Slashdot Mirror

Robert writes "Along with many other techies, I share an interest in the world of finance (bubble-era stock options pulled me in). Unfortunately, as someone with a strong preference for GNU/Linux as my operating system of choice, I have found that software in this area seems quite sparse. For awhile I have made do with Python, R, Gnumeric, Gnucash and a telephone, along with some small utilities I have written myself. What I would like to know is: what FOSS software do you use for financial analysis, trading, system development, and testing in a Un*x environment? Are there programs you would like to see written or ported? Do any brokerages, data providers, or other services provide good support for we the few? And finally, what commercial entities do you know of that are using FOSS software in their operation?"

tashanna writes "After a very welcome GTK2 conversion and some additional feature hacking, GnuCash has released version 2.0.0. Other notable changes include: 'OFX DirectConnect which can directly retrieve and import account statements over the Internet, a "Hide account" feature to keep a better overview of your current accounts tabbed window functionality, the ability to create budgets within GnuCash using your account data, support for Accounting Periods, the data file format has been improved with respect to international characters data files with international characters can be transferred to other countries flawlessly, GnuCash Help and Guide are now fully integrated with the GNOME Help system (Yelp).'"

Grendel Drago writes "The GnuCash team have released GnuCash 1.9.0. After literally years of waiting, GnuCash is now a GTK2 application. The current version is unstable, and testers are needed."

Memorize writes "What's keeping you from switching your desktop to Linux? Linux has been able to run MS Office under Wine for a while now, but Codeweavers just announced Crossover 4.2 with support for Intuit Quicken and Quickbooks. I know that lack of a good bookkeeping app (other than Gnucash) has been keeping a lot of people from switching. It supports iTunes, too. What else do you need?"

Pandora's Vox asks: "There seems to be lots of FOSS accounting software out there, including one that is almost exactly what I'm looking for. My father just left a large law firm to set up his own shop, and has been having all sorts of adventures with one of the leading legal billing software packages. It's expensive, inflexible, and monolithic. App by app I'm moving him to open source, which brings me to the question (finally!): is there anything comparable out there in FOSS-land? And if not, a) what's the closest thing, and b) would there be any interest in creating / adapting something for the kinds of time-tracking needs that lawyers have? We're talking minute-by-minute time billing, mostly. With some basic accounting tossed in. I'm hoping to do the lawyer thing in a few years myself, so I figure I should start getting the tools I'll be needing together now. Planning ahead, and all. Thanks a bunch!"

ZeLonewolf asks: "I'm a consultant to a customer who owns two franchises of a fitness gym. The computers they use to keep track of members and inventory run DOS programs written in the early 90's by a company that has long since gone out of business. My customer needs an upgrade badly. Replacement software to keep track of members and handle check-in and membership expirations, as well as inventory and point-of-sale data, costs $5,000 and up, so a free software solution is desirable. Does GnuCash do the job? Have Slashdot readers successfully set a small business up with Free/Open Software? What software have you had success with?"

sedition writes "GnuCash developer Benoit Gregoire has written the State of the GnuCash Project. It is a call for help to the Open Source community regarding the open-source accounting software for Linux, Mac OSX, and more. GnuCash is one of the largest (287,853 lines of code), but least publicized Open Source projects. Now it needs developer support, as its future is uncertain."

sedition writes "GnuCash developer Benoit Gregoire has written the State of the GnuCash Project. It is a call for help to the Open Source community regarding the open-source accounting software for Linux, Mac OSX, and more. GnuCash is one of the largest (287,853 lines of code), but least publicized Open Source projects. Now it needs developer support, as its future is uncertain."

robbo writes "Earlier this week, The Register ran a piece on major UK banks and E-commerce sites' refusal to support alternative browsers for online banking, and they followed up with a list of saints and sinners. The reasons vary from requiring support for proprietary technology to security. My own bank only recently started supporting Netscape 6 (but they still don't support Mozilla). Clearly, support for Mozilla, Konqueror, or Galeon are absolutely necessary if projects like GNUCash can successfully integrate online banking. How does the Slashdot crowd find their banking support? Is your bank a sinner or a saint?"

