 in this repository: could be the opportunity to "clean" the module, and offer an alternative to customers previously using in in v18.2 and below
3. anything else?

For OCA RFQ: @bguillot @TumbaoJu
For vertical-association editors & PSC: @chienandalu @pedrobaeza @rafaelbn
For OCA's internal tools working group: @petrus-v @thomaspaulb

[pedrobaeza]

At first sight, it seems we need to fork membership and website_membership modules for not losing the core features we need as associations (AEOdoo is also using the members directory: https://www.aeodoo.org/members), and then evolve it to get it more modern approach and heritability. We can integrate membership_extension into the main module, for example.

[chienandalu]

Yeah, I think the same. The new Odoo approach has not much to do with the former membership model and it's a good chance to merge the OCA improvements.

[petrus-v]

Yes I think OCA could maintain and improve this old module !

[thomaspaulb]

Was looking at what replaced it, and along with the removal of membership module from CE, a module sale_subscription_partnership was added to EE, which builds on partnership (CE) and sale_subscription (EE) to create membership-like behavior, worded as follows:

Following the change in community, with a new module partnership to handle the grade of affiliates, this commit extends the sale logic to subscriptions of affiliates. It allows to have recurring affiliations of members or partners.

Basically when a certain product gets sold year after year, it can update the "grade" of the partner in the system for another year. This is targeted more at affiliate partners of a commercial company, but could also be used for association membership.

So just to note, "Removed" is perhaps not the best description of what happened, not even "Moved to EE", but rather "Redone in EE", and seemingly without migration scripts.

With all this said, I agree with previous posters about the course of action.

[dbruehlmeier]

We are facing the same issue and would be happy to support an OCA fork with a financial or code contribution.

[thomaspaulb]

Maybe it is a good idea to open a Crowdfunding for this @arnaudlayec

[TumbaoJu]

Maybe it is a good idea to open a Crowdfunding for this @arnaudlayec

I like the idea of using the crowdfunding. Let me know if you want me to set this up.

[arnaudlayec]

I think Crowdfunding is a great idea too
I also think we miss a real need expression for it (yet !). In addition of making the membership available again in v19.0, I think there are other improvements needed to the module (simplification, modernization, enrichment, ...). I understood it has not been really maintained since many years. About this last part, we would need to gather the inputs, experiences and opinions of both the technical & functional people having dealt with membership. Maybe users / customers too?

I'll be glad to coordinate & deep-dive this work with you @TumbaoJu , however I'm not able to point out or find such a group of people. Any help of the community would be appreciated!

[dbruehlmeier]

@arnaudlayec We could definitely help with functional requirements fro real users. This is exactly our customer base (social organisations and non-profits, many of which are member-based).

Happy to join this small task-force if you like! 🤗

[TumbaoJu]

I think Crowdfunding is a great idea too I also think we miss a real need expression for it (yet !). In addition of making the membership available again in v19.0, I think there are other improvements needed to the module (simplification, modernization, enrichment, ...). I understood it has not been really maintained since many years. About this last part, we would need to gather the inputs, experiences and opinions of both the technical & functional people having dealt with membership. Maybe users / customers too?

I'll be glad to coordinate & deep-dive this work with you @TumbaoJu , however I'm not able to point out or find such a group of people. Any help of the community would be appreciated!

I think we can ask the community on the contributors mailing list.