GnuCash is probably the best-known Linux accounting program for home and small business users. GnuCash development is now sponsored by The Linux Developers Group, Inc., a company formed this May by the core GnuCash developers, including Robert Merkel, who originally got involved with GnuCash because, he says, "I was sick of my father nagging me about the dud accounting program he used." Please feel free to ask Robert about GnuCash, guile, shared libraries or almost anything else, even cricket. (He's Australian and a major cricket fan.) We'll send Robert 10 of the highest-moderated questions, and post his answers as soon as we get them back.

meldroc writes "Or should I call it "Shared Library Hell"? The top story of LWN.net this week states that the newest version of GnuCash requires sixty libraries(!), many of which are new versions that aren't available out of the box with most Linux distributions. Managing shared libraries, with all their interdependencies and compatibility problems, is a major hassle. How should we go about dealing with the multitudes of shared libraries without driving ourselves mad or descending into the DLL Hell that makes Windows machines so unreliable?" Well, GnuCash 1.4.1 works fine for me, and I feel no immediate need to update to 1.6, the version that needs 60 libraries. But still a good point here.

Ur@eus writes: "The Gnucash team has released the 1.4.0 version of their wonderful Quicken-like personal finance manager. This is the first stable release since the move from Motif to GNOME. You find Gnucash 1.4.0 at Gnucash.org" This plugs a major gaping hole in Linux software: I've been using gnucash for a year now, and it's made great leaps in terms of features and stability. It isn't quicken, but its close enough for most of us. If you're having problems with the main link, try this mirror.

Jeremy Collins wrote in to tell us that Gnucash 1.3.0 Beta is out. We keep the software release announcements to a minimum and let more appropriate sites handle them, but this is pretty significant. Gnucash is the best quickenesque program under Linux today, and as we all know: it's those pesky end user apps that we lag behind other OSs. We've already got several word processors, spreadheets and image manipulation coming along nicely, but seeing development happen in the financial package area (also games and video) is important. Anyway, I'd suggest checking this one out: I've been using it since xacc and it's good if you're anal. Check out the ftp.gnucash.org and report bugs if you see 'em.

Jeremy Collins wrote in to tell us that Gnucash 1.3.0 Beta is out. We keep the software release announcements to a minimum and let more appropriate sites handle them, but this is pretty significant. Gnucash is the best quickenesque program under Linux today, and as we all know: it's those pesky end user apps that we lag behind other OSs. We've already got several word processors, spreadheets and image manipulation coming along nicely, but seeing development happen in the financial package area (also games and video) is important. Anyway, I'd suggest checking this one out: I've been using it since xacc and it's good if you're anal. Check out the ftp.gnucash.org and report bugs if you see 'em.

Jeremy Collins wrote in to tell us that Gnucash 1.3.0 Beta is out. We keep the software release announcements to a minimum and let more appropriate sites handle them, but this is pretty significant. Gnucash is the best quickenesque program under Linux today, and as we all know: it's those pesky end user apps that we lag behind other OSs. We've already got several word processors, spreadheets and image manipulation coming along nicely, but seeing development happen in the financial package area (also games and video) is important. Anyway, I'd suggest checking this one out: I've been using it since xacc and it's good if you're anal. Check out the ftp.gnucash.org and report bugs if you see 'em.

Jeremy Collins wrote in to tell us that Gnucash 1.3.0 Beta is out. We keep the software release announcements to a minimum and let more appropriate sites handle them, but this is pretty significant. Gnucash is the best quickenesque program under Linux today, and as we all know: it's those pesky end user apps that we lag behind other OSs. We've already got several word processors, spreadheets and image manipulation coming along nicely, but seeing development happen in the financial package area (also games and video) is important. Anyway, I'd suggest checking this one out: I've been using it since xacc and it's good if you're anal. Check out the ftp.gnucash.org and report bugs if you see 'em.

Bill Adams writes "The Gnu Cash website is closing in a month. He needs someone to host the site for him. See the site for more information. " Anyone out there able to help?

One of the numerous Anonymous Coward's wrote in to alert everyone to the development of GNUCash. Still pretty early in the devel cycle, but it's good to see the consumer-needed apps being developed.